The tablet PC has some uses.

* Acting as a mind-dulling babysitter. ("Watch the TikTok/Vimeo/YouTube videos, babykins.")

* Showcasing bad webforms and other bad data-collection systems. (I had visited a medical provider to get a tetanus booster shot. After filling out ALL the information requested on Page 1 of the webform, the system refused to advance to Page 2. The staffer I handed the tablet back to asked me EVERY question on their intake form and typed it into her computer.)

* (Formerly) being an executive status symbol.

Give me an old-school netbook, with a full keyboard (all TWELVE function keys, and INSERT, and DELETE, and SCROLL LOCK, and PRINT SCREEN, and SYS REQ) and externally-swapable battery packs, and an EXTERNAL CHARGER for the battery packs.

Tablets are mainly for 'consumption' of 'Things' produced elsewhere.

Trying to use a tablet for 'REAL' work other than filling in forms etc is frustating and filled with errors as the touchscreen decides to NOT recognize your touch at random times.

A proper keyboard is a must !!!

I have seen a well designed system on a tablet BUT it suffered from 'touch' issues, variable conectivity issues and was ill-suited for user input via a pen as writing on glass is still STUPID with a capital S !!!

How many times do you have to make a random scrawl on a glass screen when signing for things.

The signature has no use if it is NOT recognisable, although this allows the courier to sign in your stead when they are in a hurry and they leave the parcel on your doorstep/window sill/wheelie bin/'other secure locations that thieves cannot see' !!! ^

^ Sorry ... No. 1 gripe regarding deliveries from couriers & Post Office parcel delivery. [Arrrrrgh !!!]

:)

If your "real work" on a computer is stuff that you type then fine, but for those who work or create by drawing and manipulating objects then a tablet is necessary. If you're thinking of only consumption then that's an e-book or similar, not a tablet.

"If you're thinking of only consumption then that's an e-book or similar, not a tablet."

True for you, not true for me. I'm a moderately heavy reader and use the Kindle app on an Amazon Fire 10 in preference to my e-ink Kindle. The trade off of the tablet having a far better quality and larger screen for a quarter of the battery life is fine for me, the tablet works fine for 99% of web browsing, and it's great for those few occasions when I want to watch video on a semi-mobile device. The Fire tablet is so underpowered as to be unusable for any productivity use, but that's not what I need, and at £90 or so for a 10inch table with a pretty good screen its pretty much a steal. There's no privacy - but since I'm buying the books from Amazon they already know my reading habits (and their recommendations are still s**t), I don't do any browsing on the tablet that I don't mind the Bezos' empire knowing about, and I've loaded Google Play so that I'm not limited to the appalling Amazon cr-appstore.

The household has a 2016 Fire tablet and one bought earlier this year, and from a consumption user point of view there's no worthwhile difference, showing how little progress there has been at the bottom end of the market.

"The signature has no use if it is NOT recognisable"

You haven't seen my "usual" signature.

So connect a keyboard - I know authors who wrote their whole books on iPad. Portable and convenient.

Just because you can't use a tablet for your workflow (I couldn't for mine) doesn't mean there aren't workflows where they are perfectly suitable.

I've had a number of Android tablets over the past few years and have been happy with them, but the improvements in the underlying technology have tailed off recently so there isn't the same incentive to upgrade as there would have been three or four years ago. Also, when you consider that the majority of tablet users only consume content rather than create it, and that a half decent smartphone has a screen which is more than adequate for that purpose, the need for a tablet to do the same task just isn't there, and I personally know two people who no longer use their Android tablets and use their phones instead. For me, I was going to get a new Android tablet earlier this year but after weighing up how I actually use one, decided to spend a little more and buy a 14" Chromebook Plus which has turned out way better than I expected, as I can connect it to my phones hotspot and use the Android apps for content consumption while also being able to create docs and do email far, far easier than on a tablet. It's also more comfortable to use, although YMMV.

Note here I'm saying Android and not Apple. The iPad is a different proposition with the higher end models being aimed squarely as a productivity tool and an alternative to a laptop or desktop PC/Mac and having the accessories and apps available to achieve that, so the range of use cases is much broader than that for Android. I suspect, though, that the majority of the lower spec models are used in just the same way as Android tablets are, with the same drivers to upgrade applying there.

I guess it depends on your use case. I went the opposite way - I had a Chromebook, mid-tier, so touchscreen, Pentium silver processor, proper SSD, but found I wasn't using it much, as I had a tablet sitting next to me as well, which just did what I wanted.

I do have a proper keyboard for one of my tablets, but apart from making sure it worked, it's stayed in the box. But if I was away from home, I might take it with me, purely as if I need to do a lot of text input, it's definitely a better option.

Most manufacturers have locked themselves to tablets with video format aspect ratios which is fine if you just want to watch videos.

However if you want to work with document form factors then the options (generally 3:2 aspect ratios) are far rarer or are unnecessarily confined to more expesive models.

The options for tablets which allow create and consumption of large books or music are quite rare, There have been occasional paired A4 screen devices out of Japan for musicians, but those have been hard to source or too expensive.

It seems like most manufacturers have gone the way of the grey box that afflicted desktops and laptops in the late 90s, and have failed to actually connect with the wider possibilities of tablets for non-corporate usage.

I wonder whether volumes for the major brands have grown but the associated revenue remaining static or decreasing.

I noticed earlier this year in a non US market the prices of the new models were significantly cheaper than the earlier comparable models even when the latter were still available. I bought a 11" Lenovo tablet with pen and 4G/LTE that was about half the price of the 10" Lenovo tablet and pen (no cellular network) that I purchased less than two years before.

Minor brands and generic Android tablets are almost unsaleable. You could include them in packets of cereal and they would still immediately go to landfill which to be honest whither a good many, but not all, belong.

I purchased a cheap JVC to dedicate for use with some decent bluetooth speakers to access the national broadcaster's internet only classical music station. Unfortunately the JVC was as slow as molasses in January† – nearly unusable. Ended up using a discarded really old Samsung tab A.

† Clearly a Northern hemisphere idiom. In the Southern subsitute the more euphonious May.

Shame you cannot install macOS on the iPad. Otherwise it's just a fancy YouTube browser.