Just purchased a Mcpad Allwinner A13 7" ICS Tablet

[superccs]

For <$100 I am obviously just looking for something as fast as my phone with a larger screen. Anyway just wondering what cool things you guys are doing with your cheap 7" tablets.

I will be playing my catalog of Free App-of-the-day Amazon games, possibly using for documents on the go type stuff and of course for playing/surfing while crapping duty.

 

[wirednuts]

with most cheap tablets, we buy them and try them. they normally end up in the trash before the battery loses its first charge.

 

[Bateluer]

with most cheap tablets, we buy them and try them. they normally end up in the trash before the battery loses its first charge.

This. Cheap junk is cheap junk.

Friend of mine linked that A13 tablet to me yesterday, and it well and truly, crap.

 

[Bman123]

I don't see the appeal to the cheap tablets when a kindle fire isnt much more and its way better

 

[Chocu1a]

I bought an Acer a100 for $150 & it is a rocking little tablet. Plays games great & makes a perfect reader.

 

[zerocool84]

I don't see the appeal to the cheap tablets when a kindle fire isnt much more and its way better

Bought a refurb Fire which came brand new in the box for $140 and running ICS rom on it. It's great.

 

[Eug]

I would have kept my cheap ICS tablet had it supported NTFS or exFAT, but it didn't. Too bad too, because the Gingerbread version of the exact same tablet supported it.

So, I'm waiting for a $200-250 quad-core Google 7" Nexus.

The Kindle Fire is not available here in Canada, and I don't want to root the device anyway.

 

[Bateluer]

The Kindle Fire is not available here in Canada, and I don't want to root the device anyway.

Spend a tad more money and get the better Galaxy Tab 2 7in.

 

[Eug]

Spend a tad more money and get the better Galaxy Tab 2 7in.

Nah, if I were to get a Samsung I'd have bought the Galaxy Tab Plus, because it has better specs than the Tab 2, it will be getting ICS in July, and there were a few sales recently that brought its price down to the same ballpark as the Tab 2.

However, I won't get either for a couple of reasons.

1. No NTFS support AFAIK. That alone is a deal-killer. I don't want to root my tablet to get NTFS support either.
2. A bazillion rumours have it that the Google Nexus 7" tablet is going to be announced next week, with availability not too long afterwards. Rumour has it it's going to be quad-core with a decent GPU. However, even it's dual-core, it's worth the wait for the announcement.
3. Asus is the manufacturer of the Google tablet, and Asus has a history of NTFS (and exFAT) support. However, even if Google's Asus-made tablet doesn't support NTFS, I suspect Asus will release a similar 7" tablet that does.

 

[superccs]

OK so the tablet just showed up.

To be honest I don't know how anyone can talk trash about these things.

Its faster than my nexus One and has ICS.

Screen is great, touch sensitivity is good.

About 80% of my Apps seem to be available and run (not sure if that is due to hardware reqs or ICS, coming from reference phone so no clue how that compares to other Android devices)

Connected to Wifi without a hitch.

$70. Could I have spent double that and maybe got something better? Sure.

As a first entry in to the tablet world its tough to beat though. Is it a nexus 7? Nope, it has a 32Gb microSD card though. HDMI out? Nope, just a 7" screen, USB, and headphone jack.

Is 7" a decent size for eReadering, derping around at Slickdeals, facebooking or whatever you guys do while pooping? You bet.

The battery does get eaten up by vigorous Wifi usage, installing, and file transfers. It does not come with gorilla glass. The camera does take pictures and video though.

Hope this is helpful to some of you on the fence about the whole tablet thing.

 

[SickBeast]

The 800x480 resolution screen on that tablet is the deal breaker for me.

The Nexus 7 is well worth the extra money IMO. The only issue is the memory slot.

 

[Eug]

The 800x480 resolution makes reading web pages kinda hard IMO. However, for video playback, it looks great... assuming it's a screen with good viewing angles. It makes a lot more sense to buy one of these with a microSD slot for video viewing than it does to buy a portable DVD player, for example. Many of the cheap tablets have quite poor viewing angles.

The other problem is battery life.

 

[Ravynmagi]

For someone that just wants to get a taste of what a tablet might be like, maybe not sure they are really worth spending $200+ on, this might be a good thing to start out with. Looks alright for under $100.

 

[wirednuts]

glad you like it op.

 

[BUTCH1]

I don't see the appeal to the cheap tablets when a kindle fire isnt much more and its way better

Kindle is more than double what OP paid, that's a lot more in my book. Entry level tablets get decent SOC's nowadays, the era of when a cheap tablet meant Pandigitial (godawful slow) are over, one can get a "7 tablet with an Allwinner A10 chipset and a MALI-400 GPU for under a hundred bucks, the actual performance is fairly good, the tradeoff is usually lower res, non IPS screens and smaller batteries (less run time). Ramos is selling a dual core MALI tablet (with 1024X760 screen) for less than $150. I would wait a month before buying though so a decent/stable firmware comes out..

 

[superccs]

ok so one major gripe of mine is the stock and chrome browser performance.

the stock ICS browser is slow... fine whatever.

The Chrome browser is a super bloated turd at 54Mbs!!! It is even slower than the stock browser.

I couldn't find my favorite Miren Browser on Play so I installed Boat Browser and wow what a difference!

Anyway that is all for now.

 

[dman535]

I am looking at a couple of these for the kids to use at school - any new insights since you have had almost a month to play with it?

 

[Bateluer]

I am looking at a couple of these for the kids to use at school - any new insights since you have had almost a month to play with it?

Its been a month, so its probably been flipped on eBay or CL.

 

[superccs]

The charger stopped working... and it doesn't charge off USB.... crud. Now I have to find a AC adapter.

 

[Sheep]

with most cheap tablets, we buy them and try them. they normally end up in the trash before the battery loses its first charge.

Give this man a gold star based on the OP's latest update.

 

[BUTCH1]

The charger stopped working... and it doesn't charge off USB.... crud. Now I have to find a AC adapter.

Have you tried it, all variants of the A10 SOC charge off the USB (well so far anyway..).