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Android Tablet Prices Drop Below $200

by Suzanne Kantra on September 01, 2011

Lenovo IdeaPad Tablet A1

Today, Lenovo announced its 7-inch IdeaPad Tablet A1 at a very attractive price of $199. No one really needs a tablet, but I have to say that everyone in my family enjoys our iPad and the various Android tablets that have come through our home over the last year. We use our tablets to browse the web, check email, watch Netflix movies, play games and video chat with family and friends—all the reasons we bought a netbook for our daughter a couple of years ago. And now, with prices dropping below $200 for capacitive touchscreen tablets, the tablet becomes an interesting alternative to the netbook.

Coby Kyros MID7022-4G

I mention capacitive touchscreens because that’s the speedy, light-touch technology we’ve come to expect from touch devices. Resistive touchscreen tablets have been available for a while, but are more sluggish and require a firm touch.

With this in mind, there are two tablets to consider in the sub-$200 range: the Lenovo IdeaPad Tablet A1 ($199) and the Coby Kyros MID7022-4G ($179 on BestBuy.com). Both run Android 2.3 Gingerbread, are about half an inch thick, weigh about 14 ounces, have front-facing 0.3MP cameras for video chat, a microSD slot for expanded storage and run on 1Ghz Cortex A8 single-core processors. The Coby Kyros MID7022-4G comes in black and has 4GB of onboard memory and an 800 x 480 7-inch display. The Lenovo IdeaPad A1 has a 1024 x 600 7-inch display, 2GB of onboard memory and will come in black, white, blue and pink.

Acer Iconia A100

For a low-cost option with the latest technology, check out the Acer Iconia Tab A100 ($326 on Amazon.com). It runs the latest Android tablet OS, Android 3.0 Honeycomb and has 8GB of onboard storage, a 1024 x 600 7-inch display, a front-facing 2MP camera, a rear-facing 5MP camera, a 1Ghz Tegra 2 dual-core processor, a microUSB slot and comes in black.

Topics

Computers and Software, News, Tablets & eReaders, Blog

Discussion

From Jackie @ freeismylife on September 01, 2011 :: 3:09 pm

I loved your post and it got me to thinking that tablets with dataplans may take over from smartphones. Everyone enjoys checking mail and reading ebooks on a tablet more than doing the same tasks on a smartphone. 4G tablets on Verizon can get a 2G dataplan for $20 per month. I am seriously thinking of getting a tablet with a dataplan for everyday use and going back to a traditional cell phone for making phone calls. I use my smartphone everyday to read mail and watch movies and read ebooks, but only used 28 of my 300 phone minutes last month.

From Paul on September 07, 2011 :: 2:24 pm

‘The Lenovo IdeaPad A1 has a 1024 x 600 7-inch display, 2GB of onboard memory and will come in black, white, blue and pink.’ Should read: 8GB of memory and will not be sold in the USA. However the 16 GB model will be sold in the USA for $249.00 MSRP

From Suzanne Kantra on September 07, 2011 :: 2:53 pm

I know that there’s been speculation that the $200 model won’t make it to the U.S., but I have written confirmation from Lenovo that they plan on releasing a $200 IdeaPad A1 with 2GB of onboard memory for the U.S. market.

From Paul on September 07, 2011 :: 4:29 pm

Nice Scoop that it may make it to the US , Only 2 Gig though and not the previously expected 8 Gig? wow!

From Gina Reddin on October 13, 2011 :: 3:10 am

Love the post however I would like to see more in depth input about them along with a comparison chart. Seeing customer reviews also is a big thumbs up for me when deciding on what will work best for me.

From Josh Kirschner on October 13, 2011 :: 5:10 pm

Thanks for the feedback. We agree with you about customer reviews. When possible, we put links for Amazon in the text so you can see a popup with the user rating (as in the Acer tablet for this story). But not all products have Amazon reviews.

This was a quick news blurb for the announcement of the Lenovo tablet, so we didn’t get to a comparison chart. But if you’re interested in a comparison of the Kindle Fire, B&N Nook Color ad the iPad 2, check this story: https://www.techlicious.com/blog/amazon-kindle-
fire-vs-barnes-noble-nook-color-vs-ipad-2/

From lalitha on November 07, 2011 :: 12:50 pm

What is the differnce between Ipad and tablet?

From Laura on November 16, 2011 :: 2:45 pm

Is there a comparison chart for Honeycomb versus Gingerbread?

From Josh Kirschner on November 17, 2011 :: 2:19 am

We don’t have a comparison chart, but the differences are largely around how the navigation works. Whether you prefer the Gingerbread navigation or Honeycomb, is largely a matter of opinion (I have a slight preference for Gingerbread).

Honeycomb also is optimized to take advantage of the larger screen size of tablets, along with some other program tweaks, such as browser enhancements.

In practice though, it really doesn’t matter since almost all tablets coming to market currently use Honeycomb.