What’s in a brand? When my 10 year old broke his $350 Google Nexus 7 tablet, I set out to find an alternative that would cause less pain to my pocket if the replacement tablet also ended up being dropped. I discovered an absolute gem for just $108!
Summary:
Excellent quality and performance. Genuinely surprised at the ‘bang for bucks’ this unit delivers. In fact, it outperforms our other tablets that have cost up to four times the price of this unit!
The Detail:
I’ve previously bought electronics and clothing direct from Chinese suppliers. The electronics have proved to be great value while the clothes tend to be a lot more variable – but that’s another story for another time!
My 10 year old is addicted to Minecraft. He loves it! But for any parent not familiar with the game, chill out! It really is a great way to stimulate imagination and creativity. When he came to me with a shattered screen on his Nexus, I initially did the ‘parent thing’ and told him he wasn’t getting a replacement ‘until he could look after it’! That lasted about a day before I let him play using my phone. That quickly progressed to my 10″ tablet which lead to my search for his new tablet!
I was confronted with either expensive good or low-tech cheap options when searching locally.  Anything under $150 had either a dual-core or slow quad core processor, a maximum of 1GB of RAM and just 8GB of memory. Reasonable performance started to kick in around $225.00 but, at that level, the screen resolution was still only 1024×768. I headed to the internet and China…
Perhaps a bit cheekily, I did a search on ‘tablet + highest resolution + <$150 + China’ and then started working through. I had not considered a dual-boot tablet. In fact, I expected them to be way beyond my budget yet here was this – apparently – high-end model for just $108.
Basic specs:
8 inch P+G Capacitive Touch Screen, 1920*1200 FHD
OS: Windows 8.1 + Android 4.4
CPU: Intel Z3736F Quad Core X86
Storage: 2GB RAM/ 32GB ROM
Dual Camera Front 0.3MP Rear 2.0MP
OTG/ Bluetooth 4.0/ WIFI
I kept reading the specs with great skepticism! I messaged the supplier to confirm that the resolution really was 1920×1200. Yep, confirmed! (For the technophiles, that’s 283PPI.)
I had bought two excellent Lenovo phones from the same supplier previously and was confident that my money wouldn’t disappear without trace. So I ordered thinking I had little to lose since the tablet was only going to be used for Minecraft!
I opted for the free postage yet the unit still arrived in just 17 days after ordering.
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