Last week, I picked up a new Android tablet to supplement my smartphone and hopefully replace some of the functionality of my aging laptop.  I chose the Viewsonic gTablet for its feature set, and very reasonable price.  The two main tradeoffs were a lack of Honeycomb (Android 3.x) and a limited screen resolution (it’s a 1024×600 screen, where many new tablets are 1280×768).  In the end, I decided that price won out over resolution, and that the software problem was probably surmountable, as the gTablet uses the same CPU as all of the current-gen tablets: a Tegra2 Dual-core 1ghz.

The “Going Rate” for the gTablet was around $300 online and about $320+tax locally.  Woot had offered a refurbished unit a few weeks back at $280+$5 s/h;  By the time I was serious about buying one, Jason had found it on Tiger for $280 shipped.

From a hardware standpoint, the big differentiating features I was after were both storage related:  I really wanted an external SDHC slot, so as to minimize the impact from my cost-saving measure of buying a 8 or 16gb tablet, as well as USB Host mode for reading thumb drives, external hard disks, and digital cameras.  The USB port also gives me the option to run a USB keyboard or mouse (I’ve tested both, under the stock OS), if I’m inclined.

As I use and explore the new tablet, I’ll be posting updates and maybe even a how-to or-two…

Filed under:
Products, Technology by Kevin