Choosing a tablet
Everything here goes out of date. Prices move, models get discontinued, browsers move the goalposts. So this page is dated, and we would rather you saw the date than assumed it was current.
Last checked . Prices are rough second-hand ranges, not offers.
The one hard requirement
FocalNest runs in the browser, so the browser is the only thing that has to be new enough. The device can be as old as it likes as long as it can run one of these:
| Browser | At least | Which shipped |
|---|---|---|
| Chrome or Edge | 111 | March 2023 |
| Safari, on iPadOS or iOS | 16.4 | March 2023 |
| Firefox | 128 | July 2024 |
Checking a tablet you already own takes about twenty seconds: open its browser, go to app.focalnest.com, and see whether the page renders properly. That is the whole test.
Checking one you are about to buy means finding the browser version. On Android, that is Chrome's menu, then Settings, then About Chrome. On an iPad, it is the Settings app, then General, then About, and what you want is the iPadOS version.
An Android tablet on Android 8 or newer can install a Chrome new enough. We suggest Android 10 or newer anyway, so it carries on getting updates for a while.
Reasonable buys
These are model families rather than listings, because a family stays a useful answer for years and a listing is gone by the weekend. Search the name and see what is around today.
iPad, 6th to 9th generation
$80–150 usediPadOS 16.4 reaches back to the 2017 iPad, so almost any of these clears the bar. They were sold in enormous numbers, which is what keeps the used price sane.
Watch for: Activation Lock. Make sure the seller has erased it and signed out of their Apple account before you pay, or it is a paperweight.
Samsung Galaxy Tab A7 or A8
$60–110 usedThe Play Store and a current Chrome, at the price most people expect to pay for a tablet that turns out to have neither.
Watch for: The A-series spans several years. Check it is on Android 10 or newer before you buy.
Lenovo Tab M8 or M10
$50–90 usedUsually the cheapest honest route to a Play Store tablet that can run a current browser.
Watch for: The lowest-end variants have dim screens. Fine in a hallway, hard to read on a sunny kitchen counter.
What to skip
This part ages better than the rest of the page. Models come and go; the reasons a cheap tablet turns out to be the wrong buy stay put.
Anywhere without an outlet
This is the real constraint, ahead of price. An always-on screen needs permanent power, and a display that dies at three in the afternoon is worse than no display, because everyone learns to stop trusting it.
Amazon Fire tablets
The one category where cheap often means genuinely unusable. Without sideloading you get Silk and nothing else, and on older Fire OS builds Silk sits below the versions above. If you already own one, load the app and see. If you are buying, buy something else.
Anything much older than 2018
It will not reach the browser versions above, and it stopped getting security updates a while ago. This is where the price stops being a bargain.
Tablets with a custom launcher and no Play Store
Some budget tablets, and most seat-back or point-of-sale surplus, ship locked to a vendor's own software. If you cannot install a current browser, nothing else about the device matters.
Standing them up
An adjustable desk stand runs about eight to fifteen dollars and is enough for almost every room. Mounting a tablet is a bigger job than it looks and rarely pays for itself. Treat a wall mount as the answer for the one spot with no surface to spare, not as the default.
If there is a 3D printer in the house, plenty of good free tablet stands are already designed, and a search on Printables is a reasonable place to start.
Whatever you use, sort the cable at the same time. The stand is not the part that decides whether the screen is still there in a month.
Keeping it on FocalNest
FocalNest runs in a browser tab, and a browser tab can be left. We do not lock the tablet down, and we would be overstating things if we implied otherwise. Stand it whichever way up suits the spot — the household screen lays itself out for both, putting the countdown beside the day's list in landscape and above it in portrait.
Both operating systems already do this themselves, free, and it is worth turning on for a shared screen. Android calls it screen pinning, under Settings and then Security. Apple calls it Guided Access, under Settings and then Accessibility. Either one keeps the tablet on the app until someone deliberately takes it off.
Nothing here pays us
No affiliate links, no referral codes, no arrangement with any manufacturer. If a recommendation here is wrong, being wrong is the only thing it costs us. That is roughly the incentive we want to be under when telling you what to spend money on.