Sprint’s latest Android tablet is a low-cost 7 inch model that sells for $170 off-contract, but just $30 when you sign up for a 2-year service contract. The ZTE Optik 2 might not be the best tablet money can buy, but it’s one of the more affordable — especially if you’re interested in using Sprint’s mobile network.
Data plans start at just $5 per month (although you’d only get a paltry 25MB of data for that price). The promotional $15/2GB plan is probably a much better bargain.
The tablet features a 7 inch, 1024 x 600 pixel display, a 1.2 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 quad-core processor, and Android 4.1 Jelly Bean software. It has a 5MP rear camera and 2MP front-facing camera, a 4000mAh battery, 1GB of RAM, and 8GB of storage. There’s also a microSD card slot.
The ZTE Optik 2 features 802.11n WiFI, Bluetooth 4.0, and A-GPS. you can also use it as a mobile WiFi hotspot to share your Sprint data with other devices — but Spring wants you to pay $20 per month or more to use the hotspot function.
ZTE’s new tablet is a follow-up to the original Optik which launched in 2012. That model was also a low-cost tablet at the time, selling for $100 with a contract and offering a 7 inch screen, and a Qualcomm dual-core processor. Interestingly the older model also offered 16GB of storage and a 1280 x 800 pixel display, which makes the new tablet feel like a bit of a downgrade in some respects. At least it’s cheaper.
Those screen specs are really becoming sub par.
If I’m needing to use a tablet to the point where it is cell-connected I’m not going to scourge myself with something like this.