He didn’t need a $700 status symbol; he needed a workhorse. He walked past the iPads—beautiful, but locked behind a price tag that felt like a month's rent—and found himself staring at the section.

The year was 2017, and the local was a cathedral of glowing screens and blue shirts. For Leo, a college student with a cracked laptop and a dwindling budget, the tablet aisle was the promised land.

Leo spent an hour comparing specs—, AMOLED vs. LCD , and the novelty of USB-C charging. In 2017, the Android tablet market was a wild frontier of "just good enough" and "surprisingly great."

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