Doesn't really matter anyway though, I simply can't afford a name brand tablet anyway, so the cheapo ghetto version will have to do. I checked again and it's cheaper than I thought, $79, 9", Pandigital brand. LOL so totally low end but better than nothing.
There is a lot you can do with the cheapo tablets. They can be great fun. There are, of course, trade-offs at the extreme low price end of the tablet spectrum. But, depending on how you use your tablet, the trade-offs may not be so difficult to live with. And the cheap tablets do many things much better than many very expensive brands.
I have a 7" Polaroid PMID701i tablet that I bought at Big Lots for $100. It has a 480x800 resolution screen. I upgraded the stock 4 GB memory storage to 36 GB with a 32 GB micro SD card (4 GB internal + 32 GB on the card). That brought the total price up to ~ $130. Compare that to a 32 GB iPad mini, which sells for $429.
I have found the tablet good for reading e-books. I have apps installed for reading books in each of the 3 most common e-book standards (Kobo, B&N, and Amazon Kindle - many of the proprietary, expensive tablets cannot do all three!). You can get many tens of thousands of books free (and legally) for your tablet. I have
War & Peace,
Moby Dick,
A Tale of Two Cities, and many, many classics on my cheapo tablet and I am re-reading them after many years.
Despite the low resolution screen, my cheap Android tablet is a surprisingly good video player. I play lots of videos for people which I have taken myself, as well as lots of videos I have downloaded from YouTube and other internet sources. I just upload the videos from my camera to my desktop computer, then download them from the desktop to the tablet. The cheap tablets actually make this process easier than you would experience with an iPad. The tablet shows up as a "drive" when you plug it into your desktop. Just use your computer's operating system to drag and drop files to the tablet. No need to go through iTunes. Once the files are on the tablet, just use the Android file manager to navigate to where you put them, and play or view them. The cheap tablets also work with Linux, which the iPad and Microsoft tablets do not. So, not only are they easier to use, they are also more compatible than many expensive alternatives. Also, my cheapo Polaroid has a high-def video out port, so I can play videos from my tablet on a big screen TV, if I want.
My tablet is a great platform for Angry Birds and some other games I play. The 7" screen seems almost the perfect size for games. I'm not a big game player, but my cheap Polaroid does a surprisingly good job with this.
As far as apps go, I've been looking at google play and I really don't think I'll be an much of an app user, I haven't seen anything on there I'd ever really use.
This is bad thinking. The app store is a wonder. You will find many things there of interest, which you would probably never have imagined before you got your tablet.
But, what you find interesting will depend entirely on you, of course. I have found a number of apps that I like to use on my cheap tablet - advanced scientific calculators, note-takers, e-book readers, multiple browsers, a decibel meter, multiple email readers, multiple office suites, multiple media players, Skype, a flash card app for study, language translators, newspaper readers, a program that listens to songs being played and identifies them, a radio tuner to listen to any FM station in America (and many foreign countries), wifi analyzer for your location, a voice recorder, phone books, comic books, etc., etc., etc. Your tablet may be cheap, but that does not mean it is not a useful and capable computer.
You should be aware, however, that app stores in the Android universe are complicated. Apple and Microsoft allow their products to connect
ONLY to their single, designated store and
NO OTHERS. You are limited to only those programs Apple and Microsoft believe you should want. You are forbidden to install porn. You will be limited to particular map programs. You will be spoon-fed only what Apple and Microsoft want you to have.
Stock Android allows you to connect to any number of diverse stores. "Google Play" is Google's own store, but there is also Amazon's Android App store and many others. There are app stores that only offer porn and app stores that specialize in games. App stores for software developers and app stores for home shopping. I emphasize, however, that "stock" Android allows multiple app stores. The particular implementation of Android on your tablet may restrict you to certain app stores. The Amazon Kindle, for example, blocks Google Play and tries to force you to use the Amazon store. If I recall, Pandigital defaults to the "Get Jar" app store. I believe Pandigital also tries to block Google Play. (These cheap manufacturers sometimes get paid by the app stores to only offer their stores on the tablet. Because the price at this end of the market is so low, their profit margins are thin, and they will attempt to exploit whatever revenue source they can find). It is often ridiculously easy to override the blocks they impose, but I cannot guarantee you this will be easy for your particular model of Pandigital. I can try to talk you through some techniques to get alternative app stores up and running on your tablet after you get it, if you will start a thread requesting so in this forum, after you get your tablet. The techniques which work vary from tablet to tablet, however - no guarantees.
The app store
does make a difference. For example, both Google Play and the Amazon Android store offer tens of thousands of apps, covering most anything you might want. However, to download a free app on Google Play, you just download it. To download a free app on Amazon Android store, you need to have a credit card. You get billed $0.00 to your card for every free app you download. It is ridiculous and annoying.
As long as it has a working internet browser, can play netflix & Plex, and can read my downloaded epub's and comics then that'll be enough for me.
There are many Netflix apps for Android, so I don't anticipate that you will have a problem with that. As I said above, my own cheap tablet is actually a rather good movie player.
I don't do facebook/twitter/instagram/tumblr/youtube etc, so wether it can run apps like that doesn't matter at all. And I don't really intend to game very much with it either, maybe Angry Birds and some board games like Monopoly.
You may not be interested in any of these, but your Pandigital Android tablet should do them all reasonably well.
Well it's a Christmas present, to me, from my Mom. So what we can afford is the cheap-o $79 one, not one double the price.
You don't need to spend a lot to get a great, useful, and fun tablet. If you live near a Big Lots store, check out their tablet section. Big Lots is the king of ultra-cheap tablets.
I have one final piece of advice for your cheap tablet. Buy some kind of a case for it immediately. You don't need anything fancy, but these cheap tablets really are more flimsily constructed than the more expensive tablets. A drop to a carpeted floor can crack the screen. Keep it in the case, and take reasonable care, and it should last for years.
