Datawind's low cost Aakash tab comes to UK, US

Datawind, the British company behind India’s low-cost Aakash tablet, is spreading its wings with the launch of the device in the UK this week and plans to sell in bricks and mortar stores in the US early next year. The firm’s UbiSlate 7Ci, the commercial name for the Aakash 2 tablet created to meet the needs of Indian students …

[Anonymous Coward]

It's £30 for a reason

It's crap

[Shagbag]

Re: It's £30 for a reason

Maybe, but I don't want to risk anything more expensive on my 3yo son.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: It's £30 for a reason

A tablet for a 3 year old, I give it 24 hours maximum before it becomes a jigsaw puzzle.

[Fihart]

Re: It's £30 for a reason

As evidenced by a friend's 2 yr old daughter, the childish mind loves the swipe action of phones and tables -- probably one of the reasons they sell so readily to imbecile adults.

However crap the crop of budget tablets may be, welcome sign that, soon, idiots and their money may not be so easily separated as under major brand tablet pricing.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: It's £30 for a reason

I'd spend the £30 on a protective case for your iPad instead.

[Roo]

Re: It's £30 for a reason

The specs look similar to the ones I bought for our kids a couple of years ago (kids were ~2 and 3.5 at the time) so they could watch films on a long drive. I chose tablets because the in-car DVD option was actually going to cost more... The tablets have survived and the kids still enjoy taking photos, playing Angry birds, watching films on them and surfing the CBeebies website.

We have found that those cheap (and quite sucky) Droid tablets have outperformed everything else the kids have by a very large margin in terms of happy hours/£. Big win for us, but don't let that stop you from lending your iPad to your toddlers. ;)

[Mikel]

Re: It's £30 for a reason

I ordered this Monday. I have it in my hand now. It quite definitely is not crap. It is fine for a tablet, straight out of the box.

It's not going to make me toss out my Nexus 7. But I wouldn't mind if my kids' school issued these to every student.

[Great Bu]

It's £30....

...and that thirtyquidness pretty much trumps any degree of crapness it may have against the rivals. If it was £60 and crapper than an £80 tablet, then it would be pointless but because it costs less than even a second hand version of the nearest competition, it surely wins out as long as it's operational and lasts more than 12 months ( I haven't seen any evidence that it is unreliable or poorly made, just that it is restricted in performance by low cost parts).

For £30 you still get a widget that lets you check your e-mail, facebook etc., read eBooks and play videos, music and minecraft / candy crush / <insert skinner box of choice here> - OK, it does all this slower and lower resolution than more expensive kit but the truth is that for these sorts of applications (especially on a 7" screen) slowness and low resness are far from deal breakers.

As a device to give your 3 year old, it's still a good call as it's also less than half the price of similar things designed to be kid-proof (like the innotab or leap pad things), so you can sustain a moderate break-rate and still be ahead of the game (especially if you tell them you won't replace it if they break it - my 3 year old is quite able to deal with that level of care when motivated by potentially losing his toy).

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: It's £30....

Unless the battery goes critical of course. You CAN potentially cut too many corners to get something down to £30.

[Richard Lloyd]

It's actually 40 pounds

It seems like pretty well no IT sites actually bothered to "pretend" to order one of these. The only place you can buy them is the Datawind site - add one to the basket, go to the checkout and there's a 10 quid postage fee. So the tablet is actually 40 pounds, not 30 - I've yet to see a single site mention this.

As for the tablet specs, they're so low that I suspect this will be a very nasty tablet experience (and the 3 hour battery life barely makes it portable!). It reminds me of those early Chinese import tablets that were priced half of anything else but were, again, not a nice experience (latest Chinese tablets now have good specs to match the good price though).

If you really want to buy this, get it as a second tablet as a reserve for your first (better) tablet or maybe as a "who cares if it's lost/broken/stolen" tablet for your kids. If it's your first experience of an Android tablet, it might sour you on Android though. No idea if CyanogenMod is or will be available for this tablet, but you suspect even CM couldn't rescue this woefully underpowered device.

[wikkity]

Re: It's actually 40 pounds

> suspect even CM couldn't rescue this woefully underpowered device.

i've got a similar spec tablet for my daughter, bught it when she was 2 a little over 2 years ago, running CM it's fast and handles angry birds etc, cbeebies website, netflix and iplayer no problem. Don't see why this wouldn't.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: It's actually 40 pounds

And at £40 it is not really any cheaper than all the other similar Android pads available on ebay - only unlike the Akash; key word there being "available" - unlike the Akash. What was the point of this exercise, again?

[Pookietoo]

Re: It's actually 40 pounds

Actually shipping is £10 for any quantity, so buy two and they're only £35 each ...

[James 51]

Sounds a lot like the spec for a N900.

[Anonymous Coward]

For people with less sense than money... ;->

[Tromos]

For people with less sense than money

At last! A serious rival to the Apple iPad.

[Mage]

History

Going back I think to 2007 I think they have a track record of over ambitious hyped products that sank due to problems.

El Reg Preview pocketsurfer

[rogerk]

Just received here in the colonies.

It's OS is Android v4.22.

The pre installed Apps are 98.37mb

Touch sreen is soft, trim your nails.

Olde microSD cards accepted.

Just my first 30 mins. with :)