Is there ANY tablet that has a decent battery life?

That’s an e-reader, not a tablet.

@XOIIO The Kindle Fire can do almost all of the same things as an iPad. Not just an e-reader.

@XOIIO The Kindle Fire is the Kindle tablet.

My Asus transformer says it will go ten hours on the tablet battery, and so far I’d believe that.
On a road trip I had it playing tunes and using GPS to follow google maps for the route (WiFi was off on the road though)(I was Not driving I was co-pilot). Total driving time was about seven hours and when I got home the battery was at 56% remaining.

If you get the keyboard dock for the transformer it doubles the battery life.
The dock adds USB ports and an SD slot too.

The transformer is Not in the same price or feature range as the Kindle fire, though. It’s got a 10” screen and GPS and bluetooth and accelerometers and HDMI port and a microSD slot on the tablet…
and it cost about 400$ for the tablet and another 150$ for the dock.

IMHO the Kindle fire is an e-Reader on steroids. It probably gets pretty good battery life if you are just reading stuff w/o WiFi connected. But I’m not surprised if you don’t get much time on a gadget that small (battery that small!) if you are watching netflix over WiFi.

I was just looking looking into Kindles yesterday and the Kindle Touch apparently has a pretty good battery life. They promise 2 months, based on a half hour of reading a day and one reviewer said that his gave him that battery life, as promised; and the same reviewer said that even when he uses a lighted cover, which draws power from the Kindle, he only had to charge it every 3 weeks. Battery life is always dependent on how you use it. More reading a day, a lot of wi-fi use ... well, your results may vary.

Tablets? No. Non-tablet ereaders, like the Kindles that aren’t Fire? Yes.

iPad is about 10 hours I believe. Seems to be enough for me between charges.

Tablets (real tablets) generally have a little bit less battery life than a netbook. Saying the kindle isn’t an e-reader because it can do more is like saying the ipod touch isn’t a music player. The fujitsu stylistic tablet that I ahve seems to have either 4 or 5 hours on high performance, so it’s probably 8 or more on power saver, and this is a real tablet.

Ipads are not bad. Although almost every tablet nowadays die within like 7 hours of use.

@Tizoxic True, why not get real tablet PC and a couple spare batteries, then you have way more suage for the same sort of price a laptop, or even a more expensive netbook would be.

@XOIIO thats true as well. But I’ve talked to a couple people about tablets and the reason why they perfer a labtop over a tablet is because of their short battery life, too risky to break, and they dont like the touch screen. But to me a tablet is better because of its easy storage and portablity. And just like you said because you could buy a couple extra batteries and it would be the same price as a expensive labtop or netbook.

Are there any tablets that can run on solar power?

@Brian1946 just wait. I wouldn’t be surprised.

You can buy a powerpack sound and solar panel for a couple hundred bucks,they also make a powerpack solar, it’s basically a big rechargeable batter, but it’s smaller than a suitcase and can powera big CRT for a few hours, same with a PC, it has two outlets, and a car outlet and stuff. Nothing aside from a light can be directly powered by solar power.

@Brian1946 There are a lot of solar charges on the market, for laptops and other devices.

Here are some examples:

http://www.treehugger.com/gadgets/7-portable-solar-laptop-chargers-worth-considering.html

http://www.earthtechproducts.com/p2563.html

I want this one, for my next expedition in the remote rain forests of South America :-)

http://www.globalcomsatphone.com/satellite/phones/solar_charger_expedition.html

But as far as I know, and my knowledge is admittedly limited, I don’t think technology of solar panels and inverters would allow for panels, at the very least, small enough to actually be installed in a laptop or tablet, so the system would be self-contained and provide enough energy to actually power the thing up.

There are solar powered calculators where every thing is in the device itself but a basic calculator doesn’t use anywhere near the power a laptop or tablet uses.

Edit: Looks like @XOIIO got there before me. Damn! If I just wasn’t so damn long-winded!

@WillWorkForChocolate what is it you think is indecent in the battery life way of things?

Might it be possible to save power by disabling Wi-Fi once downloading is complete?

@blueiiznh I guess I don’t really know what the “right” number of hours would be for a tablet for me to think it was “decent”. I know I borrowed my girlfriend’s Kindle (a regular one) and I read on it every day for a whole month and didn’t have to charge it even once. I was wishing the Fire tablet would be for like a few days or something.

There are full-featured electronics with color screens, fast CPUs, and all sorts of other stuff.
There are small electronics that are quite portable and don’t weigh much.
There are electronic devices that have a battery life longer than handful of hours.

No device yet combines all three of those though. You want a laptop with long battery life? It will be slow or big and heavy. You want one with long battery life? Either ditch the color screen or carry a sidewalk brick full of electrons (a.k.a. “big battery). It’s all about sacrifices, and it will continue that way for the foreseeable future.

The Kindle Fire is designed to be small, light, and full-featured. Ditto with every other tablet/e-reader that doesn’t use a monochrome e-ink display.

FWIW, my wife hated when we upgraded our phones from Samsung Trances to Droid; now we have to charge every day (or more with heavy usage) instead of twice a week. Such is the price of progress.

@WillWorkForChocolate If you want days instead of hours, ditch the color. Otherwise, get used to the cord.