What is the cheapest tablet out there the community has found to be good for trainerroad? Need something bigger then my iPhone 8 due to getting old😂 and bad eye sight.
Mike
I’ll be interested to see what people jump in with. Im considering a Samsung Galaxy Tab A 10.1, you can pick them up for about £160 and I like the idea of running TR and Netflix / Prime Video / You Tube in split screen mode.
I have a cheap Android tablet that’s perfect for book reading on endurance rides, 1080p youtube, but stutters really bad in TR. It’s unusable - the app doesn’t update every second, but skips several seconds intermittently.
So, if you go as cheap as possible, make sure you can return it if it stutters. I assume this is because of the low performance SOC (CPU part). 1080p in youtube is hardware accelerated by the SOC (GPU part).
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Do you know which one?
I guess I should clarify. Reasonably cheap but still a good performer. It’s all it will be used for.
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Really? The TR app should have very low requirements - it’s only drawing a few pixels on the screen every second and changing a few numbers… FWIW it works flawlessly* on my five-year-old Google Nexus 7, but I guess that was fairly high-end when it came out.
* if you ignore the fact that it’s crashed on me once
Don’t forget that some tablets also natively support ant+
Samsung do a few, the galaxy tab 2 is one I use
I’ll get back to you when I’ve checked, so that you at least know which SOC doesn’t work well enough.
Lenovo Tab 7 1gb didn’t even get through lazy mountain for me without stuttering, using an OTG cable and ant+.
My main TR device is an Android Box (H96 Pro). Technically not supported but I downloaded through the play store and am getting all the updates. Only issue I’ve had was half way through Disaster!
Do Chromebooks work well for TR?
They dont work at all: Running TR on a Chromebook?
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Well, that’s good to know!
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Honestly, find the cheapest iPad you can.
Android is a total crapshoot for bluetooth and ANT+ support, especially on the cheaper/lower end. Tablet android is an additional crapshoot for bluetooth support as well. The nightmare of the clusterfuck that is OEM Android, combined with carrier compromises, combined with odd hardware model compromises means you never know what you will get Android device to device or update to update.
There are numerous threads here about Android bluetooth issues. You can have it working and the next software update totally breaks it (i.e Android 7.0 to 7.0.1, completely broke bluetooth for most, 8.0 and 9.0 have had similar issues with software releases).
The basic 9.7" iPad is a steal for what it is. If it’s still too much you can find refurbished ones or slightly older ones around or under $200’ishUSD online. There are rumblings of new low priced iPad minis being released in the coming months.
iOS 10+ (they are on 12 now and 13 is coming out this year) is bulletproof bluetooth support. You will have many years of trouble free TR use (more if you buy a new iPad) if you spend a little more now.
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Yup, this.
I realize Apple devices are more expensive but they (in my experience) tend to have a longer useful life than some cheaper Android devices. Keep an eye on the refurbished and sale section of the Applestore, some good deals can occasionally be had there with the same warranty as new devices.
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Lenovo TAB 2, 1.3GHz quad-core MediaTek MT8161 SoC.
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Yea I have been leaning iPad just wish I could find a new one for around $225ish. Pretty much what I have to spend.
Just keep an eye out on the apple refurbished, eBay, amazon…
Also Walmart and Target sell them heavily discounted here and there.
Can the Ipads read ANT, or only Android devices?
I side loaded TR onto a Amazon Fire. Been working fine so far. I forget how much I paid for it, $70?
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only with a lightning to 30 pin adapter and a separate ANT+ key from someone like wahoo.
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