Not to long ago we shared the release of the Archos GamePad. The 7-inch Android powered tablet that offered physical gaming controls on the side as part of the design. It eliminates the need for a secondary accessory such as the MOGA controller or the new NVIDIA Shield. Not that we all still don’t want them.
The GamePad has been floating around Europe since December and we have all been eagerly awaiting an announcement as to when the US would be able to enjoy the gaming tablet. Thanks to some sleuth work at Phandroid, they might have found an answer. An Archos rep, Phil Geldard, talks about the tablet and points to a February release with a price tag of $170 attached. No specific date in February is mentioned and it is quite possible that could get moved back. Archos is in the middle of ramping up production to hopefully meet the demand they feel they will receive at launch.
The GamePad internal specs put it using a 1.6GHz dual-core processor, a quad-core GPU, 1GB of RAM and 8GB of internal storage. It ships out with Android Jelly Bean 4.1 and features a completely customizable mapping tool to help you achieve the ultimate gaming experience. That mapping tool is pretty important since most gamers will be playing a wide variety of Android games along with a slew of emulator games as well. I don’t know about you guys, but having control over what buttons do what can really make gaming a bit easier.
We sadly didn’t make it to the Archos booth to get a good hands on look at the tablet during CES. So any thoughts on how it actually performs will be left out. The specs do sound like they should be able to handle quite a wide variety of games though and at $170 it could be your next portable gaming device.  What do you guys think? Is the GamePad on your tax return shopping list?
Source: Armdevices via Phandroid
