Is this a US-only thing? I have not been actively looking into the latest Android offering, but I got my sister a Xiaomi Pad 5 [1] two years ago, which I believe delivered much more value at that time compared to the latest iPad 10.2 I owned, at a slightly cheaper price too.
[1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/08/xiaomi-gets-back-int...
I have been an iPad user for over a decade. 2 years ago I was shopping for a new tablet. I went to a local electronics shop trying some of them out: the affordable (~300 EUR for me) Lenovo, Huawei and Samsung ones all stuttered even in their own setting menu. The high end Samsungs were nice - starting at 600EUR.
Settled for a base iPad for 300 EUR. I hate Apple, but iPads are literally cheap, have good performance, and offer more than magnified phone applications, even with the crappy iOS.
The 600€ high end Samsung will maybe get one Android OS update.
https://news.samsung.com/global/samsung-sets-the-new-standar...
Samsung has promised to update for 4 OS versions. They haven't delivered anything yet. We'll see in 2027 if they can actually deliver.
I also had the latest Android version. iirc they promised 3 years of OS upgrades
The problem with iPad is that if you want a larger screen you have to get the very expensive iPad Pro. For large screen sizes, the Android ecosystem is much better value.
- Android tablets have the Opera browser which has text reflow functionality which works much much better than anything else. This is a huge deal for me. - I can access the file system and do whatever I want with it. - I still like notifications more in Android vs iPadOS.
If it were not for these things, I would buy an iPad in a heartbeat.