The Cheapest 8" Android Tablet in the World?
Wednesday, September 14, 2011 at 8:24PM 
This week Chinavasion rushed me over their latest budget Android Tablet. I say rushed, because they needed me to have my review done within three days of receiving the parcel so that they can coordinate it with the product launch. Well I'm up for a challenge - so rather than take my usual month or so to put together an overly long, complicated and unnecessarily intricate video review - here's what I can slap together in a few evenings. Please bear in mind that I haven't touched an Android device before, so we really are in unfamiliar territory here - oh and I've got a terrible cold so my voiceover may be a bit weird....anyway on with the show...
This 8” tablet is one of the cheapest Android Tablets on the market, and is currently available from Chinavasion for just £64 (+ postage) - it's called the Leotab and the Product Code is CVWS-PC17
Here is the direct link to the product on the Chinavasion website.
http://www.chinavasion.com/wzpu/
Apple’s current lofty position at the top of the tablet mountain seems virtually insurmountable, they have the mid to high-end tablet market all but sewn up. They have however stated that they have no interest in making cheaper tablets with smaller screens. So whilst the Blackberry Playbook struggles on and the HP Touchpad retreats from it's fight against the almighty iPad with a bloody nose – the bargain-end of the tablet market has been left wide open. It therefore makes a lot of sense for smaller tablet manufacturers to direct all their efforts at this segment of the market.
There are two ways that a manufacturer can approach the budget tablet market. One approach is to try and shoehorn in as many features as possible whilst offering a competitively priced product, like the Samsung Galaxy Tab or the Motorola Xoom. The other approach, the one favored by this tablet is to try and make the cheapest tablet on the market using the most economical components available to them today.
So what do you actually get for your (rather small amount of) money - well the one extravagance on this tablet seems to be the screen, which is a pleasingly sharp 800x600 8" display. Beyond that everything has been stripped back to meet the lowest possible price. The screen is resistive rather than capacitive, you'll need to supply your own storage memory (on microSD), the wifi is 802.11b/g (no 802.11n), there's no built in 3G sim card slot or bluetooth, there's no GPS, it's running Android 2.2 and the processor is an 800mhz ARM 926EJ-S (Rev 5).
How does this translate into real world usage and what can you actually do with a £64 tablet? Well one way of finding out, might be to press play on the video below. If after watching this you decide that you really do need a higher feature count and more oomph, then it's still worth having a look at Chinavasion's Android Tablet range. They seem to get new models in all the time so they might still have one that fits your needs.
Reader Comments (6)
nice review and very thorough as per usual.
I do like the way u point out the weaknesses aswel as the good things even tho it was given to you gratis - well done for being impartial.
Please dont be swayed to become a fanboy if other suppliers start sending you stuff - remain true to your followers - I feel you always will :)
PS any new 808 cams u know of soon?
Another outstanding review from you..... I feel that the £64 for the entry level tablet is not bad value for money.... A bit of a let down looking at their website... You cannot flash upgrade the Android OS....
Personally, I really think that that tablet is just sexy. :)
George Z.
Impact Battery
After seeing your video and not sure enough to buy a Ipad, I sent off to Chinavasion and waited tracking it to europe.
And can say I'm most pleased with access to most of the Google apps, and surprisingly having a Sony E-reader I found most use out of the Kindle app.
Thank you for the nod towards a cheap (admittedly slow) usable convenient size/weight Tablet
From my experience with these tablets, I've found the built in memory/ROM is usually an internal TF card and the actual device memory is more like 128MB. So you have the Internal memory, the Internal SD card, and then any card you put in will be an External SD.
Like the cameras you've reviewed, I've found the video can play quite differently depending on what storage you are using. The HD movie clip might have been on the tiny Internal device memory, while the internal MicroSD card was probably very slow and poor, causing jerky playback of anything on it.
Though this device is quite anaemic in the RAM/processor department, so it may just be that. But when I first got mine, I found it a little confusing keeping track of which storage device was being used.
First of all thank you for all your great video's, im watching them al with great joy!
Im wondering or you can do a revieuw of something like a 'Rikomagic MK802 II' (or other a brand) and then with a remote (keyboard / fly mouse), this product make from a regular tv a computer (android or linux) and i think many people will be intrest cause it is mutch cheaper then a computer and even cheaper then a cheap ass tablet, this android dongles cost around 40 pounds (and upwards), there are many diffrent brands with different specs and different prices, im wondering (and i think with me many more people do wonder) how good it is, cause it sounds a bit to good..
again thanks for all great revieuws!
Cheers!