Gear Patrol

The iPad’s extreme portability is simultaneously glaringly obvious and overlooked in favor of its flashier tech wonders. The take-it-anywhere-ness of the iPad is also perhaps its biggest downside: we tend to treat it like the things it replaced, the books and magazines that we could toss without a care. That usually doesn’t work out well. Here are 30 great options — leather, wool, propped, or otherwise — that should keep your tablet ticking and looking good.

The 1 pound, 6.9mm-thick Sony Xperia Tablet Z pushes gadget bulimia to new lows as the thinnest 10-inch fingerprint magnet on the market. But while the fat’s been trimmed, all the muscle’s still there — including a Qualcomm 1.5GHz processor, 2GB of RAM, 32GB of storage, an 8.1MP Exmor R rear camera, 2MP front camera, NFC, LET, a microSD slot, “S-Force” virtual surround sound and a 10.1-inch full HD screen.

Tablets tablets everywhere — how’s a man to choose? Vizio’s MT11x Windows 8 slate adds another drop in the bucket of great selections. A full-HD 1080p capacitive touchscreen with 10-finger multi-touch gestures pleases eyeballs from the start; it’s the guts, however, that make the 11.6-inch device a top-line competitor. 64GB SSD storage, AMD’s Z-60 APU…

The latest member of the ThinkPad family isn’t just a tablet dragging along a keyboard for faster emailing and double the battery power — though its companion QWERTY is certainly good for both of those things. The real kicker? Attaching the 11.6-inch Windows 8 touchscreen device to the keyboard activates a special cooling system in…

So you managed to score that shiny new iPad Mini. Next step: a case. We’ve saved you hours of SafeSearch Googling by rounding up 30 of the best iPad Mini cases at a variety of price points to help get your new Cupertino buddy from birthday suit to warm and cozy. Whether you prioritize looks, function or insurance for your butterfingers, each of these iPad Mini cases has a forte — and a price. We’ve ordered our selections starting with the most affordable and will update this article as better entries come along. So peruse, hone in, and for god’s sake, cover your shame man.

The Barnes & Noble v. Amazon slap-off continues, this time with the brick-and-mortar book giant’s launch of the Nook HD and HD+ Android tablets. The smaller Nook HD ($199+) maintains a similar form factor to its predecessor, the Nook color, with some noted improvements, including a 1440 x 900 display, which gives it the temporary…

Google’s blessed Nexus line of stock Android phones now finally includes a tablet big brother. The ASUS produced Nexus 7 will be the first device to ship with Android 4.1 a.k.a. Jelly Bean, which promises a slew of enhancements from previous desert OS iterations — particularly when it comes to speed. On the hardware front,…

Last fall, the Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime became the pace car in the Android tablet rat race. Now just four months later, Asus has announced a new flagship that’s souped-up for 2012, ditches the old vowel-overkill “Eee” brand, and gives previous early adopters the middle finger in the process. The Infinity’s body style is…

We kicked off 2012 by visiting not-so-beautiful Las Vegas to attend CES, with the hope of getting a head start on the exciting new products that will launch over the coming year. While we’ll continue to highlight gadgets revealed there on a regular basis, one of the best parts about being on the ground at…

Lenovo has made it clear that it intends to grab a piece of the Android pie with its K2 and S2 IdeaTab tablets. Both of the portable, but not groundbreakingly thin, 10.1-inch tablets will run Android 4.0. The higher-end K2 is one of the first tablets to feature a 1080p screen. Nvidia’s quad-core Tegra 3…

Is it an eReader or a tablet? Kindle or iPad killer? Does it really matter? Packing a dual-core CPU, Gorilla Glass coated multi-touch 7″ IPS panel, and its own special brew of Android, the 14.6 ounce Amazon Kindle Fire ($199) is all about the content. Sure, it may lack some niceties like a camera, mic…

While every other tablet maker has been focused on cramming components into ever-shrinking casings, Panasonic has been hard at work applying the engineering tricks of their Toughbook laptop line to an even more portable device. The result is a newly announced Panasonic Toughbook Android Tablet. Specifics like pricing and what version of Android the device…

While you were busy BBQ’n with friends and family yesterday, Asus decided to tease the world with the Padfone. Hard facts really aren’t available at this point, but as the picture and videos below illustrate, the main draw of the padfone is its unique tablet shell. We do know the device will run some form…

2011 is the year of the tablet, no matter how hard we and our wallets squirm over having another gadget thrust into our lives. But why now? A discussion on that topic could take longer than the birther diatribe if explored in full, but the short answer is we have our smartphones addictions to thank….

Photos by Gear Patrol Falling from grace is an experience many businesses never recover from — especially in the vicious world of consumer electronics. BlackBerry, once the darling brand of the technological elite and synonymous with power and status, is working to be the exception. In just a few short years, while companies like Apple,…

Apple’s new smart covers do a lot of cool things for the iPad 2, but protecting the shiny aluminum back isn’t one of them. The Xgearlive iPad 2 Smart Cover Enhancer ($35) lets you still use that $38 magnetic flap while providing added security against back-stabbing encounters. Made from vaguely described “polycarbonate material” covered with…

The Acer Iconia-6120 14-Inch Dual-Screen Touchbook ($1,200) is the latest iteration of a budding computing form factor that wants to walk the line between tablets and laptops. Unlike the petite Toshiba Libretto W100, this king of the Iconia series sports two 14-inch Gorilla Glass touch panels that provide plenty of real estate for all manner…

Let the speculation cease. The iPad 2 ($499-$829) is official. Apple’s latest creation features a new A5 dual-core chip, that’s 2x faster than the original and 9x faster graphics performance. A front and rear video camera are now included too, with the latter being capable of recording 720p video at 30fps — implying HD video…

The wait is finally over folks. HP has announced a Web OS 3.0 runnin’-tablet called the the TouchPad, and it looks mighty fine. Its 9.7-inch, 1024×768 XGA multitouch screen, 16 or 32GB of storage, 1.5 pound weight, and 13mm thickness should seem familiar. A 1.2Ghz Snapdragon processor, a 1.3 MP front facing camera for video…

As men, we’ll always be suckers for shiny things. There’s no point in fighting it. Particularly when they can help do things like battle our inbox(s), catch up on missed episodes of the shows we’re too busy to watch, or single-handedly sway the tide of battles using just our thumbs. This gift list is a…

Love the idea of a tablet, but can’t bear to part with your keyboard? Well, Dell has heard your plea and developed the “convertible” Inspiron Duo ($550) netbook in the hopes of bringing you the best of both worlds.

We opted to wait on covering the most promising tablet device to arrive for Android until it hit shelves. Now the wait is over and you can pick up this 7″ 1024 by 600 multi-touch tablet from T Mobile or Sprint for $399 with a two-year contract. Alternatively you could pay $600 to own the…

Definitely not an e-reader, and not quite a full-fledged tablet, the newly announced Barnes and Noble’s Nook Color ($250) blends an interesting mix of features that could change the current landscape of gadgets vying to replace your laptop, paperbacks, and magazines.

Back in January, you might have noticed a flurry of online chatter related to the category-bucking Sony Dash. After reviewing the product’s specs and features announced in the device’s initial press release, we were slightly disappointed to learn that the Dash seemed to be positioned really as a jack of all tech trades but master…

Not long ago Nokia announced the N810 Tablet, a personal tablet device with a 4″ screen, wi-fi, camera, GPS and 2GB of built-in storage with expansion up to 10GB through an SD-card. The Linux powered device was an interesting proposition because it basically allowed for infinite development through it’s open source operating system. Something the…