The secret to subverting the jewel in the crown of Steve Job's legacy could never lie in challenging the technology or design of the ubiquitous gadget, but in offering something that does a similar job for a very different price. While prestige has allowed the iPad's price to creep up to £649 ($899) for the top of the range model, serious development work from Android tablet producers has allowed for good quality products to be sold at much more pocket-friendly prices.
Money Saving Man's recommendation is the Gemini JoyTAB. Not only is Gemini a British company, which assures build quality and reinvestment into a local market, but it has also managed to produce a budget Android tablet of remarkable quality. Available in 7", 8" or 10" offerings, and running the latest tablet-specific Ice Cream Sandwich operating system, customers wanting a decent everyday tablet without worrying about having the top-notch quality and prestige of the iPad will find a very interesting prospect in the affordable Gemini range.
Prices are £129.99 for the 7", £149.99 for the 8" and £199.99 for the 10" inch. You may not be getting a Retina display for those sort of prices, but you are getting solid design, including aluminium back covers to match the iPad and decent 1GHZ to 1.2GHZ processors with 512MB RAM. Memory is of course limited for the price, but upgradeable to 32GB by way of a Micro SD card.
The problem with many cheap Android tablets is that they run unofficial versions of Google's Android operating system and thus don't offer access to Google Playstore (formally Android Market). There is no such problem with the JoyTAB - you also get Gmail, Google Maps, Youtube and an Ebook reader out of the box; the 8" and 10" models even support Adobe Flash.
So does the iPad have a challenger to its crown? Probably not the crown of technology and prestige, but there may just be room for another ruler - that of value - and the Gemini series seems to be headed to the throne without opposition within the coming months. See the links below:
http://geminidevices.com/products.html
http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Search/searchTerms/JOYTAB.htm
As always, please consider clicking an ad to support the fight for the consumer!
