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[woodnut]

Hello folks,

I am running a windows 7 machine and am looking into getting a cheap tablet as an extra monitor, mainly for keeping the meters visible at all times.

I'm working on a laptop and have very limited physical space so this would be a good option if I can get it working. The laptop screen does get quite clogged up with windows currently.

I see cheap android tablets ( " 7Inch Android Tablet 8GB Quad Core 4.4 Dual Camera Bluetooth Wifi Tablet UK" ) running the android kitkat operating system on ebay for around £30.

I have read a few articles online but I am not up to date with tablets and whether or not there are specific requirements to make this work.

Connection by USB would be better if possible so that I don't need to network the laptop.

It looks like there are a number of paid apps via the google play store that can be used for this task.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
Many thanks in advance.

[BikerDude]

They have apps for doing that.
As far as I can see they require a wifi connection.

https://mashable.com/2012/11/01/tablet- ... sDlr0ZB5qw

[resistorman]

I use an iPad for that when I’m traveling, but even with my pro 2, which is likely more powerful than my Dell laptop, it’s not a great experience. The lag and jerkiness is awful. I can only imagine it would be much worse on a cheap android. Here in the Asheville US area, all the thrift shops sell old flat panels for dirt cheap... I picked up a decent 19” Dell for less than 4 dollars. Even Goodwill sells them for $25, and they all give you a short period of time to return them. And personally I like the old screen size ratio for metering and mixer panels.

[Matt Houghton]

Might you be better off simply with a 7 or 10 inch USB screen — the sort of thing you have for in-car DVD/media players? They're not dissimilar in price to cheap tablets and I imagine they'll be a little less laggy...

[The Bunk]

This may or may not be of help but I have used a cheap tablet for pretty basic work purposes (not music related I should add) and it was hopeless (freezing, lag etc.). Doing the same tasks on my iPad worked perfectly well. So we upgraded, not to the full iPad but to a much better tablet and things improved. The phrase "buy cheap, buy more than once" has been mentioned...

[Sam Spoons]

I have a cheap (£60) Asus tablet, running KitKat IIRC which works fine with the Mixing Station X32 app. My oldest iPad is pretty sluggish with the Berry version, X32 Mix. I suppose a bit of latency is inevitable with anything wifi related though, plugged in via USB (if that is possible) may be a different matter.....

[OneWorld]

Might you be better off simply with a 7 or 10 inch USB screen — the sort of thing you have for in-car DVD/media players? They're not dissimilar in price to cheap tablets and I imagine they'll be a little less laggy...

Any links to any of these?

[Matt Houghton]

Might you be better off simply with a 7 or 10 inch USB screen — the sort of thing you have for in-car DVD/media players? They're not dissimilar in price to cheap tablets and I imagine they'll be a little less laggy...

Any links to any of these?

Not any I've used... I just searched eBay to check the range of prices...