GooPad's eight-incher gives Apple fans cheap relief
Knock-off, early at work
Knock-off iPad manufacturer GooPad has followed Apple and unveiled a mini version of its i-style slate. It packs similar specs, ish, but as you can imagine, has a far cheaper price than the real thing.
The GooPad Mini may be devoid of the highly-sought fruit logo, but with an 8in display at 1080 x 768 pixels, a 1.4GHz dual-core processor, 1GB of Ram and 8GB of storage, it certainly throws a comparable punch.
There's also a 2Mp rear-facing camera, a 0.3Mp front-facer and Wi-Fi support.
The good news for those who really want a Cupertino feel, though, is that the GooPad ships with iLaunch, an iOS-themed skin for Android 4.1 Jelly Bean.
Sure, the iPad Mini does have a little more panache, but at $329 for an entry-level model, it's also three times the price.
The GooPad Mini is available for just $99 (£61). That's almost affordable enough for stocking filler. ®
COMMENTS
Samsung's lawyers should buy a few.
Then, next time Apple pull 'em up in court they can enter them as evidence with the pointed comment; "Remind me again, why are you sueing us?".
Sueing the big company that makes something a bit similar to your product, while quietly ignoring the small one that makes something exactly like your product, looks suspiciously like just going after the cash rather than defending the design.
There is a cost though...
If you were at all concerned about the wages and conditions of employees building Apple products at Foxconn, think about the people working in the sweatshops where they can build tablets that retail for $99.
Given that the Nexus at $199 is apparently sold at cost, somebody is cutting corners somewhere...
Re: Hey up, what's the state of play with these cheap tablets?
I got a cheapo resistive android tablet July 2011 - but that was fairly crap. Really only usable as an ebook reader, email, RSS, music and low-res video. Simple stuff. Web browsing was possible but slow and painful and games were a no-no.
In May this year I got a new cheapo chinese one. It has a 1.2GHz CPU plus a 400MHz Mali GPU, 512MB RAM and 16GB of storage. Then it was £90 - I've seen them lately for £65-70. It runs Android 4.0.4 and most of the time it flies along. Web browsing is a joy, it makes a brilliant kindle, good for games, I've watched countless videos on it both on the screen and using the HDMI port to output to a big telly. Overall, it is WELL worth the money and makes some of the £400-500 tablets look daft. I use it every day and the kids also love it.
HOWEVER, there are (of course) a couple of limitations. Some stuff in the Android Marketplace isn't compatible with it. I'm not 100% sure why. But If I search for some apps (Amazon App as an example) it will tell me I can install it on my 2-year-old Android phone but not the tablet - might be the lack of GPS. Who knows.
Very occasionally, it goes slow for a couple of minutes. Usually it pops back again but sometimes it requires a reboot. I suspect it is doing some house keeping in the background.
If I were buying now, I'd get the Ainol Fire (about £110 on Amazon) with a dual-core CPU, more RAM, better display and metal body. But the cheap tablets ARE very good and have the advantage of HDMI, MicroSD and USB ports so carrying around a bunch of music and films becomes incredibly easy.
Re: I don't understand why ...
@shade82000: "But, if you want an ipad get an ipad. If you dont care about the ipad get an Android. Why buy somethinig that looks like an ipad?"
LOL, for *this* price, I'd buy it just to f***off my Apple loving colleagues.. :)
Having a couple of good laughs for a few tenners is like going to the theater: only afterwards you have a nice toy leftover to play with too...
