One of the screens I touch the most is what I call my kitchen tablet. It’s a Samsung Galaxy Tab A7 that sits on a stand on my kitchen counter. I use it for accessing recipes in my OneDrive storage, watching how-to videos on YouTube, browsing the web looking for new recipes, and simple actions such as measurement conversions.
Because it’s a lower-end device — its MSRP is only $230 and I paid much less than that during a Black Friday sale — I don’t need to care much about it. If it gets splattered with melted butter, it’s not a big deal. If I grab it with my hands covered in flour, I don’t need to worry about immediately cleaning it off. And, if I accidentally drop it on the floor, some cosmetic damage won’t devastate me.
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Despite its price tag and how poorly I treat it, the tablet does everything it needs to do. Web searches are fast and the LCD display is fine for my needs. Even the battery lasts for over a week (depending on how busy I am in the kitchen, of course). If it does run low on juice, it doesn’t take too long to top it up with the 15W USB-C charger either.
My 'kitchen tablet' is integral to my life and gets used every day.
The cameras are bad, yes, but who cares? I’m not using it to take any pictures. The Snapdragon 662 chipset isn’t powerful enough for high-end gaming, but I don’t need that, either. Its lack of an NFC chip and low RAM and internal storage also don’t matter. It does what it does and that’s it.
As I said, I use this cheap Android tablet nearly every day. I own plenty of devices that cost much, much more than $230 that I barely ever use. It is pretty remarkable when you think about it.
The kitchen isn’t the only useful spot
