It’s not hard to find a cheap tablet… but it can be tough to find a cheap tablet worth buying. But right now there are a few good options.
The Asus MeMO Pad HD 7 ME176CX is an Android tablet with a 7 inch, 1280 x 800 pixel IPS display, an Intel Atom Bay Trail Z3745 processor, 1GB of RAM, and 16GB of storage.
Asus charged $149 for the tablet when it launched, but right now you can pick one up for just $40.
Update: The Asus tablets are out of stock, but there are some great deals on Microsoft Surface tablets, Toshiba and HP Chromebooks, and a number of other products in today’s roundup of bargains.
Want something a little bigger? The MeMo Pad 8 has nearly identical specs, but an 8 inch display and right now you can snag one for $50.
Note that these tablets ship with Google Android 4.4 KitKat software. While there’s an Android 5.0 Lollipop update, users have complained that it’s pretty buggy, so you might want to stick with KitKat. At these prices, it’s hard to complain.
Here are some of the day’s best deals.
Android tablets
- Asus MeMO Pad HD 7 w/Atom Z3745, Android 4.4 for $40 – GameStop
- Asus MeMO Pad 8 for $85 –Â GameStop
Windows tablets and notebooks
- Microsoft Surface Pro 3 w/Core i3 for $699 – Microsoft Store
- Refurb Microsoft Surface Pro 3 w/Core i3 for $639 – Microsoft Store
- Microsoft Surface 3 for $400 (price in cart) – Quill
- Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon 14″ ultrabook (2nd gen) for $850 and up – Woot
- Dell Latitude E7240 12.5″ ultrabook w/Core i5 Haswell for $540 after rebate – TigerDirect
Chromebooks
- Toshiba Chromebook 2 (1st gen) w/4GB RAM, 1080p display for $270 – Best Buy
- HP Chromebook 11 G4 w/Celeron N2840 for $140 – Newegg
Smartphones
- Refurb Samsung Galaxy S5 for $180 – MobilePros1 (via eBay)
- Refurb Amazon Fire Phone + 1 year Prime membership for $110 – QualityCellz (via eBay)
Other stuff
- ASRock Beebox N300/B barebones mini PC w/Celeron N3000 for $110 – Newegg
- Save up to 50% on select Logitech products – Amazon
- Microsoft Band wearable (1st gen) for $100 – Best Buy
- PNY 256GB USB 3.0 flash drive for $70 – TigerDirect
- Oontz Curve Bluetooth speaker for $15 – Amazon (coupon:Â 40OFFWOW)
- 1-year Amazon Prime subscription for $67 – Amazon (Friday, Sept 25th for new members only)
You can find more bargains in our daily deals section.
Unlike the common Z3735 that uses single channel memory (source: https://ark.intel.com/products/80274/Intel-Atom-Processor-Z3735F-2M-Cache-up-to-1_83-GHz ) found in most tablets, this Z3745 has dual channel memory (source: https://ark.intel.com/products/80270/Intel-Atom-Processor-Z3745-2M-Cache-up-to-1_86-GHz ) thus certainly a little faster. Wish ASUS had better firmware updates though…
On the software update front so far Asus and Intel are a least trying yes it’s a bit buggy but who else is updating such decent low cost tablets? Most will never be updated….
Can anyone tell me which model of Memo 8 this is? Is it the new Atom AZ3580 model?
I can’t access the page from work (canadian IP address, don’t have a proxy on hand)
It was the ME181 with an Atom Z3745, but it’s out of stock now.
Thanks! The Memo 7 has better specs than the new $50 Fire 7. My new Memo 7 will replace a 1st gen Kindle fire. Good bye Amazon apps store! Hello Google Play!
The MeMo pad 8 is only $49 (new) at gamestop
Whoops, should have noticed that! Updating the post now.
Speaking of bugs, several PCs I’ve upgraded to the free Windows 10
have a severe bug: the PC doesn’t recognize input from a USB external keyboard
after login. This bug has shown up in several different makes and models
of PC.
I’m rather surprised this topic hasn’t gotten more coverage in the media.
Buzz in the media is affected more by what the media wants to do than real results. Windows Vista and 8 weren’t as bad as reported and 10 isn’t as good. I love 10’s interface, but it’s been far more problematic for me than any prior Microsoft OS going back at least to Vista.
Agreed. While my experience with 10 hasn’t been all too bad, the 3 years I spent using 8 were really good. Its unfortunate that 8 gets such a bad rep.
I have to agree with you folks. I never had problems with VISTA, nor Win 8.1, heck I currently have a Win 7, 8.1 and a Vista. all working great. I am waiting a bit more for bugs to be worked out before final decision on moving 8.1 to 10. I need to keep one on 7 for now until certain programs migrate and the Vista is for older android flashing tool that will not move up to 7 or above.
Is it just windows? Can you get into the BIOS? Maybe check if legacy USB devices has been disabled by booting into the BIOS using another keyboard.
Probably because it’s not a universal issue, it seems to be related to certain drivers that haven’t been updated to properly support Windows 10 yet…
One person, for example, reported the issue was fixed after updating his touch pad drivers… They just weren’t updated automatically and he had to go to the manufacturer web site and download the latest drivers himself.
While another user found that it was the new driver that was the problem and found the issue fixed when downgrading the driver, Sentelic Finger Sensing pad, to an older 32bit driver version… So the pattern seems to be mostly the mouse/touchpad driver… though, other drivers that also use the USB ports may also be a factor for some…
Driver issues are usually a problem with a new OS release, it’s one of the reasons why Vista is viewed so badly for example, but Windows 7 benefited because it uses the same drivers and by the time it came out the driver issues were mostly already fixed…
For W8, there was a driver issue that caused a slow down of the UI… Making Metro apps take more than several seconds to open, etc. and it turned out to be a issue with the Display Port drivers… So examples can be culled from pretty much every new OS release…
Of course, how seemingly unrelated drivers can interfere with each other doesn’t make it easy to track down and sometimes the Windows reliability monitor and troubleshooters don’t even detect the issue but it eventually gets solved…