Finally the price of tablets have come down - something we've all been wanting to happen for a while now. Although it's mainly the smaller 7" tablets that we're seeing for under £200. There have been many cheap and rather nasty tablets until fairly recently, with the sudden glut of impressive 7" offerings from Samsung, Google (Asus) and Amazon.
The Google Nexus 7" was the first tablet that really caught my eye. £159 for the 8GB version with a fast quad-core processor and an HD screen. But sadly no expandable memory slot and no rear camera (of arguable usefulness). And then, just recently, Amazon announced their new Kindle Fire and higher resolution Kindle Fire HD, £129 and £159 respectively, available in the UK this time at the end of October. These appear to be great value but again lack expandable storage or a rear facing camera. More importantly these devices are mainly for consuming ebook and video content from Amazon. Although they can be used as a general purpose tablet, you'll have to live with Amazon trying to sell its wares at any available opportunity.
And finally we have the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7 which has expandable memory via MicroSD and a rear facing camera albeit only 3MP all for just under £200. But it has a lower 1024x600 resolution than the Nexus or Kindle Fire HD and a slightly outdated processor.
But the biggest factor for all these devices, for me at least, is the screen size. If you're already using a decent smartphone, with a 3.5 to 4.3" screen, I'm not convinced the extra screen size of a 7" tablet is enough. I still find myself having to zoom in on most webpages, online newspapers and magazines.
However it all depends how and where you'll use a tablet. For reading books and watching video content on the move, the 7" tablet makes a lot of sense and has already proved very popular. And the general downward trend is pricing can only be a good thing. Let's just hope we see some decent sub-£200 10" tablets soon.
Posted with Blogsy