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What is a rear camera on a tablet worth to you?

AerospacemanAerospaceman Z-Community AdministratorUnited StatesPosts: 1,411 admin
<body><p>How much more would you pay for a tablet to have a 5MP rear camera instead of the same tablet without the rear shooter?  Please provide your opinions below the poll as well.  Thank you for your help in the Consumer Lab.</p></body>

What is a rear camera on a tablet worth to you? 67 votes

71% 48 votes
14% 10 votes
7% 5 votes
1% 1 vote
4% 3 votes



    A 5MP rear shooter is nothing to be excited about. I would think of it more as a throw away than a value add.

  • fzrrichfzrrich United StatesPosts: 4,251 mod

    My kids use tablets I just use my phone and PC. I would possibly use a tablet while at home but since my kids like them so much I haven't had the chance. I do think that a tablet should have a rear camera especially for those who take them with everywhere they go. This way they can take photos & video  and for all the various things we all use cameras for with our phones.


    My tablet has a camera?

  • delle17delle17 North Carolina, United StatesPosts: 730 ✭✭

    I would rather buy an iPad than spend money on an android tablet with a terrible camera. My Sony Xperia Tablet has a decent camera 5Mp needs to be more than that for me to buy it.


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  • poohbiwonpoohbiwon USAPosts: 714 ✭✭✭✭✭

    If I can get a price cut for buying a tablet WITHOUT the rear camera, I'll take it. Pretty useless feature for me.

  • fzrrichfzrrich United StatesPosts: 4,251 mod

    I thought so too lol

  • chrsnchrsn New YorkPosts: 217 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Would pay a little because it's better than nothing, but I would expect it to be greater than 5MP.

    Cameras do take up a good portion of the bill of materials for phones but for a tablet, due to the difference in the size of the economics surrounding them(namely, less are produced) an older but still decent camera would be MUCH better than a recent but crappier camera.

    Case in point, I highly doubt people would complain if you put an old Sony IMX220, or IMX240 if you want to be fancy. At that point they become "good enough" and since people won't use them alot, that's all they need to be.


    out of all my tablets ive never once used a rear camera on my tablets lol i would rather not have one on the tablet. Just put a nice 13mp camera on the front and thats enough

  • arysynarysyn IllinoisPosts: 1,067

    Having a rear camera isn't really worth anything to me. However, as I've said many times in the Z-community, I would like there to either be an attachable 360 degree camera option acting as the front and rear cameras. Or else have a built-in reversible camera that does both, rather than having costly cameras for each side. Just have one single high-quality camera that does both.

  • poohbiwonpoohbiwon USAPosts: 714 ✭✭✭✭✭

    I do use the rear camera on the back of my 8" Windows 10 Tablet when I'm at conferences.  It helps me take notes. That is the only time I use it though. I should amend my earlier comment a bit. The rear camera is a useless feature on entertainment tablets, which to me means pretty much all Android and Apple tablets. Windows tablets are inherently productivity machines, so it makes more sense that they have them.


    My sense is that a graph of price vs demand for tablets would be barbell shaped: a lot of people on one end who want a bare bones tablet without bells and whistles for as cheap as possible, and a lot of people on the other end who don't mind spending a premium for a highly-capable laptop replacement, and not a lot in the middle. To me, the answer to this question depends a lot on what segment of the market the tablet is aimed at. I'm one of those at the low end, whose only use for a tablet is to have something to read the news on while I eat my cereal in the morening and occasionally give to the kids to watch a movie on a long car trip. I wouldn't pay even a dollar more for a tablet with a rear camera.


    couldnt have said it any better ​ I too wont pay a $1 more for a rear camera as in my opinion people who take pictures with a huge tablet look silly

  • ddrakeddrake Alpharetta, GAPosts: 318 ✭✭✭

    I don't use the back facing camera ever on a tablet.

  • dellasterdellaster Pahrump, Nevada, USAPosts: 103

    I voted $0-$20. It's not something I use with a tablet. The only time I think I've had a use for a rear tablet camera was photographing a document to email to someone. I could easily have simply used my phone, which is always with me anyway.

  • mttmksmttmks TexasPosts: 93

    Let's convince manufacturers to put crappy cameras or no cameras on the back of tablets to discourage taking photos in concerts!

