How does it compare to an iPad?

[Guest steviem]

Just wondering if it's worth me selling my 16GB wifi+3G iPad to get one of these and keep the difference?

I have a few questions though:

-How is the Battery Life?

-Does it use wireless n?

-How hot does it get?

-Is it ok with 720p MP4 files?

Thanks,

Steve

[Guest shutdown]

i'd say you'll miss the ipad. there are just a few things that are better on the pad over the vega and you'll miss it. (Screen, apps, quality)

if you'd never had an ipad then it will be good but to downgrade i personally think would be hard

[Guest removed-14]

Quite a few people have already asked similar questions:

http://android.modaco.com/content/advent-v...rld-difference/

http://android.modaco.com/content/advent-v...got-one-or-not/

[Guest duquesa]

I own and Ipad and also bought one for my wife when I could no longer prize it out of her hands and now my 10 year old is hogging mine, I didn't want to spend that kind of money on another ipad and he also really needs a webcam for his busy social life on skype!

I also fancied buying an android to mod and have been waiting for a Tegra 2 tablet to come available so was keen to buy the Vega for him for Christmas

I posted last week that I had managed to buy one but wasn't sure if my order had gone through or not?

I was in the UK for the weekend and my order did go through and was delivered on Monday afternoon and I have now turned the tables on my boy and have been hogging his tablet and have been able to compare the Ipad and Vega.

The fact is the Vega is no Ipad in terms of build or screen quality and if you own an Ipad then I really can't see you being happy with the vega.

Ok that's the negatives out of the way

For all non Ipad owners the Vega is a serious piece of kit for very little money and should not be overlooked.

The screen is very responsive and the processor is probably quicker than the ipads in my 2 days of use.

Start up is quick enough and batter y life is very impressive, I managed 2 full days of what I would call normal usage from mine when turning the brightness down which I do on my ipad anyway.

Opening webpage's is faster on the vega than the ipad ?

Build quality is good but I will be happy once I manage to get hold of a case to protect it from bumps and daily wear.

The screen is bright and clear but like I said not to the standard of the ipad but then neither is the price.

The software is designed for phones and really doesn't translate that well into a tablet so a lot of compromises have been made in this area but this will change and if you don't mind playing around this can only get better.

All in all I am very impressed given the possibilities of this tablet and the incredibly low price.

If you own an ipad stick with it but if you are in the market for your first tablet I´d go for the Vega ;)

[Guest English Haze]

When considering paying twice as much for an iPad you should also consider all the limitations that come with an Apple branded product. No Flash, limited video formats, no USB connection to transfer content. Apple's "we know what's best for you" attitude to anything you want to put on "your" device.

As I've said elsewhere I'm happy with a slightly inferior open product than accept any of that crap from Apple.

[Guest steviem]

I'm moving to Ubuntu for my desktop right now, that's one of my motivations for selling the iPad as I don't necessarily want a Windows or OSX VM just to sync my media.

[Guest arad85]

limited video formats

There's onjly limited video content available on the Vega now. The two I've tried haven't played at all...

[Guest English Haze]

Smart move. All of my hardware at home has one flavour of Linux or another installed (except the wife's desktop because she uses Photoshop and I haven't managed to persuade her to move to Gimp and Inkscape yet).

I was reading the Google news yesterday regarding Chrome OS and they had the nerve to say that with Chrome OS there was now a third choice of OS over Windows and OSX. Um, sorry, you mean yet another choice behind the long list of very capable Linux distributions already available for many, many years!

Edited December 8, 2010 by English Haze

[Guest English Haze]

There's onjly limited video content available on the Vega now. The two I've tried haven't played at all...

But that has every chance of changing whereas with Apple...

[Guest arad85]

Smart move. All of my hardware at home has one flavour of Linux or another installed (except the wife's desktop because she uses Photoshop and I haven't managed to persuade her to move to Gimp and Inkscape yet).

Linux is a great embedded OS or server OS. The real problem with it (or Ubuntu at least) is there isn't a staged development cycle. The UI, whilst it looks good, has more bugs in it than either OSX or Win7 and when/if the bugs get fixed, only to introduce different bugs. I tried it 18 months ago (ok, it could have got better since then, but the feeling I had with it was not good). Your mileage may vary, but it is (or certainly was) full of bugs when you started opening out the UI features and using them. The core OS and command line is as stable as anything though...

BTW, gimp has some severe limitations at the moment as a photography tool - especially if you use RAW images that are greater than 8 bits as it can only handle 8 bit images.

Sorry, rant over, but there are down sides to Linux too (I've been a software programmer/program manager since 1985 and have used many forms of *nix, so I do have some experience of how to set up a Unix box ;)).

[Guest warriorscot]

The LTS versions of Ubuntu are usually pretty stable but other distros are more and less stable and you get fewer bugs on mature releases compared to bleeding edge releases to give you all the cool features. I generally dual boot linux and whatever windows is hot at the moment usually for gaming as I just cant be bothered setting up virtualisation when its easy enough to dual boot. I do have a general seperation of Windows=play Linux=work especially when I do coding based work.

The only problems I have had with video on the Vega is audio that is closed source like AC3 and DTS and that is a dolby thing because they take royalties for using them. There are some video formats that don't play but its got most of the usual suspects covered and it will improve once google gets its act together on the media front with Android. Remember Android at the moment is still a phone OS shoehorned on tablets so its media handling is still that of a phone not a tablet with lots of horsepower to play HD content. And even as is it still has better support for content than the iPad.

And the Vega integrates better into your digital life, I can access my PC remotely along with full file access on my network from and to the Vega with minimal hassle. The ipad just doesn't do that without a good dose of hacking. And you have to put up with apples attitude of "It's our hardware we are just letting you use it for a while". There are advantages to the ipad especially for the less tech savvy that just want it to work but if you don't mind playing and like to see a platform evolve from good to brilliant the vega is definitely a good choice. And while the externals aren't as pretty as the ipad its got plenty muscle and the build quality is just as good it just uses some cheaper but no less practical materials.