Cheap Tablets guide forum thread

DominicJ_2

Apples Awesome, thats why we dont use FireWire, we do use excel and samsung sells more phones.
Now that the cultist is mocked, serious discussion.

I've been playing with the idea of a tablet for a while, and seeing a CPW offer in the metro this morning has spurred me into action. My contract isnt up for a year, so thats a none starter, but just buying the tab outright looks to be £150 anyway.

Anyway.
I just kinda want it for messing around on the web, reading PDFs and if possible, updating simple spreadsheets.
I'd obviously like it run flash, but only the really pricey ones do that.

Would the £70 models be happy letting me search through PDFs and run a couple of spread sheets, or even word documents?

Would there be any advantage to getting the £100 Sony Model?
Or the Samsung at £150?

PDFs in question are likely to be 10-15mb and 200ish pages

stubrown55

Anyone tried a CnM touchpad??

surfsister

i thought this was vitamin tablets! lol!

tee_pee_2

Currys are offering £20 off Samsung Gal Tab 2

cbrown372

Best made in the microwave

http://www.scotlands-enchanting-kingdom.com/microwave-tablet.html

sillygoose

Any mention of Apple in a thread called CHEAP TABLETS is an irrelevance, any product with a 44% profit margin going to a tax avoiding company that carefully price fixes its retailers has no place on a moneysaving thread. (even if it can make the tea and Facetime with Elvis on Mars)

Two ways of looking at tablets.. the pure MSE way is to set a budget then look for the best deal that does the most for the money.

The other way is to define what you want to do with it and then look for the best price device that does what you want adequately.

A mixture of both is best of all, decide what you want the tablet for, set a budget then consider what you may compromise on to keep to budget (if necessary)

The other factor is risk. You can buy a tablet directly from China/HK at its cheapest but will have little come back (its usually too expensive to send it back). And there is always the risk of import charges. It depends on how much of a gambler you are. (I have got away with it OK)

The other option is to buy from a UK seller who has taken any customs hit and who you can deal with if you have an issue.
This includes retailers such as some Amazon, some Ebay, Argos, Tesco, CPW, Ebuyer and many, many more.

Many people buy a tablet then become evangelists for the thing without knowing much about others in the market, its understandable as we all like to think we bought the right thing and were a bit smarter than other people and indeed it may have been a good choice. But it may very well not be the be all and end all for everyone. Its annoying to be told you must buy something you can't afford because it works perfectly for someone else!!

The Android tablet market has been moving quickly and there is a lot of out dated stuff for sale, it looks cheap but isn't as cheap as it should be for its specification -these tablets are often carefully advertised with certain specifications given prominence and other poor ones hidden away.

A 10" tablet may seem a bargain at £80 but only has a single core weedy processor, a small battery or a low resolution screen (that looks worse the bigger it gets). Another trick is to not install a proper official Android system so the tablet does not have access to the vast Google store, instead they put on much smaller 3rd party app stores that give kickbacks to the tablet manufacturer.

Newer is not always better. There are plenty of android devices out there still working fine on Android 2.1. Its generally better now, but a lot of tablets got shipped with buggy versions of Android 4.3 (Jelly Bean) in the manufacturers haste to get them out. Anything with Android 4.xx + (Icecream Sandwich) or higher is fine and current enough.

A new version of Android is about to be released and I suspect the same will happen again, buggy versions until it settles down - let other people find the bugs first! There is actually little real performance gain in new Android versions, the hardware is the limiting factor more than the operating system software.

Finally 'brands' mean very little, although some generally produce a higher number of better products, they all make tablets in plants in China using a common pool of components bought from other plants in China using largely the same manufacturing methods. Most 'brands' produce some good ones and some duff ones. Don't be scared of brands you don't know. You may not know it but in its home market it may be a vast manufacturer well known producing millions of products. It may well be producing tablets that appear in the shops with well known brand names on it.

Footnote if your considering buying direct from China its not a good time from now to after Christmas, the whole world is buying now and China Post becomes totally swamped this time of year grinding progressively to a halt, delivery is likely to be extremely slow.

sillygoose

Just to kick things off... this is my offering for the
'Best very cheap tablet for kids, powerful enough but cheap enough not to cry when they drop it and break it' category.

Dual core, quad graphics processor, comes in a choice of colours so kids know who's is who's. UK Seller, feedback suggests product and support is good.

Around £54 (varies slightly by colour) + £4.59 delivery.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B007SIB51U/

Kite2010

Footnote if your considering buying direct from China its not a good time from now to after Christmas, the whole world is buying now and China Post becomes totally swamped this time of year grinding progressively to a halt, delivery is likely to be extremely slow.

And you will be more likely to be picked out to pay VAT and the royal mail £8 fee this time of year.

SkintF

Hi All,

I am looking for a 9" or 10" tablet for my Mum for Christmas which will be used for web browsing and checking emails. I have a budget for £100. I have seen one on Curry's website that looks good. Unfortunately I cannot post links yet but the item number on Currys co uk website is 21769535 and it is called GOTAB GoTab 10.1" Tablet - 4GB.

Has anyone used this tablet or seen any reliable reviews?
Of if someone could suggest a better 9" or 10" tablet for £100 that would be great.

Thanks for your help.

sillygoose

SkintF wrote: »

Hi All,

I am looking for a 9" or 10" tablet for my Mum for Christmas which will be used for web browsing and checking emails. I have a budget for £100. I have seen one on Curry's website that looks good. Unfortunately I cannot post links yet but the item number on Currys co uk website is 21769535 and it is called GOTAB GoTab 10.1" Tablet - 4GB.

Has anyone used this tablet or seen any reliable reviews?
Of if someone could suggest a better 9" or 10" tablet for £100 that would be great.

Thanks for your help.

I would avoid this one for your needs. All Android tablets have 2 processors, one that does the main stuff and another specially designed sub one to handle graphics. Curiously this means that even low powered tablets can play quite good games or movies for instance as the graphic processor takes on a lot of the hard nitty gritty work.

Web browsing tends to work the other way round, the graphics processor is no real help but the main processor has to fetch data and translate the pages onto the screen.

The Gotab has a weedy single core main processor and only 512mb of memory to work in. It will be frustratingly slow on many web pages.

This one is worth a look, much faster dual core main processor, more memory, 4 times the storage, newer android system, good feedback and a UK Seller.. £10 over budget.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/FUSION5-XTRA-COMPACT-Tablet-Capacitive/dp/B00CX1XKHY/