Thanks for the ideas. Ended up getting the Tab2 A8 and I'm liking it. Also found Lenovo sells a folio case for it, so ordered it last week. Should be here by the time I get home from work today.
Asus MeMOPad 8 is about the same price and has a similar 12*8 IPS screen. I'd pick the Intel quad in the Asus over the A7-based Mediatek in the Lenovo, though only the Lenovo has Lollipop and those FFS.
I actually like Lenovo's Yoga Tablet 2 models (8" and 10" with Android, both on sale now at Best Buy) as video devices... 19*12 and the built-in stand with FFS make them nice to watch stuff on. That's another price category up, though.
I liked the Yoga 2 tablets. After comparing the 8" to the Tab 2 the screen did look a bit better just not +$60 better to my eyes. Also after doing some searching they did update them and found quite a few posts about people having a lot of issues after the update.
The store I went in only had one working ASUS tablet on demo. Don't remember which but it was smaller, the screen just didn't look quite as good and it had a higher price.
LG G Pad is the budget tablet you should be looking at. Or you can try at local Noble and Barnes store they sell Samsung Tab Nook for good price. 10.1 for 249.00 and 7.0 for 149.00
I didn't see any LG at the local best buy on display to do a comparison with the Tab2. Also on BB web site it's more then 2x the price of the Tab2 which takes well outside the budget tablet range along with my buying budget.
If you also have an Amazon Prime subscription, the HD7 is pretty good - iirc they've been slowly unlocking some of their stuff to generic Android but don't think it's all of it yet.
The Prime video offline feature is handy. Borrowing a book/month also requires an Amazon device I believe.
If you can get one during a sale, even better - got ours last year for dirt cheap.
I don't even have an Amazon account, let alone prime. And don't really like them being locked out of the full Play store.
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