Four new tablets from Velocity Micro have turned up on Amazon.com for pre-order, two 7″ tablets, the PS127 and PS47, a 8″ tablet, the T408, and a 10″ model, the T410.
They have capacitive touchscreens and are running Android 2.3 Gingerbread, and all come pre-installed with the Kindle for Android app, along with the Amazon Appstore for downloading apps (except the PS127, that is).
Velocity Micro jumped on the budget Android tablet/ereader bandwagon when these types of devices first started becoming popular. Their early models weren’t very good—they suffered from app incompatibility issues, crappy touchscreens, and horrible customer support. Velocity Micro’s second round of devices weren’t much better, but at least they had better capacitive touchscreens (here’s my review of the Cruz Reader T301).
Now enters the 3rd round of Android devices from Velocity Micro. Let’s start with the big guns first and work down to the 7 inchers.
10-Inch Cruz Tablet T410
(pictured above)
- 10″ TFT Capacitive Touch
- 16:9 (1024X600 pixels)
- 1GHz Cortex A8 processor
- Android 2.3 (Gingerbread)
- Front facing camera
- 512MB RAM
- 4GB storage
- MicroSD card slot
- Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n
- Flash 10.3
- Quick Office Full version and Angry Birds pre-installed
- $299 at Amazon
8-Inch Cruz Tablet T408
The specs and features for the T408 tablet are exactly the same as the 10-inch model listed above. The only difference is the screen size and price.
The screen is capacitive and measures 8″, of course, and the ratio is 4:3 with 800 x 600 pixels. The price for this model is listed at $239 on Amazon.
It would have been nice if they would have upped the resolution on this model a little more instead of going with the same as the 7-inch tablets. Otherwise it has fairly decent specs for the price.
7-Inch Cruz Tablet PS47
This 7″ PS47 model isn’t yet listed on the Cruz website and Amazon’s listing doesn’t give a ton of details, but for the most part it appears to have the exact same specs as the 8″ model, even the resolution is the same (800 x 600). One difference, Bluetooth is listed in the product description and not in any of the other devices’ descriptions. This one sells for $199.
Judging from the picture, the PS47 has an unusually large area below the screen, with what appear to be Android buttons, probably not actually buttons but sensors since the capacitive screen would cover the entire front.
7-Inch Cruz Reader PS127
This model isn’t yet listed on the Cruz website either, so the details are sketchy. According to the description at Amazon, it has a 7″ resistive touchscreen with a 800 x 600 ratio. It too runs Android 2.3 Gingerbread.
This model is going by the old moniker, “Cruz Reader”, while the others are being marketed as “Cruz Tablets”, even though all come with the Kindle Reading app and the same operating system. This one, however, mentions nothing of the Amazon Appstore coming pre-installed in the product description—not a good sign. I wouldn’t count on it having the same 1GHz Cortex A8 processor as the other tablets either. The Cruz PS127 is listed at $169.
I believe the resolution of the T410 (1024×600 pixels) is the same as the Nook Color. My first thought was, why pay $50 more?
Then of course I realized that the T410 has a 10-inch screen, which is considerably bigger than the Nook Color..and a camera, and some office software–and runs Android natively, without requiring a root process.
So I guess it’s what a Nook Color would be, if you waved a magic wand and made a Nook Color bigger and run Android natively. That’s certainly worth an extra $50!
Better off with Acer Iconia A100 @ $299.
Honeycomb 3.2, dual core, 1GB ram, better screen, market etc.
I also expect better battery life.
The “10-Inch Cruz Tablet T410″ shares most of the same specs of the soon to be released Arnova G2 10” which will be priced at least $50 less. Of course battery life of each of these is always an open question.
Battery life is a big question with budget tablets like these. Like with the new Pandigital tablets the battery life isn’t so great. Like 6 hours at best. I’m used to the Transformer’s 10 hours or so.
Actually 6 hours with a 7″ tablet is pretty good. I have see people saying the new 7″ Acer Iconia A100 gets around 4 hours or so.
I was just reading about the new 7″ Lenovo tablet that is going to be released soon for $199. The press clipping said up to 10 hours, which would be a first for a 7″, if true. Of course it may be BS.