Hunting Tablet

SWMBO's father is wanting something he can view pictures from his game camera on while in the field/deer woods. We got him the game camera a 32 Gb SD card and card reader for their home desktop for Christmas last year. This year he's asked for a couple smaller cards so he can "swap them out" and something to view the images on while in the woods. There are dedicated little image viewers for this very purpose, but we'd like to get him something that's a little more functional than just an image viewer, i.e. tablet.

The kicker is that his game camera uses a full sized SD card, and finding a reasonable priced tablet with an external full sized SD card slot (not micro SD) is proving more difficult than I expected.

The goal would be an android based tablet (ice cream sandwich/jelly bean), that's a known decent brand (ASUS, Acer, Lenovo, HP, Dell, Samsung, Sony, Toshiba, etc.), with an external full sized SD card slot, all for under $250.

I've found a few examples, but they all far surpass the budget.

One possibility, though one I'd like to avoid if possible, is to get him some micro SD cards and a micro SD to SD adapter for the game camera. That would open up the possibility to a few dozen tablets to choose from.

Any ideas?

• Lee

Can any of the tablets you've been looking host a USB device? If so get a little USB SD card reader.

He doesn't need a tablet with a full-sized SD slot, he needs a microSD with a full-sized 'adapter' in the camera. When he wants to preview the images from the camera on his tablet, he can remove the microSD from it's adapter and put it in the tablet.

For that matter, he could do the same thing and preview he images on a smartphone and save the cost of the tablet altogether

digital picture frames are pretty cheap nowadays, i have one somewhere around here that takes full size SD cards and is about the size of a garmin nuvi GPS

I'm rather baffled. Of all the things I want when hunting, a tablet isn't one of them. Of all the things I want to be doing while hunting, surfing through pictures isn't one of them.

foxtrapper wrote: I'm rather baffled. Of all the things I want when hunting, a tablet isn't one of them. Of all the things I want to be doing while hunting, surfing through pictures isn't one of them.

where i go, we use it more for less predictable critters than deer, like the hogs that are running rampant all over, and the timestamp lets you know when they have been frequenting your feeder.

Trying to make this an all-in-one kind of device, view pictures, check the weather, email, etc. so that's why we were going with an internet/android tablet instead of just an image viewer/digital photo frame.

While the USB card reader is a valid option, it's kind of along the lines of the micro SD adapter. I'd like him to need nothing but the tablet and the card.

He's not going to be looking at pictures while hunting. His lease (deer camp) is just shy of 2 hours south of him, and the camera is there most of the year. He'll be able to check the images in the woods, instead of having to take the card all the way back home to see the pictures.

He's not inept, but not super tech savvy I'd like this to be as simple as possible for him, simply putting the card in the tablet and looking at the pictures. On the tablet side of things I full expect to have to set everything up for him.

• Lee

+1 on the microSD adapter. I use one often for my phone.

honestly I wouldn't want to take a full featured tablet out in the woods anyway. I'd go ahead and spend $45 on this for viewing the cameras: http://shop.sportsmansguide.com/net/cb/cb.aspx?a=1015395 And that opens you up to spend another $200 on whatever cheap tablet you want.

Seems to me an Android smartphone with some kind of microUSB to SD adapter dongle would be the ticket. A lot more portable than a tablet, and always connected to the net for weather info and such. You can get 3G/4G tablets, but then you're paying for another data plan.

bigdaddylee82 wrote: Trying to make this an all-in-one kind of device, view pictures, check the weather, email, etc. so that's why we were going with an internet/android tablet instead of just an image viewer/digital photo frame.

Can he get a signal at the deer camp? Usually those kinds of places are pretty remote.

In that case, does he have a smart phone? The usb adapter through the smart phone would let him check data/pictures from the camera card, and wouldn't take up more space.

The Samsung Galaxy Camera might be an interesting beast. It has a micro SD slot that he should be able to plug his game camera pictures into (if he uses the adaptor in them as mentioned above) to view them. It's also a full android device with full cellular connectivity. And it's a camera! At that point he might as well look at an android phone with a micro SD slot I suppose.

also: iphone with the dock connector card reader could probably work too

Going from the fact that you want no adapters involved, his best bet would be something like the Toshiba Thrive tablet. has a full-size SD card slot and they are getting to be pretty cheap in price as well!

Christmas was 4 days ago you idiot.

Oh... Can I get a photo frame that only shows canoes?

aircooled wrote: Oh... Can I get a photo frame that only shows canoes?

foxtrapper wrote: I'm rather baffled. Of all the things I want when hunting, a tablet isn't one of them. Of all the things I want to be doing while hunting, surfing through pictures isn't one of them.

that was my first thought when I saw the thread title

I see the point is missed with many that have posted, he's not sitting in a stand playing with a tablet while hunting, he's using it to view images caught by his game camera that stays in the woods when he's not there.

Never the less, he wound up with a Sony Xperia 16Gb, 9.4" Screen, "water resistant," it's got a slot for a full sized SD card. Was more than we wanted to spend, but his son, daughter, wife, and I all chipped in.

Funny thing is he got himself an Android phone a few days before Christmas, which could have been made to work for what he wanted, but the tablet was already ordered.

He was using the tablet last I checked, but it's probably stuck in a drawer somewhere by now.

• Lee

This is an old thread resurected by a canoe.

FWIW, old thread and all... I was just at my buddies house and he has a bunch of game cameras scattered around his property.

We were sitting in his living room watching the videos they stream to his cloud storage account every time something sets off the motion detector. We were doing this with a new "smart" TV but I could have as easily been doing it on my phone.

It is certainly more effective to hunt with drones... but it loses something in the romantic glow cast by my rose colored glasses.

It is a long way from crouching behind some stuff, motionless, quiet, in the freezing cold for hours on end waiting to scare deer away as soon as you tried to draw the string with all your limbs numb from cold and asleep from not moving.

Am I the only one who thought that perhaps this thread was about a portable computing device chambered for 30-'06?