WOMEN LOVE 8″: WHY SIZE MATTERS (FOR TABLETS)
I love my Samsung Tab S 10.4" tablet. It wasn’t my first tablet — nor will it be my last (it might be). I love everything about it — I love the size, the weight, the battery life. I use it for almost everything. I watch media on it. I game on it. I read on it. Heck, I’ll even remote the PC across the room with it if I suddenly feel the urge to be productive.
The Tab S comes with me everywhere (I even bought a man purse to assist me in carrying it and the various little accessories around with me; I have a tiny OTG drive, an OTG cable, a stylus, a backup battery (with power to spare) — heck, I even have a tiny little wireless Bluetooth game pad (the fun little Impulse controller) in case I need some Mr. Do on the go.
I’ve worked my way through the tablet world to get to this point. I started with a hacked 7″ B&N Nook Color running a full AOSP-type Android rom. I moved to a 10″ Asus Transformer 101 complete with docking keyboard, gave the TF301 a go, invested in a Nexus 7, had a Nexus 10 and a plethora of other slates along the way — finally ended up finding what I wanted in the Tab S (although it took a custom ROM to get the abandoned tab up to some modern Android specs).
What I could NOT work through was why I couldn’t get my wife to buy into the tablet lifestyle.
My wife is an avid reader. Her original tool of choice? The (decommissioned) 9″ Kindle DX with e-Ink display. I finally managed to break her off of the Amazon teat and got her an amazing large screen e-Ink reader (Onyx M92 9″ device) that is a bit more friendly to non-Amazon purchases — which allows her to read any type of book format (PDF done right, BTW) and has a nice fat microSD card installed. It met a tragic accident and ended up in the scrapheap — so she had to learn to live with the smaller Kindle reader.
Every time I’d get a new tablet, I would shoot her my old one — trying so hard to get her to love a tablet as much as I do. She took a shine to the Nook Color initially, but refused to read on it. Completely underpowered for a real Android experience, I moved forward — she side stepped back to her e-Ink reader; happy as a clam.
I wasn’t ready to give up. Once I grew out of the Nexus 10 — I loaded it up with her favorite genre of games; hidden object puzzlers. Once again, she tried it a couple days — shrugged it off — and into the closet it went (still have it sitting around too).
I thought I could live with a smaller tablet when the gorgeous Shield Tablet originally came out — but it only lasted about a week before I realized it just isn’t big enough for me. So the Samsung Tab S came home — and the Nexus 10 went to my wife.
Surely the insane screen, smaller size and extra power would woo her into my way of thinking; tablets rock.
Nope. The Nexus 10 got mothballed.
The wife refused to budge. Her Onyx M92 9″ e-Reader was all she needed (until she broke it, of course)
I gave up. Until recently when a friend asked me what tablet to get his wife. Of course I recommended the Samsung line and he said he had been considering a Samsung Galaxy 8" tablet. I told him I wasn’t ultimately familiar with the Galaxy line (still in Tab S land) line, but I’m sure she would be happy with it.
I followed his experiences closely. After all, I had a wife resistant to tablets — perhaps THIS tablet held some sort of magic?
After a couple of weeks, I asked after his wife’s tablet behavior. He told me that she LOVED it. He said the tech was fantastic and that the size and operation suited his wife perfectly.
Now I was definitely interested. I checked into Best Buy’s return policy; 15 days, no restocking fee. No real risk. I pulled the trigger and brought this slate home to her for her birthday.
A few months prior, my wife found Pintrest. I don’t get the draw, personally — maybe it is “RSS for chicks”. Who knows? But she found herself totally addicted. She used a laptop for her “Pintresting” and sometimes her Galaxy phone — but she preferred the bigger PC screen and layout to the “phone app” edition of Pintrest.
My wife’s needs for a tablet are pretty light — Pintrest is huge, match 3 games, hidden object games, Facebook nonsense … little email, Google Hangouts. She adopted the Galaxy 8" with these needs in mind and the size appeared to be a key element in her adoption. 10″ is too big, 7″ is too small (and yes, I went there). The Galaxy 8" fit her like a glove.
Suddenly — the moon, the sun, Mars and Earth aligned and out of nowhere, she became a tablet freak too. If all of this wasn’t enough, I caught her READING A BOOK on it. I think once she realized that the dot pitch and resolution was so much better than the old Nook Color (and she could read in bed with the lights off) — that drove the final nail in the anti-tablet coffin.
Shortly thereafter, I found the receipt for the Galaxy 8" tablet. I had kept it on ready-hot-standby — figuring the tablet would be returned within a week.
The tablet is still a natural appendage for my wife. She takes it with her to school. It travels with her; and while the size and lightweight probably make this possible — it was everything combined that really sold her which makes the Galaxy 8" (in my book) the new “chick tablet”.
When my friends ask me about tablets (for their wives or even themselves) I tell them how much I love my Samsung Tab S 10.4" … but I also have a story about how I converted my hold-out wife to the wonders of tablet ownership.
So if your special lady is looking for a tablet to call her own, remember; size matters.
