For a long time – or since the tablet was powerful enough to support everyday document processing – there has been an enduring discussion in the digital world: can the tablet replace the traditional laptop as the new productivity tool?Most people have actually given a negative opinion in previous practice, believing that when it comes to productivity tools, tablets cannot replace traditional laptops.
However, in the past two years, with the blowout of a new round of tablet equipment, the situation has been different from before. The reason is that the newly launched tablet devices pay great attention to the three words productivity, whether it is the hardware itself or its system and software, all of which have been optimized to improve user productivity. At this point in time, let's go back to the discussion"Can tablets replace traditional laptops as a new productivity tool?"This is a question that needs to be approached from a new perspective.
It is still proud of the market in terms of productivity
In fact, if you mention productivity tablets, I believe the first thing that comes to your mind, in addition to iPad Pro, must be the Surface series.
Microsoft's Surface has created a 2-in-1 tablet notebook, you can use it as a simple tablet or as a traditional notebook, because it runs a complete Windows, so at least you can use the full version of the Office suite, you can easily open a lot of windows, run a lot of professional software only Windows version. It doesn't matter if it's fast or not, at least it does, and from that point of view, it's still the most productive of tablet devices.
This year, there are also two new devices that bring the 2-in-1 Windows tablet back to the spotlight, one is Microsoft's Surface Pro 9, and the other is Huawei's recently released MateBook E series.
The former finally used a new mold,The hardware has been upgraded in an all-round way,It can be said to keep up with the whole era,Although it's still expensive,But it's really the only tablet in the current two-in-one windows tablet。
The latter is to change its own Android tablet to an x86 cup,Audio-visual entertainment has been brilliant for a long time while relying on the system and supporting keyboard to make up for the shortcomings in productivity,Its hardware quality basically crushes Lenovo's yoga duet at the same price,It can be said that it is a two-in-one Windows tablet with high cost performance at present。
Of course, they are not without shortcomings, such as the inability to cram a large-capacity battery in order to control the thickness and weight of the body, such as the feel of the keyboard and trackpad will be limited by the size and somewhat lacking ......And because the domestic two-in-one tablet market is relatively small, they have not been able to set off too many waves. As the main force of shipments, the tablet of about two or three thousand is the common tablet product that people have at hand.
There was a time when Android tablets were the synonym for low prices and low quality, but some manufacturers have not given up on chasing the high-end market. In general, the overall quality of Android tablets is constantly improving, and about two or three thousand mid-to-high-end tablets this year generally use Qualcomm Snapdragon 870, a flagship-level SOC and a screen configuration such as high-resolution and high-brush screens. This configuration no longer poses a bottleneck in the face of simple document processing, but rather requires more care for the system itself.
Due to the decline of Android tablets in previous years, Google has also left such devices behind, and has not introduced new features for Android for tablet devices for many years. At the same time, iPads not only have exclusive iPadOS, but also ushered in a lot of enhancements in productivity, application split screen, the strengthening of file management allows iPadOS to be able to handle documents well, Apple even uncharacteristically catered to the user's opinion to add the mouse pointer back, which shows its determination to build an iPad productivity ecology.
Google doesn't do it, there is Apple, there is a model, you can only copy it yourself and then make some micro-innovations. As a result, we see that manufacturers reproduce and strengthen the multi-window of iPadOS on the tablet, and if the application is not adapted to the horizontal screen, the original interface is rotated and then filled with the background on the left and right sides, and there is also a "parallel vision" function that effectively uses the screen space under the horizontal screen. Thanks to the efforts of the manufacturers, the new Android tablet has indeed made great strides in terms of productivity, and light document processing is no longer a problem.
But can productivity be limited to light document processing?Definitely not. Therefore, they have unearthed a new use of multi-screen collaboration, so that different devices in the same ecosystem can synchronize data such as notifications and files, and switch devices without interrupting normal use. You can even use the tablet as a secondary screen of the mobile phone ORP, so that the screen of the tablet can be used more.
However, no matter how complex the above scenarios are, they may be limited to light office scenarios, can the tablet be used for other productivity applications?The answer given by Apple is of course yes.
So I still have to go back to the iPad Pro, the current top-of-the-line tablet device, except for light office productivity scenarios such as document processing, it is second to none in the tablet device in terms of creation.
In the spring of this year, Apple updated the same M1 processor on the MacBook Pro for the iPad Pro, a move that also means that Apple will continue to strengthen the performance of the iPad Pro. So what kind of application can use such powerful performance?Adobe's authoring apps are one category.
In addition to using Apple Pencil for painting creation, photographers can also use iPad Pro to quickly carry out ** post-processing.
Looking at the entire tablet market, only the iPad Pro can attract users to try using tablets for a short period of time. In fact, iPad Pro is very popular in the art creation circle, and many directors who work on the set like to use it, because it has a screen with more accurate color reproduction, handwriting ability that is easy to draw storyboard drafts, and quite strong performance, and on the set, it is much lighter than MacBook Pro, and it has become one of the most convenient tools for directors to have at hand.
In fact, the vast majority of people buy tablets, mainly for audio-visual entertainment. Vendors are trying to increase their productivity from the system, but there is still a long way to go before more users buy into it.
Traditional laptops are more efficient in real production environments than touch-based tablets because of the full keyboard and mouse experience, and in this regard, tablets may never be able to completely replace traditional laptops. But it can't be ignored that today's children are exposed to all kinds of touch-operated devices from an early age, and when this group of people grows up, the tablet with touch as the main means of interaction may play more roles in actual work.