Tablet under 300

I posted this question in general hardware http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?p=1042042076#post1042042076 and was told it be better to ask tablet questions here. I am currently looking for a tablet under 300 dollars. I'm in the US btw. I don't know much about tablet but i plan on doing web surfing and watching movies and tv shows on probably through plex. Bigger screen the better I guess.

Don't know what your "use" case scenario is but Amazon makes a range of tablets from 49 dollars up.

Do some research?

You could get a Nokia N1 from some sellers for that price, or a Samsung Tab S, or... any number of things really. Truth is all you really need to worry about is screen quality and battery life if you're just streaming content on it, as that's not very processor intensive.

I like sticking to a windows tablet instead of apple. Easier to download movies directly to it and expand storage with SD cards. Lenovo has some decent semi-cheap ones. I have a Lenovo lynx with 64gb (paid $300) and a 64gb uhs-3 sd card from amazon for $56. But it is a few years old now.

It depends on how you like to watch. Plex you can do on just about anything, including Apple devices. Streaming and the web are easy to do just about anywhere. I'd only get a Windows tablet in that price range if you're the sort who has to download less-than-official videos directly.

It's a toss-up between the iPad mini 2, Shield Tablet K1 and (if you can afford an extra $50) Galaxy Tab S2. The iPad has the best app ecosystem for what you want to do, it's readily available, and it's well-built. The Shield Tablet K1 should be the fastest, and the Galaxy Tab S2 is both the most portable and one of the few modern tablets in this price range with multi-window support.

If portability is a concern at all I'd vote for one of the models Aurelius mentioned, or a 2013 Nexus 7. I've had two of them now and they're a good balance of size and portability, cheap, and run the latest Android.

The software side is really easy and takes about 5 minutes total. You'll need a media server, renderer (device displaying the media content) and remote control.

For a media server, on a Windows PC locally search for built-in "media streaming options" and enable all access for local network. Move your media into the appropriate videos, music and pictures directories under your local profile.

On your Android tablet, download BubbleUPnP server/client/remote control app. License is only $4.69 but is well worth the cost of cup of coffee and can be installed on any number of devices. Run the app, it'll auto discover your local media servers, display the media content and show you available renderers. Beauty of it is you can remote control any server to play to any renderer running BubbleUPnP or equivalent so, for example, from one tablet you can remote control the server to play to a Chromecast connected to TV, to another Android phone or tablet on your WLAN.

Optionally, you can purchase MX Player Pro and use their custom codec if your renderer's native player doesn't play all media correctly due to, for example, missing audio codec support on non-Samsung devices. Samsung native player has great codec support and support additional features like picture-in-picture.

As for hardware, for media watching you only want SAMOLED for true black and no backlight bleed, micro SD card slot and/or USB OTG support for carrying your library with you on the go, good codec support to play all your media without issue and 802.11ac WIFI for plenty of bandwidth doing things in the background while watching media like moving files with Solid Explorer, Flud, etc . Your best choice is Galaxy Tab S2 which you can find on Craigslist for as low as $250 to $300 and can even replace your PC as a low power media server with BubbleUPnP. Other great options are Windows tablets like Thinkpad Helix2, Surface 3, etc starting from ~$350 on CL with built-in Windows Media Player that will auto discover media servers and while it's a little more money they can double up as a laptop to run professional software like full Office, Photoshop, etc.

No one should be considering a Nexus 7 at this point.

Shield Tab K1 ($200), Nexus 9 (around $200 on recent deals) or iPad mini 2 ($200) are about the only tabs I would look at right now under $300. Samsung has nice displays and some software features, but their software support is abysmal because they come out with new tabs every 3 months and can't keep up with them for more than 9 months or so.

^^^
If you're willing to mess around a bit Cyanogen is great with the Samsung tablets.

If you're looking at other devices like Nexus or Shield devices check if USB mass storage and exFat are supported.

USB mass storage allows one to connect a USB flash stick and play media off of it. Nexus devices may need USB Media Importer app purchase to get around that limitation.

exFat file system allows file sizes >4GB which is common with video files so it's good to check.

Also, not all devices support codecs like AC3 audio decoding natively. Samsung devices have natively supported all of the above for the last several years so fewer things to worry about.

I vote Nvidia shield too.

Specs are very generous for the$200 price range.

Only thing I don't like about the Shield is the huge bezels. That said (I'm not the OP) I am considering one myself since the idea of being able to stream PC games from my beast at home is very appealing vs. dealing with my aging laptop's very limited capabilities.