Worst gadget ever? Ars reviews a $99 Android tablet

i bought one to play with. it wasn't quite as good as the reviewer said, although i briefly got the wireless working. My run time was about 20 min before dead batteries. It took 45 minutes for Walgreens to figure out how to refund my money, and in the end could only refund it within $2 on my creditcard with the rest in cash

I pity all the uninformed consumers who buy this, or even worse, people who receive this as a gift from those uninformed consumers...

BBYOpen, Best Buy's API team, found some other interesting uses for the $99 Android tablet... :)<p><a href="http://bbyopen.com/2010/11/maylong-android-tablet-more-versatile-than-you-think" rel="nofollow">http://bbyopen.com/2010/11/maylong-android-tablet-more-versa...</a>

This reminds me of when one of my good friends came back from China with a knockoff iPhone. I bought his extra one off him for $50 out of sheer curiosity. Everything this article said about the knockoff tablet vs. the real thing was true for the phone--it was billed as a touch phone and yet came with a stylus, because using it with your fingers was impossible; in fact using it with the stylus was almost impossible too. It had the look-and-feel of an iPhone, but all the apps were clearly just cheap, badly translated knockoffs that were just truly awfully made. The wifi would "connect" but never worked. The screen was scratched after two days of use.<p>I ended up sending a few text messages with it (it took me 15 minutes to compose each one because of the awful interface) and after messing around with it for a while got so frustrated that I promptly "lost" it.<p>It was a great conversation starter though--"Hey, want to see my Chinese iPhone?" It always got a laugh out of people when I showed them.

I bought one for my girlfriend's two-year-old to watch Sesame Street. It works for that, and if she decides to throw it on the ground (which she's still learning not to do), hey, at least it wasn't an expensive cell phone or something.<p>Mostly I agree with the article's assessment on the touchscreen. I haven't had any trouble with the wireless on mine, though.

"No applications can perform this action." just replaced "lp 0 on fire" as my all time favorite error message.<p>It's like you asked it to solve the halting problem, or violate one of Asimov's laws.

I learned about the Nook Color over the weekend. It has the potential to be a really good Android tablet ($249, 800MHz A8, 8GB storage). Only thing is that it's restricted to running apps approved by B&#38;N, and it's running 2.1.

My favorite part - "anyone looking to buy one would get more bang for the buck by setting it on fire for warmth. "

I'd be tempted to use one of these as a device which simply displays a custom written webpage which fetches and displays information. Once you've got it running it does nothing other than display a webpage. Put it on the desk, plugged in constantly. It could show my calendar or weather/traffic data.

&#62; <i>The lag is slow and inconsistent, forcing you to always wonder if you need to hit something again or whether the M-150 is just trying to figure out if you hit S, A, or D.</i><p>I almost missed this journalistic easter egg!<p>Also… did you see the thumbnail they are using to link to this story? They photoshopped in some, er, <i>brown froyo.</i> <a href="http://static.arstechnica.net/assets/2010/11/m-150-list-thumb-140x78-17884-f.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://static.arstechnica.net/assets/2010/11/m-150-list-thum...</a><p>I still can’t get over the IE icon showing up on an Apple-imitating “dock.”

I'm surprised no one has asked this yet:<p>How easy is this thing to hack? At $99 for a small ARM system with a 7" screen and battery, this is a damn good deal compared to getting a similar setup with a BeagleBoard.

There seem to be a few sub-standard Android tablets around at the moment. A high-street clothing retailer in the UK recently released one for £180, which was also entertainingly panned by the press:<p>“All in all, a disastrous piece of gadgetry.” <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/rorycellanjones/2010/10/a_cutprice_tablet_computer_whatev.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/rorycellanjones/2010...</a><p>“If this were a car it would be roughly in the category of a Robin Reliant from a couple of decades ago.” <a href="http://www.pda-247.com/wordpress/2010/10/next-10”-tablet-review/" rel="nofollow">http://www.pda-247.com/wordpress/2010/10/next-10”-tablet-rev...</a><p>A common concern is that these products will damage the reputation of Android as a platform, and I suspect that’s true.

If Google were smart, they'd come out with their own Android tablet. That way people would stop being enticed by this absolute crap.

When people talk about the problems of Android fragmentation, its this low end where things get really scary.

These devices really are cheap and nasty. I have an Eken M001 and an M003, which are the same WM8505 chipset and (AFAIK) the exact same Android port.<p>However, if you're stuck with one then it's worth loading one of the alternative firmwares from <a href="http://www.slatedroid.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.slatedroid.com/</a> on it. People have done quite a lot with the closed source Android port to make it more usable.<p>They also make for good tinkering/reverse-engineering on a budget. I'm actually just winding up a (very hacky) early stage Android 2.2 port to this chipset. although it isn't showing signs of being very good to use, it's been fun to hack together.

I played with one last week. It ranks slightly below the CueCat in usefulness.

This is exactly why Apple don't lease their software to device makers. If you want to be known for quality you _have_ to curate the whole experience.<p>Android is certainly achieving an amount of ubiquity but that also means they will be associated with these horror stories. Obviously, not true of Apple.

So does anybody know of a decent cheap android tablet? I'd really like to have one so I can browse the internet in my bed before I got to sleep and I don't want to pay ~600€ (iPad,tab) for that (and I don't live in USA where this is "pocket change") ...

I wonder how other companies making quality Android products feel about this. I'm not sure how ubiquitous the term "Android" is in the cell phone market (obviously the more informed consumers know, but what about more casual users?) but it seems like a lot of the commercials for the phones in the higher end mention that the phone runs Android.<p>Can the casual consumer differentiate between a terrible device that runs Android and a great device that runs Android? Would one bad experience with Android on a horrible device preclude that person from buying another Android product, even if the other product provides a quality UX?

The price still amazes me even after hearing how bad it is.

I'm having the exact same experience with the $150 Android Tablet from KMart - the Augen. Wireless works, but the touch screen is really hard to use, and the battery dies fast, even when off, so every time I turn it on I have to plug it in.

I saw these things being sold all over Shenzhen about a month and a half ago. The were really cheap (after haggling, of course), but the quality was terrible. Oh and in Shenzhen they were actually being sold as "iPads".

I'd almost be interested in getting one to be an internet radio gadget. But that's about it.

Well, at least it has a webcam.

There are crap copy-cats from china all over the place. go to dealextreme and you will find 200 models of windows mobile tablets!<p>i have one to run GPS in my car. cost me $50 and has a 7in screen! works perfectly... for the price.<p>but the first ones where just crappy. unusable. slow. battery was as good as that one. look for some old reviews.<p>With that one it will be the same.<p>As soon as there is real competition in the android tablet/netbook market the chinese copy-cats will start to show up some really good products.<p>mark this: android will only be a HUGE hit when those devices that does not goes out of their way to prevent hacking start to hit the market. and it is starting<p>The little android momentum had so far was a mistake on the part of manufacturers. they by accident let android be hackable. and are fixing it, for android loss.

I don't litter because I don't want to make that Indian cry, but this will make him put a shotgun in his mouth.<p>Manufacturers should be forced to properly recycle such garbage.

Competing with Apple on price alone in a market they essentially created. Great strategy..

I'd guess there were similar reviews of Altair 8800 in 1975/76 ;-)

Wow, unabashed apple fluffer arstechnica finds and reviews cheapest example of shenzhen style knockoff tech with expectations of terribleness, and confirms they don't like it a bit, no sir, not at all.<p>In other news, there is a lot of water in the pacific ocean.