Good outdated electronics

I bought an old tablet

Good matcha costs 180 PLN for a small package. I don’t drink it myself, but I was surprised to find this out, especially since I recently bought an old Samsung tablet from 2014. It was 80 PLN cheaper than a package of Japanese tea.

What for?

To read the press. I know it’s a bit of an extravagance and a rather uncommon hobby, but as long as the press exists, I will read it. At the same time, weekly magazines in PDF format are usually cheaper than printed ones (and additionally, you can search through the text and you don’t have to run to the newsstand ;-)). Of course, I realize that this is a declining hobby. Tygodnik Powszechny is holding up, but FORUM, published since 1965, unfortunately folded a few years ago.

Why not an e-ink reader?

Ebook readers (Kindle, Kobo, and others) are great due to their eye-friendly e-ink screens. However, they are not suitable for reading PDFs for two reasons - these screens are usually small and slow. Therefore, zooming in on a PDF file, which is most often tailored to an A4 page, is a nightmare. Of course, there are e-ink readers with large screens that eliminate the text-zooming issue, but that costs around 2500–3000 PLN. You can, of course, throw money at any problem, but in my case, reading the press wasn’t a strong enough argument to spend such a large amount.

Which tablet to buy?

It turns out that even very old tablets work well as simple PDF readers. In my case, the only parameter that mattered was the screen—I wanted something large so that pages wouldn’t require significant zooming. Equally important, of course, is a high resolution so that the letters aren’t pixelated or jagged.

The Samsung Note Pro from 2014 fit these requirements perfectly, and on top of that, it cost 100 PLN. Granted, the processor is old and it has very little RAM—but it is enough to use custom ROMs to jump from Android 5.1 to Android 10 and install a reasonably modern and fast PDF reader.

Downsides and risks

Naturally, because the hardware is old and long unsupported, using banking apps is out of the question. I also won’t log into my email or other services that I consider essential. Web browsers will run slowly—and the New York Times website will take forever to load. But what does work is ProtonVPN, PDF readers, a chess app, OpenStreetMap, and since this is a 12-inch tablet with a high-resolution screen, it can serve as a second monitor for a computer. Installing a clean, alternative ROM allows you to completely get rid of the bloatware from Samsung and Google.

The biggest downside of this reader is its port, the micro USB plug. It feels like I will never truly say goodbye to this standard. Oh well, I’ll just have to live with it. ;-)

Summary

Some might see this as technological hoarding—but if you are looking for a tool for a simple and specific use case, an old tablet can be the solution. Some people buy old tablets for their kids to watch cartoons—well, if I weren’t against raising children with a screen in their hands, I’d say it’s a great idea. Old tablets can still be cool multimedia tools.