Standard question ... which tablet? Archos 7 vs Velocity Cruz Tablet vs ...

[pwalt]

I'm buying a 7" tablet for my 11 year old son for Christmas. (Then theoretically when he's tired of it it will be something I can play with as well)

I wish not to spend an incredible amount of money ... but I also want it to last more than 6 months. It will be primarily used for the downloadable Droid games. Possibly a Paint app. I would also be interested in a photo editor (limited to fixed ratio cropping).

I bought the Archos 7 last night.

I loaded a few programs from the Appslib (not a terrible program in and of itself) ... and quickly ran out of memory! I didn't realize that the device will not use all of it's internal 8G and is limited to 58M of application memory (or something like that).

I've read through forums that this is a 1.5 issue and, theoretically, can be hacked. True?

I bought it for $180 and am thinking about taking it back and getting the Cruz Tablet (not reader) for $250 on sale. This is all at Best Buy. (I'll attempt to not get hit with the 15% restocking fee)

Main question ... is the app memory so severely limited with the Cruz or am I going to have the same problem?

My husband is "happy" with what we have because "it's good enough for our son" ... but I want it to grow with him (at least a little bit) and be fun for a while, not just the month of January!

Our local Toys-R-Us is also selling the Coby Kyros for $200 (not on sale) ... this also has 2.something OS.

Screens ... resistive and capacitive are both fine. The kids are used to playing on my resistive touch screen HTC Imagio phone and don't seem to have any problems with it.

Sorry for the book! I did spend quite a bit of time browsing/searching the forums, but a lot of the posts were pre-Cruz release!

 

[pbrauer]

My opinion, having gone through exactly the same device progression (plus one more!), is go the extra $50 to $299 and get the Huawei S7, also from BBY. Much better all around device in terms of usability, capability and future. The only thing that the Cruz has that is better than the S7 is a capacitive vs. a resistive screen, but I had nothing but problems with the Cruz screens (I went through 2 devices).

Please take a look around, there are several different comparison threads and reviews here comparing the Cruz and the S7.

Good luck!

 

[pwalt]

Ugh ... it's just so hard to justify another $150! But ... reviews on the Cruz and the Archos 7 are all "meh to bad" and most of the reviews on the Huawei are "good and great".

<sigh>

 

[TabletConnect]

We posted a quick comparison between the Huawei S7 and Cruz Tablet (which we reviewed in detailed). We would easily recommend the Huawei over the Cruz Tablet. I have not personally used the Archos 7 but have heard nothing but bad things. Unfortunately, you do get what you pay for here.

 

[pwalt]

WOW WOW WOW WOW!!!

I returned the Archos 7 to Best Buy with no problems ... possibly because I had purchased the Accident/Extended Warranty. I bit the bullet and bought the Huawei and boy oh boy do you get what you pay for!!

It's quick
It's responsive
The "joystick, touchpad, whatever it is" button is a pretty slick addition.
The battery was mostly charged, so you could play with it right away
There's more than 2 things in the apps pre-loaded (haven't explored too much yet as I'm still at work ...)
Downloaded Angry Birds full edition (at the suggestion of a friend) and IT WORKED and I still have 139MB in app space available. (Yes, the possibility of 2.2 and "unlimited" app space is still very nice)

Much, much happier with my purchase, that's for certain!

 

[poncespr]

WOW WOW WOW WOW!!!

I returned the Archos 7 to Best Buy with no problems ... possibly because I had purchased the Accident/Extended Warranty. I bit the bullet and bought the Huawei and boy oh boy do you get what you pay for!!

It's quick
It's responsive
The "joystick, touchpad, whatever it is" button is a pretty slick addition.
The battery was mostly charged, so you could play with it right away
There's more than 2 things in the apps pre-loaded (haven't explored too much yet as I'm still at work ...)
Downloaded Angry Birds full edition (at the suggestion of a friend) and IT WORKED and I still have 139MB in app space available. (Yes, the possibility of 2.2 and "unlimited" app space is still very nice)

Much, much happier with my purchase, that's for certain!

I think that, like the Pandigital Novel on its $130 -$150 range, the Ideos S7 at the $300 price range offers the most bang for your buck. Excellent build, quality, very good processor, plenty of ram, bluetooth, integrated gps, 3G data, AND full phone capability.

I sure do love mine

 

[Bilgediver]

I went with the Archos 70 INTERNET tablet, so hopefully it'll be much better than the Archos 7 Home tablet.
Crossing my fingers.