Hi all, I'm in the market to buy a tablet for various reasons and I realized that with a new device I might be able to play GC games on the go, so I'm looking for recommendations on tablets that yield good performance on Dolphin. I understand a 64-bit ARMv8 is required, but beyond that I have clue what to look for as I'm more of a PC guy in general. In many cases it's hard to even find out exactly what kind of processor a tablet has, many will just say "1.5GHz Quad Core" or something similar. I tried doing a search for recommendations but most of the topics I found were outdated (from 2013-2015...).
All I am looking for currently is something with expandable storage and the option for a WiFi only model (no contracts/expensive mobile versions, this is NOT negotiable). Ideally I'd like to have no more than a 9" screen and decent battery life, but good thermal design and previous requirements would take precedence over this.
I'd like to keep the cost ~$200-$250 if possible, but if it's not let me know anything up to $500 and I will save up another month or two for one.
Nothing as of right now.
Android is not in a state right now where any device comes close to running a a lot of games at full speed. The shield TV comes the closest but only with the most lightweight games.
That bad, huh? I'm not surprised given the sluggish state of the mobile market with regards to updates and new features, and the relatively new development for android vs PC. Still, I do need to get a tablet for other reasons (work and personal/travel) by the end of next month, so is there any tablet that is expected to be usable in the future? Whatever tablet I wind up buying will be what I'm stuck with for probably around 3 years, so anything I can do to maximize my chances of having a compatible tablet down the road would be great, or do you just recommend a windows tablet instead at the ~$500 range? I was looking at the Pixel C earlier. It's pricey but if I can get tax exemption or a purchase allowance at work on it then it might push that into my budget.
Everybody has theories with silly drivers and incomplete backends, but nobody really knows.
Every mobile vendor has some quirk besides nvidia. So basically Pixel C and nexus 9 are the go to options, although newer CPU's are beginning to close that gap. Qualcomm has the fastest drivers, ARM is totally shit, and PowerVR is accurate but glacially slow.
IMO if You want something that will allow You to play while being mobile You need to buy something like 2in1 ...
One of the cheapest may be Acer Switch Alpha 12, but it's still ~900$ ...
You'll get 12" tablet which is Windows laptop in same time ... it's like Surface Pro, but lot cheaper
Yep, the best choice is a windows 2 in 1 if you want to use dolphin. But they're not cheap.
My advice is it isn't worth getting a much more expensive tablet just for dolphin when otherwise you'd do just as well with a much cheaper one for everything else.
There don't seem to be many good options for high performance(lots of budget options) android tablets. How about getting a large screened android phone to serve both purposes? The Google Nexus 6p is one option. It has a 5.7 inch screen, is fully ARMv8 and it runs the lightweight dolphin games like SSBM decently with some tweaks in the dolphin settings menu.
So it sounds like tablets suck in general right now. I was at best buy the other day looking at the tab s2 and the another customer told me that we could be seeing the tab s3 as soon as next Friday so I should wait to buy anything right now. I will wait and see how that looks when specs are announced and return gets for opinions then.
Well, unless that tablet is an SD 820 with an nvidia X1 GPU mashed into it (It's not) you're not going to be seeing reasonable performance on Android Dolphin.