The low-cost tablet invasion

Over at PCMag, Tim Bajarin took notice of the low-cost tablet invasion.

Don’t get too excited about the $89 tablet he just heard about; it’s a single-core, 1.2 GHz tablet with a 4:3-ratio 800×600 screen. For $89, it’s fine, but I wouldn’t call it unexpected, and certainly not revolutionary. It’s a couple hundred megahertz faster than the $79 tablets at Big Lots, and has 120 more pixels in one direction.

His analysis certainly seems plausible. We already have families toting multiple smartphones–I still get puzzled looks when I tell people my wife and I share a smartphone–so there’s little reason to think families won’t get multiple tablets. We have two, if you want to count that–my wife has an Ipad, and I have my hacked Nook Color. I’ll continue to use the hacked Nook Color for watching videos and/or reading documents even after I buy something more capable. With any luck, that might be this month.

The Nook Color gets a little laggy for running some apps, which shouldn’t be too surprising since it’s less powerful than even the $79 tablets today. But it’s still usable for media-consumption tasks.

I can see myself picking up a better 7-inch tablet this spring, then perhaps a larger-format tablet sometime later in the year. Then I’ll have two 7-inch tablets that, among other things, I can use to keep the boys amused on long trips. The 10-inch tablets are nicer for things like reading magazines.
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