Gadgetory

you don't buy a cheap tablet to replace your laptop if you want to do that buy an iPad or a surface or a galaxy note but be prepared to pay handsomely for them you buy a cheap tablet because it's great for watching Netflix or for reading on the subway you maybe buy it for your kid who's really not ready to handle anything that costs $500 whatever the reason there are a few things you want to pay attention to like you want really great battery life you want all the apps and games you need you want solid construction as close to totally unbreakable as possible and most of all you want a good screen without a good screen nothing else about a tablet really matters a few years ago you actually couldn't get all of that and still spend less than $200 but now you can and a surprising number of places I'm actually really shocked at how many good cheap tablets there are but one definitely stands out the assumed mo pad 7 is definitely the best cheap tablet you can buy the memo pad 7 is near the top of the price limit here but it's still cheap enough for almost anybody but it doesn't feel cheap at all it has this thin nicely textured body that asu's modeled after a clutch bag it has sharply rounded corners like a Lumia phone and it both looks and feels a lot more expensive than it is it has a brand new Intel processor which is surprisingly fast along with front and rear cameras that are at least as good as you'll get for this price although that's not very good but the key here is the screen the memo pad 7 has a 7 inch 1920 by 1200 display that is just leaps and bounds better than almost any other device in this price range it has great viewing angles and it's plenty bright oddly those are both really hard to come by on a cheap tablet it's also just really sharp clean and crisp and easy to look at for a long time without feeling like you're watching a movie through a screen door or a dirty window adding the loud stereo speakers and the memo pad 7 is a pretty great movie watching machine it's not perfect of course it has these huge black bezels around the screen and a soos bundles some really ugly and unnecessary customizations to Android but the key thing about the memo pad 7 is that it's the only cheap tablet that doesn't feel like you've got what you paid for I should actually also mention the Nexus 7 here Google's tablet which is also made by a soos has the same screen resolution and a slightly softer body that I like quite a bit but it has an outdated processor at this point and it's actually kind of hard to find the Nexus 7 is great but at this point the memo pad 7 is probably going to last you longer the only other one really worth looking at purely because it's the only other one with a screen this good is Amazon's HDX 7 this is a pure consumption device make no mistake Amazon's app library is still also very small but there are a few fun games and a really solid selection of things to watch and read if you're trying to go even cheaper the one you should buy is the Fire HD 7 you'll get a lower res screen and the thicker and more plasticky body but you still get access to Amazon's huge library of movies music and TV ships the HD 6 is even cheaper but it's only 6 inches it's basically a cell phone the rest of the cheap tablet landscape is full of models that are all essentially the same thing the assist memo pad 8 has an 8 inch screen and is cheaper than the memo pad 7 but it's not as well made it's lower res and it's not as fast Samsung's Galaxy Tab 4 7.0 Lenovo's android-based a8 EVGA z' Tegra note all have bad screens and cheap bodies they all I should mention perform pretty well one thing you really don't need to worry about anymore is performance at least for the basics dime-a-dozen processors can definitely keep up now be really really wary of the absolute cheapest tablets you can find but not because they won't work well it's often just because they can't run all the right apps or because they have such bad screens that you won't even want to use them but the best thing about cheap tablets is that they don't have to be bad I'm actually surprised at how good they can be but if you want the best one though the one that no one will ever guess cost you less than $200 buy the Asus memo pad 7