[JunkStory]

Any tablet experts here?

I need a tablet that is very smooth for reading PDF's (especially large PDF's that could be 100's of MB large). I've narrowed down the search to either the iPad 2 or the Samsung Galaxy 10.1 with Android 3.1.. but I'm open to other choices. The key is having a smooth PDF reading experience, I hate laggy or stuttering software.

Which one is better? I've read many reviews on the internet but I find that many contradict each other, and some seem biased. Obviously sites like Engadget is biased towards Apple, and Anantech is biased towards Android. I need real world experience.

[OverDrive]

I've never used the galaxy before, but I never see any sort of problem or lag while reading PDF's on my iPad. Especially if you view them in iBooks since you can view and change pages of a PDF as if you're reading a book. I highly recommend the iPad 2.

[Chewy734]

^ +1.

I've read about a couple hundred different scientific journal papers on the iPad over the past few months, and haven't noticed any problems.

[Epacy2]

Its smooth on my Galaxy 10.1.

[JunkStory]

Thanks guys for your responses. I also need to use it for reading scientific journals (I'm done with printing piles of papers). I went to the store to try out both models today, and I think I'll go with the iPad 2.

During my test, I opened up the same PDF documents on both the ipad 2 and the galaxy 10.1, and it was obvious that the ipad 2 is a bit smoother. The Galaxy was great, but there were some laggy moments. I thought it was because of the fact it was running many tasks, so I did a power off/on reset, but the same problem persists.

Outside of PDF reading, the Galaxy 10.1 interface is absolutely brilliant. You can go from one thing to another with extreme ease. The single button of the Apple device gets tiresome quickly, as is the grid layout of icons.

[ac1208]

I've had an Android tablet with 3.1 and I currently have an iPad2 and the iPad2 is much smoother than the Android in reading PDF books. I have numerous 300+ page textbooks on the iPad2, and it runs flawlessly on the iPad. Other reasons I switched was due to the apps selection. While the Android Tablets have good hardware specs, Android hasn't been able to completely reap the benefits of it.

[Sara]

Originally Posted by OverDrive

I've never used the galaxy before, but I never see any sort of problem or lag while reading PDF's on my iPad. Especially if you view them in iBooks since you can view and change pages of a PDF as if you're reading a book. I highly recommend the iPad 2.

Having the iPad2 I second this.

[E90SoFlo]

Ipad 2

I don't read "extremely" large PDF's but the ones I do read, work amazing.

[Greenkirby21]

In general, iOS runs smoother then android because of the fixed user interface(i.e you can't really customize anything unless you jailbreak it) which leads to less bugs.

Android on the other other hand allows more customization/features, but at the expense of more bugs and lag.

[texasmojo]

Tab here.