14 DAY TRIAL // It appears there’s a war going on in the low-end tablet sector. Some manufacturers are seemingly dead set on lowering slate prices to the absolute extremes. After Datawind’s Ubislate launch and Office’s Depot Apex AP-7S118, here comes a new competitor on the cheap slate market.
This one is called the Azpen A700 and is sold by Microcenter. It’s one of the most basic tablets you’ll ever see or read about, but it’s a tablet, nevertheless.
The slate features a 7-inch multi-touch display with a resolution of 800 x 480 pixels and an AMD Cortex A8 1.2GHz single-core CPU coupled with 512MB of RAM.
The Azpen has a meager 4GB of storage, but customers can extend it to 32GB via the microSD card if they choose to. Surprisingly, Azpen doesn't run the most outdated operating system, with Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean being the default OS here.
The Microcenter listing boasts that the slate is “perfect for reading eBooks and all your favorite online content.” Of course, doing something more advanced with it is out of the question, but according to reports, the slate has Google Play and can run Google apps.
The Azpen A700 ships for $39.99 / €29 and could find a number of uses in your household. For example, you could turn it into a child slate or give it to an elderly member of the family.