VeiwSonic to bring Ice Cream Sandwich to the masses for $170

If you are like the rest of us Americans, then dropping $500 for a super tablet is desired but out of the question. As much we would all love to snag a Transformer Prime, Motorola XYBOARD or even a Galaxy Tab 10.1, the reality of it is they are still slightly out of reach for many of us. We all lust for them, we all want them, we all know we would enjoy them. When you look to the market for something that will hold you over for a year or so until something on the high-end side comes down in price, you often find your self going to the Amazon Kindle Fire, Barnes and Nobles Nook or even some off brand tablet that sounded good on the box. ViewSonic is looking to try and make getting a tablet in your hands a bit easier and a little more affordable.

The tablet in question is the ViewSonic ViewPad E70. In order to get the price of a tablet down to something affordable for general consumers you can expect to sacrifice some of the high-end features. The E70 is should fill the niche pretty well with a name that many know and can respect. The tablet is slated for launch in May of this year with a retail price tag of $169. Inside you find some lower end specs that should still help quench your thirst. The E70 will be a 7-inch tab with a lower resolution 800 X 480 display. It will feature a  1GHz processor, 4GB internal memory with microSD card slot. External connections you will find a microHDMI port for connecting to a TV or external display. You will also find a standard front facing camera for self portraits and video calls. Of course there won’t be any cellular connections, but it will have a Wi-Fi connection integrated. Not to mention it will be running the latest and greats Android OS, Ice Cream Sandwich.

As you can see this isn’t going to be the cream of the crop tablets, but for those on a budget looking to get a device to use for email, web browsing and media consumption should be please with it. Current word on the street is that it won’t have direct Android Market access, instead you will find the Amazon AppStore preloaded along with a number of other applications.

If you are looking to spend a little more money, ViewSonic has a second tablet that is scheduled to ship out the end of January, the Viewpad 10e. This one has slightly increased specs. Bringing you a 9.7 inch screen with a resolution of 1024 X 768. Still packing a 1 GHz processor and the same 4GB of memory. It will run a little short on only 512 MB of RAM and still has a front facing camera and a mini-HDMI port. The ViewPad 10e is set to land with Honeycomb as the stock OS, but will see an Ice Cream Sandwich update in the near future. This tablet is set to launch with a price tag of $270.

Neither of these tablets are going to be the mega power house devices that you see plastered across ads and websites. For the price tags and the specs though, they sound like they should be great entry level devices. Even if they can let me read some books and watch some movies, I think I would be happy to spend $170. We did get a chance to take a look at these guys, if even only for a brief moment. The viewing angles on the screen are drastically improved as compared to their current tablet offerings. Hopefully we will be getting some hands on time with these as they become available and we will be sure to elt you know if they are worth your time and money.

Source: ZDNet