Since the release of the original iPad in January 2010, tablets have not been long in coming to make a real impact on our daily lives. We’ve seen dozens of options over the years, including laptop-style convertible tablets, keyboard docking tablets, and even laptop replacement tablets.
Tablets under $ 200 oversaturate the market and it is often difficult to determine which options are really worth the price.
Whether it’s a gift to a friend, a child, or yourself, there are a variety of options you can make when choosing a tablet worth investing in. Luckily for you, we’ve narrowed it down to three of the best cheap Android tablets that work great and won’t go bankrupt.
Best 3 Cheap Android Tablets
When it comes to budget Android tablets, no one offers a better price than Amazon. This is why you will find that two of the three items on this list are from Amazon. When looking for an inexpensive tablet with unmatched features and usability, it will be difficult to find a better company.
Here are our thoughts on which are the cheapest Android tablets you can buy on a budget.
Amazon Fire HD 8
Amazon Fire HD 8
If you are looking for a combination of great display, high performance and economy, the Fire HD 8 comes first. While there is nothing special about the hardware (after all, this is an 8-inch tablet for under $ 100), you can choose from four colors: black, red, yellow, and blue.
Don’t let cheap plastic distract you from your purchase. The focus of any tablet will be the display. The Fire HD 8 has a 1280×800 resolution, good viewing angles and sharp colors. It doesn’t compare to the Apple iPad until you realize the iPad starts at $ 800.
People who need a budget usually aren’t looking for the most advanced features either. At just a tenth of the price, the Fire HD 8 offers many useful features for those in need of a Netflix mobile player, home tablet, or something else to keep kids busy.
It has front and rear cameras that you can practically ignore outside of video calls. However, the dual stereo speakers deliver flawless audio for watching videos and listening to music.
The base tablet comes with either 16GB or 32GB of internal storage, which is currently not much. It also features a microSD card slot for expanding storage. Mediatek’s quad-core processor isn’t the fastest on the market, but it’s more than enough for day to day use, Netflix streaming, or web browsing.
One of the best features of the Fire HD 8 is its battery life. You can easily spend up to twelve hours watching movies, surfing the Internet or listening to music, ignoring low battery warnings.
The Fire HD 8 software is somewhat ambiguous, depending on expectations. It runs on Fire OS, which is a combination of Android and Google’s open source software. That being said, it still doesn’t offer proper support for the Google Play Store or the full suite of Google apps. Instead, you’re stuck with Amazon’s own Amazon Appstore for software downloads.
However, if you are interested in using the Google Play Store and Google Play Services on your device, you can download their unpublished apps using third party apps. There are many mods and tweaks available, but even without that, the Amazon Appstore has most of the software (besides YouTube) that you can expect from a tablet. For those who regularly use Amazon and Amazon products, it doesn’t really matter.
Alexa is integrated into the Fire HD 8 and can be accessed by pressing and holding the Home key. Then it will be activated and will wait for all questions and requests that you see fit to ask.
The home screen will display ads, which is why the price is so low, but it doesn’t really cause any problem or inconvenience. However, if they annoy you, you can pay $ 15 to remove them from your device.
Despite all the flaws, the Amazon Fire HD 8 is an amazing little device. There is a lot of quality packaged for $ 80, especially if you plan on using your tablet specifically as a multimedia device. Amazon Prime subscribers will find it much more appealing, but it still remains the perfect companion for anyone looking for a cheap Android tablet.
Amazon Fire HD 10
Amazon Fire HD 10
The Amazon Fire HD 10 is Amazon’s top-selling tablet. While the original was very disappointing, the cost of the Fire HD 10 has grown significantly over the past two years.
The tablet underwent a year of rethinking back in 2017 and came with a new design and a lower price tag. The 2019 model saw even more additions and changes in the form of a new processor, USB-C port, and several new colors to choose from.
The new colors include muted blues and reds that look stunning and give the dated plastic look a more mature vibe. The microUSB port has been replaced with the more popular USB-C port, and the processor speed has been increased by thirty percent.
In all fairness, this particular device is even better than the Fire HD 8 for multimedia purposes, with an incredibly crisp 1080p display and four speakers on the sides of the device. The only difference is obviously in the price.
It suffers from the same problem as its operating system, which doesn’t support the Google Play Store, but if you find that the extra $ 100 is a fair price to pay for better visuals and sound, this might be the tablet you’ve been looking for.
Lenovo Smart Tab M10
Lenovo Smart Tab M10
A small update to the Lenovo Tab 4, the Lenovo Smart Tab M10 brings with it a big new feature: a full-fledged speaker dock. Dolby lets you turn your Smart Tab into a Nest Home-style device.
It features dual front-facing speakers that let you turn up the volume of your favorite movies, tunes, TV shows and more.
The characteristics of the M10 are very similar to the Tab 4, but with a slight boost. It now runs on a Snapdragon 450 processor, comes with a meager 3GB of RAM, and a 10.1-inch 1080p LCD is perfect for watching Netflix on a budget tablet.
The M10 has Alexa built in, allowing the tablet to act like an Echo-type device, allowing you to control other smart devices in the house that Alexa has been given access to.
The M10’s biggest flaw is the one left over from its predecessor, and that is its software. The M10 is now on the Android 9.0 update, which took nearly a year to create. Who knows when and if the M10 will even see the Android 10 update, which is already being used on Pixel and OnePlus devices.
That said, the Lenovo Smart Tab M10 is an incredible device on a budget, especially for the multimedia consumer who wants loud, crystal clear audio and a large screen.
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