Disclosure: Some links on this page are monetized by the Skimlinks, Amazon, Rakuten Advertising, and eBay, affiliate programs, and Liliputing may earn a commission if you make a purchase after clicking on those links. All prices are subject to change, and this article only reflects the prices available at time of publication.
Toshiba makes some of the most affordable Windows tablets available, with prices for the Encore Mini normally starting at $99. But right now Microsoft is selling that tablet for $20 off.
I still wouldn’t buy that model though, because it has an awful display. But the company’s 8 inch tablet which normally sells for $179 is now available for $129, and that’s a more attractive offer thanks to a decent 8 inch HD display, an Intel Atom Z3735G processor, and 32GB of storage.
Note that the tablet has just 1GB of RAM though.
Here are some of the day’s best deals.
- Toshiba Encore 2 8″ Windows tablet for $129 – Microsoft (via eBay)
- Toshiba Encore Mini 7″ Windows tablet for $79 – Microsoft Store
- Refurb Microsoft Surface Pro 2 w/64GB + Type Cover for $550 – Microsoft (via eBay)
- Alienware Alpha mini gaming PC w/Core i7 Haswell for $800 after rebate – TigerDirect
- Lenovo Yoga Tablet 2 10 for $240 – Lenovo (coupon:Â CMYOGAT10)
- Refurb Samsung Galaxy Gear or Gear Fit smartwatch for $79 – Daily Steals
- Crucial 128GB mSATA SSD for $50 – TigerDirect
- Netgear 802.11n WiFI range extender for $30 – Newegg (coupon:Â EMCAKKP89)
You can find more bargains in our daily deals section.
Today was the day the HP Mini Stream was supposed to show up at the HP Store. Nothing yet. The much more expensive Pavilion is. Don’t care how much they stall on the Stream, not buying the Pavilion.
Typo: “which normally sells for $179 is nor available for $129”. Why did the first batch of windows tablets come out as 2gb and then now they’re all coming with 1gb. What is up with that?
Many of the new ones are being made for the low cost specific SoCs for the cheap, low cost, tablet market that competes more directly with other mobile devices…
This affords the OEMs to make the devices for next to nothing as the SoCs are cheap even without the subsidizing and they qualify for the discounted and free versions of Windows, and work just as well with Android for easy one hardware, two software platforms… that further lowers costs for OEMs…
Mind, they’re all waiting for the next gen hardware and that’s still months away and so are covering the impulse buy market with these really low cost tablets…
Though, they’re not entirely ignoring the upper range… Models like the Asus Transformer Book T200 are one of the newer models that now offer the top end Bay Trail T Z3795 with up to 4GB of RAM and full 64bit W8 and UEFI… and is generally cheaper than the earlier business class tablets from Lenovo, HP, Dell, etc… starting at a more budget $499 and the keyboard dock has a easy to access 2.5″ drive bay for easily adding a HDD or 2.5″ SSD for extra storage… though, it’s also a larger and heavier tablet than the previous T100 but shows they didn’t just ignore the higher end entirely…
The low cost devices are just getting all the news and are the majority of new devices… but again this should only last until the next gen hardware becomes available, which shouldn’t be too much longer as they already started shipping the first wave of Cherry Trail SoCs to OEMS and the Braswell updates should start shipping in a few more months as well, along with the second higher range Cherry Trails…
Initial Cherry Trail release should be the budget type with the GMA only getting 8 EU’s, still double what Bay Trail offered, and the higher end will be later with 16 EU’s for the more premium range tablet models…
@CyberGusa Do you think Cherry Trail tablets would also go as low as $99? Is it worth the wait?
As low as $99… eventually, yes… it helps that Intel is heavily pushing to help lower costs for OEMs this time around, but we may still have to wait until the second wave of releases before they get as low as $99… So, I wouldn’t recommend getting one right away for the best price… only if you can’t wait…
Initial Cherry Trail releases will probably target the mid-range, as they’re not going to stop selling Bay Trail overnight and they need time before the new SoCs can fully replace the old… and then they’ll move on from there…
As to whether it’s worth the wait, I’d say yes… Mind, don’t expect a big improvement on CPU performance… They’re mainly just boosting the top clock speed up to 300 MHz faster, boosting the max memory bandwidth and RAM capacity support to 8GB, and taking advantage of the improvements that the 14nm FAB advance allows…
The main improvement that will be noticeable is in terms of GPU performance… Intel is presently behind the market in GPU performance and this update addresses this… They’re not going to close the gap completely but basically they’ll be going from the near equivalent of a HD GMA, with present Bay Trail, to around the performance of a much higher end HD4000 but still be fully optimized for mobile SoC power range…
You’re not going to get the equivalent of a Ultrabook level performance with the CPU only marginally improved with higher max clocks and memory bandwidth but these may make the Core M releases a questionable alternative, especially as the Core M are priced a lot higher…
While seeing systems with at least 4GB of RAM should be a game changer as that also means we’ll see a shift to full 64bit OS and UEFI’s and the multi-tasking advantage of the desktop OS will start to really show…
Thank you very much! This was very helpful! Another reason to wait would also be Windows 10. It looks to me that we can expect further reduction in CPU choices, cutting costs for manufacturers to create performance/cost effective devices being also a great benefit for consumers.