Voice recognition is another tool you can whip out of your toolbox in the quest to save time and money. We find the almighty Google keyboard to be the best for dictation so if you have not installed this keyboard yet then get going.

Here are some tips for using voice recognition and how to set it up..

How do I talk to my tablet….?

• Talk slightly slower than usual, and as clear as possible. Kuwi* accents are difficult at the best of times so be nice to your tablet.

• Don’t look at the words as they appear, this will put you off. You need to give it a chance to make sense of what you said and correct its own errors.

• If you are talking for a while do check that it is still recording. Sometimes it will stop after a paragraph, so you may need to push record again.

[* antipodean in-joke alert]

How to set it up

Tap the Settings Cog.

(1) Ensure under ‘Default keyboard’ - ‘multilingual typing - Gboard’ is selected.

From Settings tap on "Language and Input" - you should see something similar to below.

(2) Under ‘On-screen keyboard’ you want to make sure that ‘'Google voice typing' is included

If the 'Google voice typing' is ticked then all is good. However there are some defaults you will be very interested in reviewing or changing (trust me on this). Tap the 'Google voice typing'. You are taken to the following screen. Ensure ‘block offensive words’ is on

You have any option here to block ‘offensive words’ - turn this option ‘on’. If offensive words did come through, they would be ‘beeped’ out in the text. Yes we have tried this.

Whilst you are on this page look at your default language. Then tap on 'Offline speech recognition'. You can then download language packs to enable offline use.

If the language you want to use is not shown, tap on 'ALL' and select which ones you wish to download.

Once you have done this and gone back to the previous screen, make sure that the default language for Voice is set to one you have downloaded.

You are now ready to go whether online or offline.

Switching to Voice

Any place where you are using a keyboard you can use the Voice recognition.

On the Samsung keyboard, just to the left of the spacebar is a key that if you press and hold will pop up a mini-menu.

On the menu will be a microphone icon. Tap this and you will be using Voice.

For users of the almighty Google keyboard the Voice recognition is activated by the microphone icon in the top right corner.

You are all set to give it a try now. Happy chatting!