14 DAY TRIAL // Today's media tablets mostly tend to revolve around the $500 price point, but ViewSonic's invention goes much lower than that although, true enough, its feature set reflects it.
The thing about media tablets is that they are a novel product with a lot of potential, though the market has only begun to tap into said potential, for the moment.
Granted, the Apple iPad has been selling well, but Android-loaded tablets, and other, like HP's WebOS TouchPad, still have some hurdles to jump over.
That said, there are also certain slates that are willing to make concessions if it means selling for half the price of regular ones.
ViewSonic's gTablet is one such device, as its base price tag is roughly $250, as can be seen on this online listing.
As already mentioned, the affordability comes at a cost, specifically both hardware and software drawbacks, compared to the likes of the aforementioned HP TouchPad, Samsung Galaxy Tab, Toshiba Thrive, ASUS Eee Pad Transformer, etc.
To be more specific, while the Tegra 2 (1 GHz) isn't lacking in itself, the Android 2.2 OS is quite a way behind Honeycomb, especially with the Ice Cream Sandwich version of Android so close to arrival.
At least the 16 GB of NAND Flash storage space is a common feature with the base iteration of most other tablet devices, although the latter have other versions as well, with 32 GB.
Nonetheless, at such a low price, the 10.1-inch ViewSonic gTablet should still score a few sales.
The list of product specification also includes the obligatory microSD card slot, WiFi and USB connectivity, among other things.
Of course, those that want more prowess can just choose one of the other tablets that ViewSonic has in its products portfolio, such as the ViewPad 10 Windows 7/Android Dual-Boot one or the ViewPad 10Pro. UPDATE: Clarified the platform details.