Compaq once stood as a giant in personal computers. Decades later, the brand lives on through licensing agreements with other companies. One result is the Qtab Pro, an 11-inch Android tablet now available on store shelves. The story behind it mixes history with everyday hardware in ways that keep drawing attention.
OPPO has released a new compact tablet aimed for users who want a lot of power but don’t want to carry a large device around. At only 5.39mm thick and weighing a svelte 279g, the OPPO Pad Mini easily fits into a bag or even a decent-sized pocket. The body was built with a combination of anodized as well as sandblasted metal, and it feels somewhat substantial while remaining absolutely lightweight in the palm. You’ll get three colors at launch: Space Grey, Monet Purple, and Peppermint Green. A magnetic strip along one edge keeps the OPPO Pencil 3 Pro stylus clean, eliminating the need for fussy clips or cases.
8849’s Tank Pad Ultra is a rugged beast, weighing over three pounds and measuring 10.6 x 6.7 x 0.9 inches. On the other hand, it has a lot going for it, including a screw-on handle that hooks securely in the rear and swings out to provide a very sturdy stand for watching or projecting videos. Plus, it’s quite water resistant, so you can take it outside or throw it in a backpack without fear of it breaking.
BlackBerry entered the tablet market in the spring of 2011 with the PlayBook, a 7-inch tablet that had to compete with larger offerings from Apple and others. People who picked one up quickly noticed how portable it was, fitting easily into a bag or coat pocket for on-the-go use.
A Scholastic Book Fair cash register appears for sale on eBay, and Michael MJD simply wants to get his hands on it for a closer look. It turns out to be a PAX E500 POS terminal that Scholastic had customized for their traveling sales events. These devices would process orders for books, posters, pencils, and anything else was piled up in those brief, generally chaotic classroom installations.
Honor has just launched the MagicPad 4, the world’s thinnest Android tablet at a mere 4.8 millimeters thick, excluding the minor camera bump. This surpasses the previous MagicPad 3 by a full millimeter and slips under the 5.1-millimeter mark set by devices such as the current iPad Pro and Samsung’s Galaxy Tab S11 series.
Samsung released the Galaxy Tab A11+ late last year, and it quietly exceeded people’s expectations with what it does at a reasonable price for an Android tablet. Priced at $210 (was $250) for the 6GB RAM and 128GB storage edition, this 11-inch slate includes a slew of enhancements that feel like a game changer in a market where corners are typically cut.
The Bigme B10 proudly claims to be the world’s most powerful 10-inch color E-ink phone-tablet, and it has every right to do so. It packs a MediaTek Dimensity 1020 chipset, 8GB of RAM, and 256GB of storage into a frame that remains very compact. It ships with Android 14 out of the box, allowing you to access all of those millions of apps while still providing all of the benefits of E-ink, such as a reading experience as near to paper as possible.
US prisons currently use Android tablets granted by the correctional institution as an upgrade from the gloomy electronics offered in the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s. Back then, convicts had a limited number of options, including shared payphones, a small portable radio, or, if they were lucky and had a few dollars, a Walkman, and possibly a few tapes or CDs if their funds were sufficient. Tablets are now primarily supplied by two major providers: Securus Technologies (by its subsidiary JPay) and ViaPath Technologies (after GTL). Jpay models, such as the JP6S, are currently dominating a lot of states; these devices run a closed down version of Android, which is often Android 8.1 these days.
Many low-cost tablets feel like half-finished devices, bound within Amazon’s ecosystem with limited app availability and a general sense of sluggishness. The Lenovo Idea Tab (2025) with the Lenovo Tab Pen and Folio Case, priced at $179.99 (was $249.99), is an entirely different beast.