Coby Kyros MID7024

HP sparked a huge amount of interest in the HP TouchPad tablet when the company marked down the price to $99 this weekend to liquidate all remaining inventory. Some folks who wouldn’t have looked twice at the tablet for $399 or more are rushing to buy it at the new low price, many with hopes of installing Google Android, Ubuntu Linux, or other operating systems.

But the TouchPad is sold out nearly everywhere. You can either keep pulling your hair out trying to get your hands on one, or you could settle for a another tablet which is already selling at a low price. Here’s a roundup of some Android tablets you can buy for less than $200.

Some lack the HP TouchPad’s capacitive touchscreen, instead using resistive touch technology. Some have low resolution displays, most have less storage space than the TouchPad, and almost all of them have slower processors. But you can use them to surf the web, check email, watch videos, or run thousands of apps. And you can buy any of these tablets today.

Unless otherwise stated, I believe most of these tablets have resistive touchscreen displays. It’s also worth noting that you may need to root the Pandigital Novel or Barnes & Noble NOOK Color in order to get the most use out of those devices.

You can find other bargains on mobile gadgets and accessories in our daily deals section.

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10 replies on “Can’t find an HP TouchPad? Here are 10 Android tablets for under $200”

  1. I connect to my routers via ssh and sometimes vpn to win2008R2, A BT KB and real RDP via IPSEC will be a nice addition to my TP. If for $99 I can install homebrew app, I will not hesitate doing it and risking my tablet. The benefits outweigh the risks

    BTW, This TP tablet is fast.

  2. The Coby Kyros MID7022-4G deserves a mention here.  It’s $179.99 at BestBuy.com or ToysRUs.com (and available at a lot of Toys R Us brick and mortar locations).  It’s a 7″ capacitive screen (800 x 480), 1Ghz CPU, 512MB memory, 4GB storage, and comes with Android 2.3.3 Gingerbread.  Market access can be added by installing a few .apks that can be found online.

  3. Out of all of those, I think the Nook Color is the best — the screen on it is great, and (for a dev) it is easy to get a full Cyanogen or MIUI rom on it.

  4. The Archos 70 has a capacitative display and is easy to install the android market…

  5. The problem is that those all run Android, which is garbage, whereas the Touchpad ran WebOS, which is much higher quality Linux-based software.  Most people will get more useful service out of 200 dollars worth of fruits and vegetables or even toilet paper.

    2. You say that webOS is “Linux-based” as though Android isn’t. Both OSes use the Linux kernel, but few (or none) of the GNU userland tools which most people associate with “Linux”. Where’s Stallman when we need him to gripe about this sort of thing?

      1. No, Android differs in that it’s based on a stripped down linux kernel. Meaning it’s basically a crippled version of linux at best.

        So while both were optimized for Smart Phone use, WebOS since versions 1.0 to 2.1 used a patched Linux 2.6.24 kernel. Meaning WebOS has more in common with full linux and thus more potential.

        Though on lower end hardware Android has the advantage of being a lighter OS and having been around longer it of course has far more apps available than WebOS and it looks like it’s going to stay that way now.

        1. I don’t disagree with you, but my point was that Android *is* Linux. Stripped-down or not, if you start from Torvalds’s kernel code, you are using Linux. I mean, that’s what makes it “Linux” and not “Solaris” or “BSD” or (haha) “HURD”.

          1. At this point you’re point is a bit of a stretch, as Android has evolved into a very different OS.  Being based on a stripped down kernel was the closest it came to being linux.  But since then they have gone their own way and continued to make changes.

            Linux even officially dropped support for Android since kernel 2.6.33, and Android now has no native X Windows systems support and doesn’t support the full GNU libraries.  So it ranges from hard to impossible to port any modern Linux program to Android.

            WebOS at least is only based on a patched version, instead of stripped, of the linux kernel.

            So at best Android can only be considered a separate fork of the Linux kernel and aftermath point about the potential of WebOS is valid.

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