A large number of people prefer to use their tablets as a productivity tool, especially when they are outdoors, more than their laptops. This is primarily due to the former’s portability that cannot be rivaled by even the smallest and thinnest of laptops. Tablets, in fact, can now assume business communication roles that are present in smartphones, making it a perfect combination of smartphone and laptop functionalities.
There is an array of tablets that you can choose from in the market today, all of them offering various specs that you can use for personal and business purposes. One group of tablets provides you with respectable performance while being affordable. Two tablets from this budget-friendly group are the subject of the short reviews that follow.
Hisense Sero 7 Pro: Low-priced respectable 7-inch tablet
The Google Nexus 7 has set the bar high for budget-friendly tablets in terms of design and performance, and that is why comparisons with other devices are almost unavoidable. The Hisense Sero 7 Pro, though a decent tablet in itself, falls short of the standards set by the more impressive Nexus 7.
This device is obscenely cheap, costing only $149. This is already a great bargain considering that this device has a respectably fast quad-core processor and a responsive touchscreen. Meanwhile, in terms of design this tablet sports an all-black and slate-gray front and back, respectively, and the frame is mellowed out by its softly rounded corners. The tablet is also solidly built.
When taking photos, you get to enjoy using its fair 5MP rear-facing camera, as well as its 2MP front-facing shooter. It also comes with a microSD card slot that can take up to 32GB of expandable memory. In addition, it has a mini-HDMI port and a micro-USB port as well.
The Hisense Sero 7 Pro is powered by the 4.2.1 version of the Android Jelly Bean operating system. Without a second skin to overlay the stock Android user interface, the UI may look bland for some. You’ll be treated with a host of Google apps such as Google Play, Chrome Messenger, Gmail and YouTube.
This device is run by a 1.3GHz quad-core Tegra 3 Nvidia processor coupled with 1GB of RAM. There’s a beefed up 4000mAh battery, a 1280 x 800p resolution screen, and a number of connectivity support such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 3.0 EDR, NFC, GPS, and Android Beam.
Acer Iconia A1-810: affordable and respectable
Intended to be Andorid tablets’ answer to the iPad Mini, the Acer Iconia A1-810 is anything but that. Aside from the shallow similarities such as the size of the screen and the subpar display resolution, the tablet has nothing in similarity with the Apple tablet.
Despite this, the Acer Iconia A1-810 is still a respectable tablet. It runs on the latest Android operating system—the 4.2.2 Jelly Bean version—and comes with an expandable storage absent in both the Apple iPad Mini and the Google Nexus 7.
You can buy the 16GB version of this device for only $200. When it comes to design, this tablet weighs more than its size reasonably dictates. It is also chunky and may be difficult to operate with just one hand. Good thing that its plastic frame is excellent in resisting smudges.
The Acer Iconia A1-810 is powered by a 1.2GHz quad-core ARM Cortex-A7 CPU combined with a1GB of RAM and a PowerVR SGX544 GPU, which makes it lag-free most of the time. It has support for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0 and GPS. When it comes to camera specs, the tablet sports a 5MP rear camera as well as a 0.3MP front camera. The device’s 7.9” display has a resolution of 1024 x 768p, which is measly in today’s standards.