    I watched Nothing More and Hell Yeah! through someone's iPad. I'm normally not a violent person, but I came pretty close that day.

  • razor512razor512 United StatesPosts: 2,635 ✭✭✭✭✭✭✭✭

    I do not see much value in having a camera on a tablet, as there is very little utility in one.

    At its worst, you see people waving a tablet around trying to take a photo, which can look a bit annoying.

    When looking for a tablet, I never really look into which camera it has, as beyond testing if it works, it will likely never be used.

    Historically, tablets tend to have horrible cameras anyway.

    Other than that, I would prefer to have a high quality microphone, as for lectures and other events, it is good to be able to capture high quality audio.

    At the moment, I an looking to upgrade from my HP touchpad tablet, and am mostly looking into the Nexus 10​, if I can get one cheap in addition to finding a replacement battery that is in good condition. I also find this to be kinda sad because I can't find a decent 10+ inch tablet with good audio that isn't insanely overpriced. I do not want to spend mid range laptop pricing for an ARM based tablet. If I have $500 to spend, it isn't going to a tablet, it will go to a laptop.

    Overall intent is to keep the total (tablet + battery to be under $200, so that I can swap the battery, then install cyanognmod, then overclock it to 2GHz+. It is either that, or getting lucky to find a similarly priced Dell venue 10 or 11 pro with 4GB RAM.


    ​ to your point above, I use mine to capture video and audio of meetings as well as using the camera to take stills of white boards etc. to have after the fact. I've found being able to reference back to them incredibly valuable.


    Sounds like less of a manufacturing issue and more of a venue issue.  Just curious but did no one stop them from videoing the show and messing with your experience including yourself. 

  • ironbaybeedollironbaybeedoll United StatesPosts: 4,615 mod

    It definitely is a venue issue. I went to see 5FDP and Hatebreed, a couple years ago, and had my sony bloggie was taken from me by security, two songs in. I wasn't even using it. I had it looped on my jeans. After the show, the guy told me it should not have made it past security at the doors, and the band specifically asked no cameras/video of any kind. I was further told it is up to the venues, and /or bands to decide.

    I was front row, arm length outside the pit, I had no right having a camera with me, not only would I have possibly blocked the view for others (I hadn't thought about it until I was there) but being that close to the pit, someone could have easily gotten hurt on it. I can't imagine to many people bring ipads to concerts.

  • mttmksmttmks TexasPosts: 93

    That's not surprising. The lead singer has lashed out at fans before. I've seen him do it twice. Some of them have made headlines.

    I'm guilty of taking photos and a video here and there, but I'm not watching the show from my phone screen. I paid my $40+ dollars to enjoy the show with my eyes and ears, not your cracked iPad Pro!


    I tried that in the past with a samsung galaxy tab 8.0, but the camera had such horrible low light performance (standard florescent lighting in a classroom), that the text was almost unreadable, thus I simply used my smartphone, and then simply dumped the audio and photos from both devices, to a folder on my NAS, and sorted the date created.


    Safe to assume had the tablet performed better, you would have used the one device rather than needing 2 and then consolidating images?


    I probably would have in that one case since I already had it propped up,  though to make it more usable,  I would have wanted a small floating window for the camera app where when taking notes,  I would not have to completely leave th office app.

    Outside of that one situation,  I do not think I would have another need for the camera.


    From a business perspective i agree and i also like that idea of a small camera window so you can take notes and pictures and have them sync up. I used to use word to record discovery meetings and it would time stamp my notes with the audio. very useful.

  • davedave Ingolstadt, GermanyPosts: 84

    Well, I wouldn't even consider a tablet without a back camera. Furthermore it's tough to name an amount of money I would pay extra for a 5MP shooter as a 5MP shooter won't be good for that much. I went for 0-20 bucks therefore.

    But as I said, I wouldn't buy a tablet without a back camera anyway. It's not like I'm using the back camera on my Note 10.1 2014 that much (I actually use it very rarely) but I wouldn't want to miss it. When I need it (e.g. when having to take a photo of a slide at university) it should just be there and serve the purpose I want to use it for.


    I voted #1. I don't really see much use for them. With the 4 or 5 tablets that I've owned over the past 7 years, I don't think I've taken 10 pictures. I took one on my current Samsung tablet, just to check it.

This discussion has been closed.