MSI isn’t the only company getting into the budget Android tablet space. ViewSonic just announced that it will offer a new 7 inch tablet called the ViewBook 730 for $249.99.
The tablet has an 800 x 480 pixel resistive touchscreen display and a stylus for writing and drawing. It also has a 1 GHz ARM Cortex-A8 processor, and 8GB of storage. ViewSonic is promising up to 8 hours of run time.
The ViewBook 730 runs Google Android 2.2, and while I don’t believe you’ll be able to access the Android Market (at least not without hacking the tablet), it will ship with the Amazon Appstore preloaded.
ViewSonic will also include Amazon’s Kindle, MP3, and shopping apps as well as Twitter, Mediafly, and YouTube apps. The ViewSonic ViewBook 730 will support Adobe Flash Player 10.1.
The tablet will be available later this month for $249.99. That makes the ViewBook 730 a little pricier than the upcoming $200 MSI WindPad Enjoy 7 or the $99 Arnova 7 tablet. But at a time when many Android tablets run $400 or more, it’s nice to see a few companies competing for space at the bottom.
Manufacturers will milk tablets as long as they can, I wouldnt say that 250$ is cheap, its more like rip off, given that ZTE V9 has all the same specs except for older CPU, but it has 3G and phone functionality. I dont see a point in paying 200$ or more for Wifi only tablet and non-HD screen resolution. As I said, they simply try to make as much money from tablet sales as possible, tech is cheap, Android is cheap, Wifi tablets shouldnt cost more than 70-100$ MAX! 3G tablets should start at 100-150! And so on, E-book readers should cost not more than 50$! Etc
Who believes that anyone wants these low-res craplets any more? Get a Nook Color for the same price and enjoy the much better screen and multi-touch input. I own a Viewsonic G-Tab and it’s great apart from the LCD. Surely Viewsonic can do much better, and they really need to if they want to sell a worthwhile number of units.