Tablets and flash player

laverne_2

Am looking to buy my 9 yr old son a tablet for Xmas. He will be mostly using it for doing homework, playing online games such as moshi monsters etc, you tube and watching films/programmes online. My understanding is that I need a tablet that is compatable with flashplayer. I am hoping to spend around about £100 and am hoping for about a 10" screen although this is not a necessity. I have spent the past few days surfing the net to find the right one but am absolutely clueless and have just confused myself even more trying to understand all the jargon! Can anyone help me find the right tablet for me please, thanks in advance

neilwoods

10" tablet for £100 is going to very basic.

When you say homework, do you mean browsing net for info actually doing the work on, like on a pc with microsoft word.

Most tablets will be running android 4 which is ok for flash, but the very latest android 4.1 have dropped the support for flash.

So for tablets, Currys do a couple of 10" tablets at the moment, discgo at £89 and arnova at £129, they dont have direct access to google play store, instead have there own version which won't have as many apps.

Not sure about moshi monsters, but they brought out there own tablet with very similar specs to the 2 above and should be ok to play moshi on.

So for £100 for 10 or 9.7 inch tablet, the market is very limited (yes you could buy an imported chinese no brand name, but if anything went wrong, that is where the problems start, at least with high street store, can take it back.)

laverne_2

Hi, he does hIs homework on a website called education city which I believe uses flash and will also be surfing the net for info ect. I did consider the two from currys but wasn't sure if they would meet my requirements. Can you still download apps through googles website? I can spend a bit more (£150) to get a better one or am I still being a bit unrealistic with the price? Would i get much better if i were to compromise on the screen size? Thanks for your help

neilwoods

Arnova uses Appslib and Disgo uses SlideMe, both are apps libraries and do have quite a few apps there, as to what they have, may be worth having a look to see.

You can put google's play store on these, but wouldn't recommend unless you know what your doing as it can stop the tablet's Working.

For £150 (ish) you can get the Kindle fire which uses android 4 (but with amazons own interface), direct access google play, nexus 7 16gb is at £169 at the moment (but new 32gb version is coming out within the next, so the 16gb nexus could drop another £10 or £20). Only trouble with these are the connections, no micro sd card slot or hdmi.

Ebuyer are selling the Acer Iconia A110 for £180 (with £30 cashback), so £150 for a 7 inch, but does have micro sd card slot and hdmi. But the nexus and iconia run android 4.1, so dont officially support flash, it can be put on them, but no guarantee it would work.

So if just to be used for those sites and bit of browsing and some films and what apps would be needed, then the ones from curry would be ok.

If it was me I would go for arnova, made by Archos who make some nice media players. And look around as well, a few places sell the arnova and may some deal going on.

neilwoods

If you live near a retail park, why not go look and try some of them out. Currys, HMV, Staples, Maplin, they all tend to have demo models out. Most of the shops tend to have free wifi, so can check out the app stores.

laverne_2

Yes think I will do that, thanks again for your help

jaydeeuk1

The newer android tablets won't come with flash player, and won't be officially supported.

Blackberry playbook at ~£99 might be an option, plus it will be a hell of a lot better built than a £100 ainol/nat/archos

WantToBeSE

If you can stretch, google nexus 7 is selling for £169.99 (£20 cheaper than RRP, and with 16GB) at currys/PC world at the moment.

neilwoods

WantToBeSE wrote: »

If you can stretch, google nexus 7 is selling for £169.99 (£20 cheaper than RRP, and with 16GB) at currys/PC world at the moment.

Nexus with jelly bean does not support flash. Hopefully the sites that use flash will swap over to html5.

Yeah blackberry playbook is pretty cheap, just never took off as they hoped it would. 16gb for £110 or 64gb for £130 so decent amount of storage, Better processor. Uses QNX as operating system, so not as many apps as android, but about 100,000. So a serious contender for the price

GeorgiaF_2

Hi Laverne!

I couldn't afford a full price tablet myself either and after a bit of research i settled on a HP Touchpad 32GB model with WiFi for £130 - i found it online at a cash generators in bolton!

The reason i went for this is because although its native OS is WebOS (which is really good on its own) there is a really good developer community that has created an Android OS that can be "added" to the tablet, creating a dual boot type of thing, giving you full access to the google play market etc and basically having a really cheap 10" android tablet!! All the required software is availble online - if you're interested i can send you some links?

System

neilwoods wrote: »

Nexus with jelly bean does not support flash. Hopefully the sites that use flash will swap over to html5.

you can install and use flash on a nexus 7