Five Nexus 7 alternatives: 7-inch Android tablets under £200

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Summary: The Nexus 7 has rapidly become the hottest tablet around - but if you don't want to put your cash towards the Asus-manufactured Nexus 7, then what else can you get for your £200?

By Ben Woods |August 3, 2012 -- 11:00 GMT (04:00 PDT)
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The Nexus 7 has done a fine job of delivering an impressive set of specs at a thoroughly affordable price, albeit at the sacrifice of mobile data — it has Wi-Fi but no 3G. So is there anything else out there that offers a similar experience for about the same amount of money, or even less?

As a baseline, it's worth noting that the Nexus 7 brings with it a 7-inch 1280x800 pixel HD display, 1.2-megapixel front facing camera, Tegra 3 quad-core processor, 1GB RAM and the choice of 8GB or 16GB of internal storage.

Kobo Vox tablet
The Kobo Vox tablet is a mid-point between an e-reader and a full-blown tablet. Its strength lies in the Vox Kobo e-reader application.

Hardware-wise the Kobo Vox brings a 7-inch 1024 x 600 pixel touchscreen display and 8GB internal storage, expandable by a further 32GB via microSD support.

The addition of microSD support obviously gives the Kobo a slight advantage over the Nexus 7 and the devices are equally matched in the connectivity department — neither has 3G. The Kobo also now comes with access to the Google Play store.

However, the lower resolution screen, 800MHz processor and 512MB of RAM don't work in the device's favour. Neither does the virtually ancient customised version of Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) found running on the device or the omission of front or rear cameras.

The specs may not quite measure up to the Nexus 7, but this is at least reflected in the price: it's available now for around £140.

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Topics: Tablets, Android, Mobility

 

[b1lk1]

THere are so many better sub $200 tablets available than the 5 they picked to compare with, I am not even sure it could have been called a comparison.

To me, the real flaw in the Nexus 7 is how locked down it is in terms of storage. Nothing like FORCING us to use a cloud service of some kind. I was going for one until I realized that fact alone and I passed. My Iconia A100 is still plenty powerful enough and certainly more flexible.

 

[Sorceress]

The reason I nuked the Nexus 7 early on was the memory restriction. Having no expansion capabilities was the kiss of death in my opinion.

 

[mikearnill]

I would say there are many tablets available at this price range but there is no such alternative tablet for nexus 7. I mean nexus 7 is insanely great product, damn huge screen, brilliant touch, long battery life, marvellous design and many other cool features.

 

[emitchan]

looks good, and 7 inch is rather fit for me~~ maybe I would buy it after I got my salary this month ~~

 

[Fannie]

i find nexus 7 is very popular in the world.So many people choose this phone.

 

[arcone]

I have two tablets. An N7 16gig. I am so glad I got it can't put in down. Its fast, but most of all the screen is awesome. Viewing angle, colours, text is sooo clear. Also the N7 can access USB sticks etc with no problem and stream video.

I have another tablet 10 inchish, now I feel its a bit big, and what have I done with the 64 gig that's on it, used less then 16 in over a year.