[Galaxy Tab S Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] princecharming88:
Sound a lot like me OP. I was so set on getting the Nexus 9, pre-ordered one on Amazon, but couldnt wait for delivery so I went to Best Buy and bought one there to play with while I waited for the Amazon order to be delivered. The one I bought from Best Buy had all the issues that some people had been talking about. Overheating was the first thing I noticed right from the start, then after I read the reviews about the back cover being easily pressed in and making a creaking sound, I noticed mine does the same thing, and the cherry on top was right after I bought it for the full $399 plus tax, HTC went and did their "fire sale" and slashed the price to $199 for a limited time/limited quantity and that confirmed my decision to return it and cancel my Amazon order, which I ended up doing reluctantly. Android 5.0 was pretty amazing though and the tablet, at least for me, was the perfect size for portability/comfort for media consumption/web browsing. (Although the 4:3 aspect ratio wasnt the best for netflix/movies both on the tablet and when mirroring the tablet to my tv via chromecast since when mirrored to my tv i would have two black bars on both sides of the screen

I had a nexus 7 before i bought the nexus 9, but it was just too small for web browsing. Screen was amazing on it and build quality was great. I bought an ipad air (first gen with A7 processor), and while the build quality is better than any other tablet in the market and it was an overall very fluid, smooth and lag free experience, iOS isnt for me. Too limited, not enough customizability and since i have an android phone I'd rather stick with an android tablet for better continuity and syncing between my devices. Played with the ipad air for a few days and returned it.

After returning the ipad I decided to pick up the samsung tab s 8.4 . While the screen is great, samsungs bloatware ruins the tablet IMO. Just like you, even the slightest stutter or lag drives me crazy . Chrome definitely was slow and scrolling was choppy. I had it rooted with CF-Auto root, and even after disabling/erasing samsung bloatware and changing the launcher to nova launcher, it still wasnt as fluid and smooth as I want so i returned it. The Tab S is feature packed, but still feels slow and laggy compared to the ipad air i tested for a couple days. With 3gb of ram and the pretty decent processing power, I expected ipad like performance but it definitely fell short.

Now I'm looking at picking up the ipad air 2 but first reading through the forums to see if there are ways to sync my android phone to the ipad.

Why cant we just have a tablet with:

8-9" screen with a 16:9 or similar aspect ratio, 1080p or higher resolution

SD card expandable

Vanilla/Stock Android 5.0 L

Front Facing Speakers

Front/rear facing cameras (not THAT important)

Good build quality

2-3gb ram

Good/fast processor

Sounds like I'm describing the Nvidia Shield from those specs (except for android 5.0), but even the Shield has had some negative reviews dealing with both wireless connectivity issues and build quality defects (cracking trim around the tablet due to heat)

Is that so hard? lol..sorry for the rant