iPad mini is the superior choice
I am the main Roon user in the house and I use an iPad Pro 12.9ā for my dedicated listening time and just use my iPhone when I am bouncing from garage to patio to kitchen.
However, each of my boys have a Lenovo Tab M9 in their room that they use and they work wonderfully. Roon is the only app that runs on these tablets and they do not have internet, so it is setup as a dedicated Roon Remote. These little android tablets work great because I can create a macro to reboot the tablet and launch a fresh Roon application every morning to keep things running smoothly.
Iāve always been more an apple guy, but these android devices have been rock solid.
I said a few posts ago:
However, itās not Intel-based, but uses a Snapdragon ARM chip. And therein might be a problemā¦
As of December 2024, the Roon UI would not run on this architecture because OpenGL 3 was not fully supported. Does anyone know if things have improved since then?
You do not have to / should not unlink your iPad from iCloud for potential synchronization reasons. But you can choose not to sync your iPadās photos or other data types with the Cloud. Afterwords you can delete (some of) your local iPad photos to free up memory.
Check under Settings / iCloud / Saved to iCloud which objects are synced with your iPad.
iPad and go big. I used the largest iPad at the Audio dealer and immediately knew it was going to be a minor expense with a big payback.
You will enjoy reading and researching your musicās background information. I have 200 plus LPs and have never read one cover. But, really enjoy the write ups on Roon Meta Data. Iāll pull up an album I might like. The writers give us the background of the artist and the value of this effort, good or not so much.
Nice to read about the other players as well. They are often people I really like in the modern era but just beginning their playing career.
Any power will do. Once you begin to use it youāll never look back.
My experience is that 8" tablets work best for me, large enough but not heavy. Higher resolution will give you a better experience with the remote app. But the 2022 HD8+ (800 x 1280) works surprisingly well and is very cheap even with its lower resolution.
I mostly use the Alldocube Play50 Mini Pro as the remote. it is much faster than the HD8+ and with 1920Ć1200. Canāt remember if I had to adjust the scaling to work well with Roon remote though.
I was using the old Google Nexus 7 (2013), 7" (1200 x 1920), for a while and it worked very well. It has gotten too slow by now.