Sub £100 android tablets

[hit]

I have to travel around the country quite a lot with my family and was thinking of buying my two offspring one of the cheap 7" android tablets each for Christmas, mainly to keep them occupied while travelling instead of fighting!

 

Looking around, the reviews are very mixed, for example on amazon a couple I looked at had reviews from "the best thing since the iPad" to "makes a great doorstop". Others that I have look at like this Minigadget Envy 7 Ultra-slim Capacitive Android 4 0 Tablet Pc - Envy - Android Tablet Pc - Product have amazing reviews on their site but of course could have been written by themselves.

 

So have any of you bought one of these devices? Is it great for watching a movie, playing angry birds, that kind of thing?

[Dos_Box]

CPC have a few that look pretty good: Tablets | CPC | Results=

[CyberNerd]

I helped a student connect an £80 7" polaroid tablet to our network today.

Her friend, who had an ipad2 came along (it was before school) and they duly noted that there wasn't "anything" that the £400 ipad could do that the £80 android couldn't.

These are teenage girls, so they probably don't do much more than FB, youtube and a bit of internet...?

 

The Polaroid could handle video, and writing google apps documents.(IIRC it has 1GHz processor and 512MB RAM on android 4).

It did feel VERY flimsy. Coincidentally my boss brought in her £160 Nexus 7. The difference in quality and speed is noticeable. I would spend £160 on a Nexus 7, but no way would spend double that on an ipad or windows device.

[JLunn]

I have to travel around the country quite a lot with my family and was thinking of buying my two offspring one of the cheap 7" android tablets each for Christmas, mainly to keep them occupied while travelling instead of fighting!

 

Looking around, the reviews are very mixed, for example on amazon a couple I looked at had reviews from "the best thing since the iPad" to "makes a great doorstop". Others that I have look at like this Minigadget Envy 7 Ultra-slim Capacitive Android 4 0 Tablet Pc - Envy - Android Tablet Pc - Product have amazing reviews on their site but of course could have been written by themselves.

 

So have any of you bought one of these devices? Is it great for watching a movie, playing angry birds, that kind of thing?

 

 

We have trialed a couple of 7" and 9" Chinese imports in order to upskill our technicians and ICT teachers on Android 4. We also bought 4 x 9" from Ebuyer Android for some teachers to trial with Ebuyer creating a custom ROM that was helpful. As a result I would advise trying to get a dual core processor and definitely 1 Gb of RAM minimum as this improves performance hugely. The main issue with lower spec tablets is the feeling of lag that occurs when browsing the internet with gestures like pinch and zoom. If you pay the little bit extra for the higher specs and Adroid 4.1 (will highly likely be upgradeable to 4.2 when released with miracast which the family would like) you will actually get a device that rivals the Apple products due to its interface customisation abilities and the allimportant microSD slot for all their music and videos.

 

Jon

[hit]

The Polaroid could handle video, and writing google apps documents.(IIRC it has 1GHz processor and 512MB RAM on android 4).

It did feel VERY flimsy. Coincidentally my boss brought in her £160 Nexus 7. The difference in quality and speed is noticeable. I would spend £160 on a Nexus 7, but no way would spend double that on an ipad or windows device.

 

I would love to buy a pair of nexus 7's but these are for 5 and 11 year olds who just need some entertainment and £160 is just a few quid more than I wanted to pay. The only sub £100 one I have managed to get my hands on is in HMV which is alleged to be half price at £79-99. It seemed to crash at every opportunity but of course that could be many hands fiddling with it and screwing it up! The other thing is they won't let me play a ripped movie on a SD card for some reason, something about infringing copyright blah blah!

 

Hmmmm! Might have to get up to Tottenham Court Road when I can get some free time!

[flyinghaggis]

+ 1 for the nexus 7 TBH. Why spend £100 on no-brand junk when you get a tegra 3 bang up to date top of the line tablet backed by Google themselves for £160!

[Arthur]

CPW are currently selling the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 for £119 after cashback. I think an update to Android 4.1.1 is due to be released soon, but that's already a version behind the latest now.

 

+2 for the Nexus 7. It is a really nice tablet and IMO worth the extra money despite the lack of an SD card slot. Google Play Music will also be available in the UK next week so you would be able to offload upto 20,000 MP3s to Google's servers if required?

Edited November 6, 2012 by Arthur

[Arthur]

Regarding cheap Chinese tablets...

 

Which 7" tablet should you buy? « MoDaCo

 

Note that I've largely excluded the 'cheap Chinese tablets you can buy on eBay' because in my experience they are almost all flawed by sub-par software builds.