14 DAY TRIAL // Point of View decided it was serious about its plans to enter the tablet market, so it put together the ProTab2 XXL, which might just be the cheapest tablet yet.
Granted, a tablet can be called the cheapest only as long as one disregards the paradox known as the HP TouchPad and the $35 Aakash.
To make things clearer, the TouchPad sold for $99 just a couple of days ago (eBay crashed from the traffic) and the Aakash is a device made by the Indian Government for education.
Point of View's new product is more of a consumer-oriented slate that trades the Tegra and massive storage for a much lower price.
Said price is 169 Euro, which is 222.77 dollars according to exchange rates.
This suggests that it is more expensive than the Amazon Kindle fire, until one remembers that the actual European price of the Fire is 199 Euro.
Such is the way of the IT market: European/US prices don't reflect exchange rates that much, so if the Capacitive ProTab2 XXL, as POV's new item is called, does get released in the US, it will probably cost less than $199.
That said, the ProTab2 XXL has Android 2.3 as an OS, relies on an ARM Cortex A8 processor, features MALI-400 3D graphics and 512 MB of DDR3 memory, plus 4 GB of NAND Flash storage.
The 1 GHz chip and the MALI graphics handle video playback quite well, giving the HDMI 1.4 port a full purpose when streaming to an HDTV.
That said, POV also threw in support for games, Adobe Flash, 802.11 b/g/n WiFi, a webcam on the front and the obligatory microSD card reader.
Select countries should already have the ProTab2 XXL up for sale at the aforementioned price. No clue yet on how long it will be before true worldwide availability is attained.