Archos has an event lined up on the 23rd of June wherein the France based company is expected to launch a new breed of tablet PCs. In the meantime, though, the company’s budget line of Arnova tablets has already received a boost recently when Archos introduced the Arnova 7 and Arnova 84 range of tablet PCs. Also, one striking aspect of the Arnova 7 and Arnova 84 tablets is their throwaway prices, which means tablet computing can be within reach of an even lower strata of budgets.
We have already mentioned the budget Archos tablet sometime back, though we now have more details on the tablets. Archos has created the official product pages for the new tablets and, unbelievable as it might sound, the tag-line for the Arnova 7 is “a 7 inch tablet for $99 is possible.”
However, at that price, one shouldn’t be expecting all the bells and whistles that one might expect, and it comes as no surprise that the tablet is by no means a powerhouse. It doesn’t look all that bad on paper, though. So for $99, what you get is a 7 inch, 800 x 480 pixel resistive touch screen display, Android 2.2 Froyo, along with 4 GB of flash storage. The tablet can handle H.264 videos with resolutions up to 720p as well as MPEG-4 and RealVideo formats.
Further, the Arnova 7 also features a USB port, microSDHC card slot, and 802.11b/g WiFi. The tablet measures 7.6 x 4.7 x 0.5 inches and weighs a meagre 12 ounces.
The product page doesn’t say anything about the CPU, but we can safely say that the Arnova 7 doesn’t have a cutting edge dual core chip. But if you’re just looking for a cheap tablet to serve for your mobile computing needs such as surfing the web, reading e-books, watching videos, or playing a few games, the Arnova 7 does fit the bill quite admirably.
Another good aspect with the Arnova 7 is that Archos has made use of decent resistive touch panels for the tablet, which offer acceptable user experience. This since Android applications haven’t been designed for resistive touch screens as they work best with finger touch inputs rather than fingernail or stylus operations.
As for the bigger Arnova 84, the tablet features an 8.4 inch, 800 x 600 pixel display. On the OS front though its a bit of a letdown as the tablet runs Android 2.1 Eclair. The Arnova 84 will have similar storage, connectivity, and media capabilities, and measures 8.3 x 6.3 x 0.39 inches while weighing in at 1.3 pounds. There’s no word on pricing for the Arnova 84 as yet.
With a keen interest in tech, I make it a point to keep myself updated on the latest developments in technology and gadgets. That includes smartphones or tablet devices but stretches to even AI and self-driven automobiles, the latter being my latest fad. Besides writing, I like watching videos, reading, listening to music, or experimenting with different recipes. The motion picture is another aspect that interests me a lot, and I'll likely make a film sometime in the future.
