Tablets are designed to be portable so you can take them around anywhere, but they’re exceptionally useful in the house as well. There are a range of things you can do with an Android tablet from the comfort of your lounge room. Here are five ways you can use your Android tablet to make life easier without having to lift your butt off the couch.
Gizmodo’s Guide To Tablet Apps is presented by the Samsung Galaxy Tab S2: with a pixel-rich Super AMOLED display, your images and videos are sharper and more vivid than ever before. Learn more about the Galaxy Tab S2’s specs.
Use Google Chromecast To Stream Content From Tablet To TV
We see a gazillion funny videos on the internet every day and it’s awesome to share it with friends. Rather than forcing your friends to crowd around your mobile device to watch cats being freaked out by cucumbers, why not load it up on your Android tablet and stream it to your TV with Chromecast?
You need to buy a Google Chromecast device first (don’t worry, it’s cheap) and then plug it into your TV’s HDMI port. You’ll also need a WiFi connection to get it all going. The setup process is incredibly simple and once that’s all sorted you can start streaming content from your tablet through Chromecast compatible apps including YouTube, Netflix and Spotify. The latter will make playing background music during a party easy as well. Bonus.
You can find a list of Chromecast compatible apps here.
Read All The Articles You Saved During The Day
You idly scroll through your Twitter feed and news aggregation apps during the day and see a ton of articles you want to read but don’t have time to do so during the working day. The good news is you can save the articles with the Pocket app. You can save the articles from your web browser or from apps like Twitter, Flipboard and Pulse with Pocket, which puts them all in a centralised location. After a long day at work, you can ensconce yourself on the couch, pull out your tablet, open up Pocket and read all the articles you have saved. It’s a great way to unwind when you’ve had a stressful day.
You can get Pocket for your Android tablet here.
Entertain Guests With Group Games
There are a swathe of games available for Android tablets that are great for bringing people together around a coffee table in the lounge room. One of our favourites is a game called Bloop, a fast paced four-player tabletop game you play with your fingers. It is reminiscent of Twister, but requires far less space and effort.
You can buy Bloop for $1 on the Google Play Store.
Home Automation From The Comfort Of Your Lounge Room
Home automation is a thing now and there are a bunch of products on the market that allows you to control household items without getting up from your couch. These products generally come with tablet apps that you can use to customise certain actions. Take the Philips Hue light for example. You can use an Android tablet app to control the luminosity, creating “scenes” (which are like saved profiles) and even sync the light with music and movies.
Another product for automation in the home is the Nest thermostat which allows you to adjust the temperature of your dwelling through a compatible Android tablet app.
Browse Files From Your NAS From Your Tablet
If you have a network attached storage (NAS) to consolidate your media files into one location, chances you don’t store the unit in your lounge room as they can be bulky and, frankly, a bit of an eye sore. You can view the files through a computer but why go through the hassle of doing that when you can view the files on your Android tablet?
Most storage vendors like Synology and Seagate have mobile apps that let users peruse their files through their smartphones or tablets. This is a convenient for those of us who are too lazy to walk from the living room to their computer desk to find a saved movie. Once you find the file you want you can then stream it using Chromecast.