Gadgetory

when the iPad first came out it immediately faced competition from 7-inch tablets running Android unfortunately they all cost too much and most of them came with two-year contracts eventually some genius figured out that the way to compete against the iPad was to make a solid contract free tablet for around $200 and Donnell bail and then this week's top 5 were cutting down the best cheap tablets under $300 these are the tablets that are keeping things interesting starting off at number 5 the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 now don't confuse this with the Galaxy Tab 7.0 plus or the Galaxy Tab 7 7 or the Galaxy Tab 8.9 or the Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 this tablet has more sequels than Harry Potter but this particular tablet hits the sweet spot on price $249 it also has an IR blaster to control your TV and best of all a micro SD card slot at number 4 the 2012 Kindle Fire now not the HD version but the old design the Amazon updated with a faster processor a new OS and twice the RAM there's still no camera and the design is still pretty blah but the price is a hundred and $59 that's the lowest price on this list and it makes this tablet a great value at number three the Barnes and Noble Nook HD now for $199 you get a lightweight 7-inch tablet with a beautiful screen and a micro SD card slot and because it's from Barnes and Noble it might even shame you into reading a book or two coming in at number 2 the Amazon Kindle Fire HD here's another $199 7-inch tablet with a great screen you also get that 720p camera for Skype video chat and some of the best speakers you've heard on any tablet and with Amazon you're also getting a great selection of music and video content that truly rivals Apple now before we get them the number one seven-inch Android tablet let's take a look back at the top 5 tablet flops remember when they wanted 550 dollars for the Dell Streak those were dark times all right now the number one reason why the iPad should just crawl back to Cupertino the Google Nexus 7 I still don't know how they pulled this off $199 Tegra 3 processor and a completely polished front end for all of Google's best software I still say it's a micro SD card slot away from being perfect but it's pretty close so there you go those are the best 7-inch Android tablets out there right now for under $300 be sure to check out Eric Franklin's round up over on iPad Atlas and for more top fives like this head over to top-5 cnn.com Donal Bell thanks for watching