Has anyone bought one of those cheap Android based tablets?

Draeger

Draeger

Draeger

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Not sure whether to put this in the Laptops section or here. Won't mention any competitors as I am aware OcUK sell tablets but I was wondering if anyone has any experience of those cheap Android based tablets that can be picked up in various places for anything between £50-£100?.

Having looked at a few online and read customer reviews of them, for what they are they appear reasonably decent little gadgets as long as you don't stupidly expect it to be an iPad beater. Most seem to run CPU's of the ARM flavour of around 1.0-1.2Ghz and come with 512Mb RAM plus varying degrees of storage space. I've no idea about Android OS but it would seem that ver 4.0 which I believe is 'Ice Cream Sandwich' is the preferred one to look for?. And lastly, a capacitive screen rather than a resistive one is good?.

Just wondered if, within forum rules of course, anyone has bought one of these in the above price range and has any info they could share. Thinking of picking one up just for basic stuff like browsing the web, sending emails and the odd movie and Word document. Plus I'm a bit of a gadget freak and despite the fact I have two laptops at home I'm curious about these little things and very tempted. :cool:

Ta.
 
I did have a cheapo one but i found it wasnt very responsive when the screen was pressed as it took ages to do anything. Android market didnt work either :)
 
There are a couple of 7" inch tablet deals available if you look at a certain uk based hot deal site. Both are good quality pieces of kit and well worth the money if you are in the market for an android device.

If you are not too bothered about android there are other devices such as the Kindle fire or archos (??) which should handle basic browsing, mail, media streaming.
 
Clav said:
There are a couple of 7" inch tablet deals available if you look at a certain uk based hot deal site. Both are good quality pieces of kit and well worth the money if you are in the market for an android device.

If you are not too bothered about android there are other devices such as the Kindle fire or archos (??) which should handle basic browsing, mail, media streaming.
Click to expand...

The Kindle Fire runs on Android, OcUK posted a deal the other day for one of these sort of tablets http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=LT-021-OK&groupid=959&catid=1882&subcat=
There's a thread round here somewhere, apparently for the price it's pretty good.
 
We brought one cost £150 but wasnt very quick got fed up with it being slowish so returned it. They say you get what you pay for and its true buy a cheap £50-£100 tablet and and dont exspect it to be good.
Cheap tabs are ok for browsing but thats about it.
 
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I bought a Motorola Xoom tab, it cost me £250, and that was on offer.
It was sluggish straight out of the box, so what chippy08 says about getting what you pay for is bang on, especially with tablets.
Needless to say I returned it.
My advice mate would be not to expect snappy performance and you shouldn't be to disappointed!!
 
It's funny that you should start this thread today; I took delivery of an "Ainol Novo 7 Flame" this morning. I'm pretty sure you can pick one up for £100 if you get one directly from China; I got mine from a UK seller for £135. I figured it was worth paying the extra to get it from a UK seller, who upgraded it to Jelly Bean, rooted it etc, and I can deal with should it go wrong instead of having to send it all the way back to China. The device itself has a dual core Cortex A9 processor (apparently clocked at 1.5Ghz), 1GB RAM & 1GB ROM, 16GB onboard storage and a 1280 x 800 IPS display. The specs compare quite favourably to the Kindle Fire, though it also has a MicroSD card slot and an HDMI port as well.

With regards to performance, I've not tried any games on it yet, but so far it's at least as responsive as the first gen Asus Transformer (the TF101). For some reason streaming via Plex doesn't seem to work, but playing media locally is fine, and streaming with TVCatchup and YouTube (including HD) works fine. WiFi performance seems reasonable; I got 11.4Mbit/s on a speed test (I have a 50Mbit VM connection).

Physically it's slightly wider and slightly shorter than a 3rd gen Kindle with keyboard, about twice as thick and about 50% heavier (about 350g). The build quality seems pretty good. It's clearly not in the same class as an iPad, but it's not terrible. The build quality of Ainol devices has come on a long way in the past couple of years - I had an Ainol V9000HDG which was pretty poor.

In case you're interested, I've taken a few photographs of it next to some other devices; the aforementioned Kindle, a Sony Xperia Acro S, and a Transfomer TF101. The final photo is the devices stacked to show the relative thickness, with the Transformer with keyboard/battery at the bottom, then the Ainol Novo, the Kindle and finally the Xperia.

ainolkindle.jpg


ainolxperia.jpg


ainoltransformer.jpg


thicknesscomparison.jpg


If you have any questions feel free to ask, and I'll try to answer them :)

Edit: Quadrant Standard benchmark result;

]
20120925200814.png
 
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Thanks Saundie, nice info and pics there, appreciate them. What version of Android OS did the tablet have on it originally? - ICS?. What's involved in changing to Jelly Bean and what are the advantages of doing so?.

I'm looking at a £59 NATPC M010S which has the following spec and is getting some very good reviews :-

CPU : A13 1.0 GHz
Graphics Processor : Mali 400 MHz
Touchscreen : 5 point multi touch capacitive resolution 800 x 480
Operating System : Android 4.0 ICE CREAM SANDWICH
Memory : 512mb DDR III / 8gb NAND Flash - upgradeable by Micro SD memory card (max 32GB)
WiFi : 802.11 b/g/n
Connectivity : 1 x Micro SD slot, 1 x AC Jack, 1 x 3.5mm Earphone Jack, 1 x Mini USB
Battery : 4000 mAh provides the longest usage time of all of our tablet PCs
Camera : 0.3mp Front facing
Android Market / Google Play Store : YES
G Sensor : YES
3G : Requires HUAWEI E1750 Dongle available separately
Dimensions : 198 x 117 x 9.8mm
Weight : 365g

How does that compare with yours?.
 
I would definitely spend a little more to get a higher res (1024x600 minimum) IPS display.

The Flame above has a 1280x800 IPS display, cameras and a faster CPU. The Onda v711 has the same faster CPU but only a 1024x600 IPS screen and omits the camera but is also cheaper.
 
Raikiri said:
I would definitely spend a little more to get a higher res (1024x600 minimum) IPS display.

The Flame above has a 1280x800 IPS display, cameras and a faster CPU. The Onda v711 has the same faster CPU but only a 1024x600 IPS screen and omits the camera but is also cheaper.
Click to expand...

Agreed, go for as high a resolution as you can. My Galaxy Tab 8.9 is 1280x800 and browsing websites etc is great because they all fit nicely. Anything lower and you're potentially going to have to start zooming in to pages or panning around to view them properly.
 
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