It’s more difficult than I thought it would be as I don’t recognise any of the manufacturers! Any to avoid?

I’m looking for something to trawl the web on in the evenings when sat on the sofa. I have an Android phone (Xperia Ray) but find it really small for this and would like to have a tablet just lying around.

What I’m after:
wifi required
don’t need a camera
bigger screen the better
£100ish?

Motorola xoom 2. Got one on o2 contract from car phone warehouse £32 per month/24 month 🙂

I hadn’t thought of getting a contract but i guess that gives you data out and about?
For sofa surfing that’s more than I want to pay, £32 * 24 = £768!

Been a few threads on this tho they are month+ old.

Ainol was one brand, I think stoner and druidh became experts…

Its on a phone contract, 300 minutes, unlimited texts and 50Gb data.
I use a HTC wildfire s out and about, when upgrade was available didn’t want a new phone so had the tablet as a free gift and an unlocked cheapo phone I can use for fishing, where orange is a better signal.
And the tablet for sofa surfing.
Wasn’t trying to say it was a good deal, but works for me, and it’s a good tablet IMO 🙂

not going to post a long review spiel but very briefly:
Get one with at least:
1) IPS screen (its seriously miles ahead of any previous tech)
2) 1Ghz chipset (pref ARM 9)
3) Android Market (aka “Play”) as standard or at least in an easy patch
4) 1Gb RAM + 8GB SD

I have one of these
http://gadgetfreakz.co.uk/ainol-novo-7-aurora-android-4-0-7-ips-tablet.html
and have been mucking about with various roms and settled on a nice the latest ICS build from here:
http://www.slatedroid.com/topic/30483-firmware-ainol-novo-7-aurora-ics-403-v9-03-07-2012/

and its great for browsing, podcasts, video, games music etc.

Have also had it on a gingerbread build that was really stable and fast but not quite as packed as ice cream sandwich.

Dont worry so much about the brands as the chinese are now developing some incredible ahrdware. But DO read reviews on slatedroid from super users to get a feel of how flexible and stable each unit is.

7″ is nice for browsing IMO, 10″ IPS units are bit more pricey than £120ish though.

That ainol looks the part…any where on the high street that stock these so I can take a hands on look?

Not that i’m a huge fan but i bought a couple from maplin for the kids for sub £100 not exactly fantastic but if you are just looking for a web surfer and the ability to play film etc it seems fine. i had to put market on because it only had getjar and if to do want to go out and about i just use my phone as a hotspot.

Ainol was one brand

Thats an unfortunate brand name 😯 😆

I bought a Sumvision Cyclone Astro from ebuyer last month. Its one of many brandings for the same device, momo9 and Scroll Excel are the same apparently.

£85 gets you

Android 4/ICS
7″ capacitive multi-touch display
1.2Ghz chip, 8Gb Memory
Mini HDMi out
Other stuff. iPlayer compatible.

The sound is pretty good (i.e. it goes plenty loud enough) good battery life, however the screen resolution is merely average (480*something) apparently the same as a smaller smartphone like the Desire, its fine for browsing but probably won’t blow your socks off, and the camera is appalling, its really only suitable for Skype etc. I find the browser is a little laggy but its fine if you are not trying to rush, I’ve not really bothered trying other browsers yet.

The spec is constantly being upgraded so it may be improved again now.

The only issues I am finding with the tablet (presumably all Android tablets in general) is its annoying that you can’t get widgets (such as BBC news) to fill a whole page, (seeing as you have a home screen plus four others to swipe through) and I find you have to be more positive to scroll webpages/slide between home screens. I’m assuming this is because on a smartphone screen, a quick flick with your thumb results in sliding across 50% of the screen, a flick across a tablets 7″ screen probably covers less than 25% and it isn’t enough to swap pages etc. I have to deliberately draw my finger across the screen.

Thanks for the links, it’s good know where to look. Seems like the technology is changing really quickly so if I can hold out for a little longer it might make sense. I think my phone will get an upgrade to ICS in the next couple of months so it will be good to see how that goes and then hopefully the 10″ tablets will have ome down a bit.