I’ve bought probably 5 or 6 tablets in my life. Each time, I thought I’d find a use for them. Every time, though, I ended up giving them away to someone so they didn’t languish in a drawer.

The only use I found for a tablet was as an e-reader, but it was never really great at it (too large/awkward, poor battery life, etc). Bought a Kobo for that, and it’s perfect.

Smartwatches? I can see the appeal for those. I don’t wear it anymore, but the one I had was useful to use as a remote control for my phone (answer calls, see incoming notifications, music control, etc) while leaving my phone in my pocket. It didn’t have any radio besides Wifi/BLE and was purely an accessory device. It synced with my phone via GadgetBridge, and everything stayed local.

And a smartwatch with a cell radio is no more/less a tracking device than the phone you’re already carrying. Assuming you’re not syncing your health data to some cloud service, that is.

Tablet

Great for watching videos, reading the newspaper and drawing (with a digital pen).

I actually don’t have a laptop anymore, because I found that a tablet could do everything I needed on the go with less bulk, longer lasting battery and no fan noise.

Smartwatch

Tracks my heartrate (had some issues with elevated heart rate before), guilt-trips me into doing more excercise, shows me notifications without having to get my phone out, displays the time with a customizable watch face.

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I use my tablet to take handwritten notes.

Tablets are better than a smartphone for drawing. They’re also cheaper than a pen display and have a smaller learning curve than a pen tablet. They’re also a bit more portable and tend to have better battery life than a laptop. I also like using a tablet for reading comics.

I prefer to read manga and comics on a tablet screen, easy to make text bigger for someone with dyslexia, more portable than a laptop, not to mention cheaper. Smart watch makes it so u don’t have to pull out my phone when i get a notification at work or when my hands are full, and i can glance to see if it’s important. Also helps me reduce my screen time, and lengthens my phone’s battery life. As far as tracking, i have almost all tracking disabled except what is necessary for operation of the “local”(i have precise gps disabled) weather. All health features and telemetry disabled/routed to 0.0.0.0. i understand not everyone has uses for these kinda of devices, but that doesn’t mean no one does. My watch lasts 2+ months on a charge, my phone 1-3 days, tablet, lives connected to a wall unless i wanna read on the go. I don’t worry about battery life.

I use my tablet for site surveys and leave my phone at home or work. It is light to carry, has great battery life, has a sim card, memory slot, headphone jack. When I’m done work I can watch a film. It’s some shitty Samsung thing work gave me, it’s great. I don’t think I would ever buy a tablet myself though.

I do not have a use for a smart watch.

A tablet is nice because it’s a bigger screen. I like reading ebooks on them. (plz don’t tell me to get an e-reader)

A watch is nice because it means you can ignore your phone, but still reply to notifications. I like the more accurate step count. I’d really like a device that counts my lengths when swimming too, but I haven’t had a chance to use one yet.

In both cases I’ve gotten devices that have more battery than I expect. I rarely found myself in a situation where charging was a hassle.

Tablet: TV in my camper van. But it wasn’t expensive. I spent $120 on it new.

Watch: Companion to the phone. Does strava things beyond just riding a bike.

I use a Pine64 watch, and set it as a notification center. It shows me notifications as they come in, so I don’t have to take my phone out of my pocket while at work. It allows me to see if the notification is urgent or if it can wait until break. When I’m not at work, I put on an analog watch. I don’t use tablets, except for an ereader.

Edit: added link.

I hate watches. Back before pocket phones (I’m old enough to remember when car phones were a thing for the rich) I carried a pocket watch instead of a wrist watch like most people had. Once I got a flip phone which fit in my pocket I stopped using the pocket watch. (I don’t remember why I had both a “candy bar” phone and a pocket watch)

since a lot of functionality at my job that doesn’t require me to physically be in the office can be done on a web browser I use my tablet as a work computer if the office is occupied. before this year I used my smartwatch as a phone monitor because even vibrating I can’t feel my phone ringing in my pocket or vibrate for text messages. and it was literally vitally important that I be available 24/7. these days I no longer need to be constantly available but I now have to monitor my glucose levels so I found a watchface and corresponding phone app to send that information to my phone.

tablets and watches still have a place for a lot of people.

Tablet is just a bigger screen…

And this is why I got a tablet, I needed more space in my screen 🤷‍♂️

less functionality than a smartphone

Tablet is just a bigger screen

A bigger screen is more functionality.

I agree with you about watches. Tablets though, I disagree. I have several different tablets and they do different things in my workflow from my laptops or phones. My tablets can be an ebook reader, weather center, and video viewer. One of them, I read comic books on. They’re easier to use for those purposes than my laptop. I would need a second monitor to do those things, and I would need to switch it to tate mode for comic books and other ebooks to be comfortable for me to read. Plus, I couldn’t read easily in bed or somewhere like that even with the form factor of the smallest netbook in my collection.