What to do with an old tablet after buying a new one. Don’t put it in the closet

A reader of books and magazines for all family members regardless of age, a semi-permanent sound source for a wireless audio system, a recipe book for the kitchen or an assistant with instructions for a garage workshop, a smart home center, a portable screen for surveillance cameras. But what can I say: the tablet can simply be torn to pieces by the younger generation. However, if you have already bought some new one, you can find a lot of more extraordinary uses for the old one. It should not be hidden in a distant drawer – it will probably still come in handy both at home and in the cabin of your own car.

Multimedia system for rear passengers in the car

→ to install the tablet on the headrest, you need a mount

Multimedia screens for rear passengers are often provided only in the most expensive cars of premium brands – in those in which the owners never drive. Of course, you can easily find their nameless counterparts on sale, which sellers praise literally from all sides. However, if somewhere an old tablet is lying around that is not used or has received a more modern successor, it will be quite possible to turn it into something similar and clearly more functional. The only important thing is to get a suitable mount that will securely hold the tablet behind the headrest. Often, such accessories are attached to its guides and sometimes even differ in some interesting additional features – for example, they can act as a clothes hanger. By the way, if you wish, you can organize constant power for the tablet by laying the cable under the seat trim or hiding it in any other way.

The tablet may well replace the head unit of the car

→ this will require mounting and constant power

The tablet may well become the central device not only for the rear passengers, but also for the front ones. Oh yes, in this case, he can also take on the role of not only an entertainment device, but also a navigator, as well as a hands-free headset – it all depends on the initial set of gadget features. Interestingly, in this case, devices based on the Android operating system are more preferable than the iPad, due to the ability to make voice calls and more flexible interface settings just for the needs of the driver. Of course, in this case, you will also have to get a special mount for the tablet – there are even more options in a variety of formats. The only thing is to recommend the use of holders that are attached to the air conditioning system ducts without additional support, in this case it is impossible – they will be unstable and can ruin the “curtains”.

An old tablet will be a great new photo frame for home

→ it will be enough to install the tablet on a dock with power

Using a brand new tablet as a banal interactive photo frame for your desktop is not a good idea. It can be too much for him to have interesting tasks that exclude the continuous display of photos from the selected system gallery in slideshow format. However, when it comes to the old device, which no one cared about “yesterday”, the situation is turned upside down. Indeed, why not place the device on a powered dock nearby in any convenient place and organize a cool high-tech album in this way. If the device is not from the “last century”, it will also be able to synchronize the selected album through any cloud storage. It remains only to choose any suitable dock to your taste – fortunately, there are plenty of options.

The tablet will become an additional screen for your computer

→ so it will be possible to expand the space for work and play

With the help of an old tablet, it will be quite possible to expand the working space of your computer. This is especially true for laptops with relatively small screens, where there may not be enough space for all the software you need in front of your eyes at the same time. If you use a Mac and after buying a new one, your old iPad is left idle, you can take advantage of the built-in capabilities of the Apple ecosystem – the Sidecar feature. It makes it possible to turn the tablet into an additional monitor in a couple of clicks – in this case, it will be possible to use both a wired connection and a wireless one. In the case of an Android mobile device, as well as a computer based on the Windows operating system, you can use third-party software.

▶︎ Here are a couple of suitable applications:

• Duet Display is a utility that will turn your iPad into a second monitor for Windows or Mac.
• SpaceDesk – the program will turn your iPad or Android tablet into an additional screen for a Windows computer.

The tablet can be used as a media server for content

→ Kodi or another similar tool is suitable for this

Even an old tablet can be used as a home multimedia center to control access to absolutely any content: both offline and online. To do this, for example, it will turn out to use the open source platform Kodi, which is incredibly versatile, or the same Plex (both systems are available on the iPad and on Android devices, as well as on many other gadgets). However, even broadcasting movies downloaded to a tablet on a large TV screen can already make life much easier. At the same time, the old device will turn out to be a public home device, which is not a pity – the brand new gadget will be used personally for completely different tasks.