The iPad lineup starts at $350, and that's brand new, look used or refurbished and it becomes even cheaper. If that's too much for you, you'll be pressed to afford any computer.
They are hardly commodities. The build quality and lifetime of iPads is incredible compared to any other tablet I’ve ever used (typing this on a six year old iPad Pro that’s still going strong).
True, but they last long enough that you can get them second hand, whereas used products from other vendors tend to be junk not worth spending money on even at a cheaper price point.
There is a definite lack of worthy competitors to the iPad Mini in the market.
Most other tablets are 10" or larger. The only other contemporary tablets I've found in that size have had very low-end specs in comparison.
Many of these devices aren’t actually fungible commodities though.I tried to buy a phone in the $200 range and Android phones were so much worse than used iPhones. I they would drop calls and freeze on the dial pad during long calls where I was on hold. Tried two different models and had the same issues. I could have tried a used $200 Android but I was not wanting to try for a third Android. All I wanted/needed was to make important calls.
So I guess I don’t see them as commodities which implies fungibility.
I realize that there are bad Androids out there and the abundance of choice makes it difficult to sift through the good and the bad, but there are good Android phones out there in the $200-$300 USD range. My current phone is a bit over three years old and it is still very usable.
> All I wanted/needed was to make important calls.
Can I recommend you a 40€ phone? They've been making models that can do calls for a while now and they needn't cost as much as an Apple-branded device to do just that
> they would drop calls and freeze on the dial pad during long calls
Never heard that happen to anyone with any phone model. If you've ruled out some software-specific issue like a call recorder you've installed or so, that sounds borderline implausible. Then again, given the number of issues I experience with software (of any kind)...
