Budget tablet maker E Fun’s latest low-cost Android tablet is really low-cost. The Nextbook Ares 8 is an 8 inch tablet with Android 5.0 software and a $78 price tag.

It’s available exclusively from Walmart, and for a tablet that costs less than a Kindle eReader, it’s actually not bad at all.

ares 8_07

I got a chance to check out the Nextbook Ares 8 this evening, and while it certainly has some hallmarks of a cheap tablet, such as just 1GB of RAM, it also has the kind of specs that would have been unheard of on budget tablets a few years ago, including an IPS display with excellent viewing angles.

The tablet features an Intel Atom Z3735G Bay Trail processor, which should offer decent performance, 16GB of eMMC storage and a microSD card slot for removable storage, a micro HDMI port, micro USB 2.0 port, and an 8 inch, 1280 x 800 pixel display.

Other features include GPS, a 3-axis g-sensor, and front and rear cameras. The Nextbook Ares 8 measures 0.34 inches thick, weighs about 0.85 pounds, and comes in three color options: red, blue or black.

We’ve come a long way from the time when we got excited about $150 tablets with crappy hardware.

Support Liliputing

Liliputing's primary sources of revenue are advertising and affiliate links (if you click the "Shop" button at the top of the page and buy something on Amazon, for example, we'll get a small commission).

But there are several ways you can support the site directly even if you're using an ad blocker* and hate online shopping.

Contribute to our Patreon campaign

or...

Contribute via PayPal

* If you are using an ad blocker like uBlock Origin and seeing a pop-up message at the bottom of the screen, we have a guide that may help you disable it.

Subscribe to Liliputing via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 9,543 other subscribers

28 replies on “Nextbook Ares 8 is a $78 Android tablet that’s not awful”

  1. This is the worse electronic i have ever purchased, i had it replaces 2X and they all suck so bad they are unusable, i will never buy a nextbook again

  2. I bought one at Wal-Mart and it keeps freezing, having a UI system error, the display dims all the time says its over heating and I have the display set at about 20%. it was totally unusable. I had Nextbook send me a replacement and the same thing happened, so they sent me another and same thing. these Tablets totally SUCK. I have cleared the cleared the tables reset it several times, stopped all items but the ones I use and it is still horrible. I will never buy another Nextbook item worse electronic item I have ever bought. I wasted my money. I would rather use my old Commodore 64 computer

  3. Just got the latest version with Android Marshmallow 6.0. The best thing about it is that there is very little added on in the way of useless apps, and the couple that are there can be uninstalled! The other reason I like it is the ability to add a high capacity micro SD and tell the tablet to treat and manage it as system memory, thanks to Android 6.0. It works as expected for the price, but so far no problems other than an included app that I will uninstall anyway.

  4. I’ve never really used tablets. This model is my my fist. It seems fine to me, the keyboard stays up and it runs apps. The only problem is some apps will randomly go into sleep mode. I can just pull them back up and it works again. Besides that I would say this is worth the money. After all its under $90 so what do you expect?

  5. Just bought the nextbook ares 8 android. Put it on charger for 4 hours, went to power on, and nothing. I held power button down for 15 seconds, still no power. I went to website and reported the problem and it took me to a place called kayako. I found my product and entered the information into a live chat. The guy comes on and says I am at the wrong place. He could not help me. I guess I will try and return it to walmart. Piece of crap…..

    1. Same happened to me so I tried to use another charger and worked.
      I actually use a Nokia or Samsung charger.

  6. I am having fun with this tablet, my first of any android device. However, I believe this tablet does not have gps capabilities. This is after trying many setting to make sure the gps apps I tried could detect gps on device. If you tell me to try such and such a setting, I’ve tried it. Today I am looking at online specifications for this tablet and unless it is wrong or I have the wrong model then it doesn’t have gps.

    https://specdevice.com/showspec.php?id=256e-4bed-0033-c5870033c587

    1. Interesting. If you look at the photo of the Spec Sheet above, you can see that E Fun claimed that the device had GPS when introducing the tablet, and the Walmart website says it does as well.

      I haven’t actually tested it myself though.

      Are you sure you’re using this exact model?

  7. I’m really right in the middle there is a lag but it isn’t bad just like 2sec maybe 3 I’m all about my movies so that’s not bad… oh yeah the sound sucks I can’t hear crap does anybody else have this same problem..pictures awesome…

    1. About the sound, it’s really not powerful so you might wanna use a bluetooth speaker. Even indoors i can’t hear It from a distance.

  8. Its actually a great little tablet for the price, mine is currently scanning over 600,000 race photos in the background from a 128 gig card and running like a type as I type this using F-Stop, and I’m sure the Android media scanner is also running as this has only been on since purchase 2 hours

    1. For sure, man. I got one, bought it last year on Walmart for 80 dollars and until now i have no problems at all. Good choice on buying It.

  9. You must be doing something wrong! My Next Book Ares 8 has no problems with e mail. It is fast and has not crashed. My battery last 28 hours unless I am playing games or music. Only problem is, I had to download a good phone and texting app.

  10. Intel Inside == pass. Android on Intel is still pointless, which is why these tablets are so cheap, Intel is subsidizing them to try and buy some marketshare.

    1. Wrong, the point is it’s good as in 22Nm finfet good and cheap as well !

      1. Intel CPU is technically pretty good but too many Android applications have binary code built for ARM. Emulation is slow. Intel tries to attract developers to build x86 binaries, but there are still too many ARM-only applications.

        1. wait I dont think it works like that……. dont forget android is still being virtulizes on top of java thanks dalvik

  11. This is a piece of junk. I tested most of the main features and IT was quite slow. Kept crashing when wanting to view combined emails. “Unfortunately Email has stopped working” is message. Tech support had me do factory reset. Did not work. Told to take it back to Walmart and have it replace. I did and the second one had same problems. Kept going back and forth with tech support, but nothing got solved. Told to ship it back to company at “MY” expense! So DO NOT BUY! I did not shipped it back. Just returned to Walmart!

    1. Battery Life is SOOOO BAD – don’t buy this ! There’s a reason the manufacturer or Walmart don’t list the battery life or mAh in the Specs.

    2. You are right. WiFi is slow, the keyboard pops up when you don’t need it, and does not pop up when you do. You can be typing, and the keyboard disappears. This is not what I expect from a quad core. The damned thing is also slow. Even after killing off all other apps, this thing will drag its feet. Don’t buy if you are a power user.

  12. Brad, did you use it enough to test its mic? I’m looking for a tablet with a good enough mic to be heard across the room for Google Now.

  13. So Efun beats all the big guys (Acer Asus Toshiba and even HP and Samsung)
    to the punch with lolipop on an 8″ bay trail tablet under $100 and at Walmart to boot.

  14. IPS and GPS with Nokia HERE map make this a pretty good nav system for the car.

  15. That’s pretty tempting. If they have a version with Android M on it near the Holidays I might grab one. Though I’d happily pay $99 for one with 2 Gigs RAM and a newer processor please.

    1. If you have any preference over processor, you’re probably going to need to spend more than $99

Comments are closed.