Always seems like a good idea? I've got an iPad2 that I really wanted to love, and used until it became so slow it was useless (a couple of years ago). It still sits on my kitchen counter as a plugged-in weather station, though the app crashes frequently.

I've got an HP Touchpad I bought during the fire sale for $50 or whatever the going rate was. I think its got Android on it. It was less of a fun project than I expected. Mostly I realized I don't like Android.

I've got a 7" Fire I bought at christmas for $30 but never use.

My wife's got a 7" Nexus she got as a gift but rarely used.

She's also got a Kindle she used to use occasionally.

Plus an iPad Air she uses quite a bit.

I'm pretty sure there's another tablet or two in there somewhere but nothing comes to mind.

After the 2nd or 3rd tablet one would think "seems like a good idea" would have become "seems like a bad idea". You also didn't even mention why you stopped using the 3 other tablets you bought after having bad experiences with your iPad2 and HP Touchpad.

Your iPad2 example sounds like a software problem? And regarding slowness, have you tried a factory reset? I have an old iPod Class gen5(?) from 2004ish which became very usable after a system update (6 months ago) and a factory reset. I use it now mostly for streaming radio from various websites, all of which load fast enough.