Looking for a $200 Android tablet with a 7 inch color screen for reading eBooks, but don’t feel like handing your money over to Amazon for a Kindle Fire? Kobo’s got you covered.
The Kobo Vox tablet went on sale today. It comes from the company that’s probably the third best-known eBook provider, after Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Kobo’s book store offers 2.2 million eBooks, including about a million titles that you can download for free.
But while the Vox is aimed at readers, it actually looks like as reasonably good all-purpose tablet. Its features include:
- 7 inch, 1024 x 600 pixel FFS display with multitouch
- 800 MHz processor
- Google Android 2.3 Gingerbread
- 512MB of RAM
- 8GB of storage and an SD card slot for expansion
- 7 hour battery
- 802.11b/g/n WiFi
- built-in speaker and stereo headphone jack
The Kobo Vox ships with a web browser, photo, music, and video apps as well as Facebook, Twitter, Rdio, Zinio, and PressReadre apps for social networking, music, magazines, and newspapers. The tablet doesn’t come with access to the Android Market, but Kobo says users can download over 15,000 free Android apps.
The tablet measures 7.6″ x 5.1″ x 0.5″ and weighs about 0.89 pounds. It’s available in black, blue, green, or pink colors.
While Kobo’s tablet doesn’t offer the digital music or movie stores that you get with Amazon’s tablet, Kobo Vox owners will get a more standard Android experience and an SD card slot for expansion. The tablet also appears to have a front-facing camera, although there’s no mention of it on the spec sheet.
The Kobo Vox is available in the US and Canada for $199.99.
Interesting, but if you’re looking beyond the Kindle Fire for a bargain tablet, I suggest waiting a few more months, when the sales figures of the not-Fire tablets become clear. The $149 price point isn’t impossible within the next few months.
The $149 price point is already happening now. The above specs are identical to the Nook Color, which is presently selling in WalMart for $149 “refurb” (actually clearanced).
The $200 price is competitive, but the hardware isn’t, at least as compared to the bellwether Kindle Fire. Whether you want an e-reader with a strong ecosystem or you want one to retrofit to a full tablet, there’s no reason to pick the Vox, at least for those within the US.
Buy! Buy! Buy!Â
$149 !149 $149
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