Hands On: Budget Android Tablet, Huawei S7 Slim

24.03.2011
There are great and , but where are the decent budget tablets? The answer could be Huawei's S7 Slim, an Android 2.2 OS 7-inch tablet shown here at CTIA. Tablet maker Huawei offers a bright spot among a sea of mediocre "value priced" tablets that I've seen with its S7 Slim offering.

I played around with the Huawei S7 Slim and am impressed. Huawei won't reveal availability or the exact pricing on what it calls a "value priced" tablet, so we'll have to trust that it's more affordable than leading tablets Xoom and iPad 2 priced above $500. Nevertheless, I spent some time with this tablet and here are my impressions.

Hands On, First Impression

The tablet has a white plastic body, but unlike the Apple iPad 2, the white is limited to the back and edges, only. You still get a black bezel around the display.

And that display is worth noting: It looked surprisingly good under the show floor's unforgiving lights; this even though it carries an unimpressive 800 by 480 pixel resolution. What caught my attention about the display was its bright, vivid colors and its wide viewing angle; other value tablets, I've seen (and even some that aren't considered "value" and have beefier screen specs) haven't looked this good. Even text looked better rendered and sharper than I'd have expected given the display's spec. Another noteworthy point: the 7-inch display has a 16:9 widescreen aspect ratio, which is well-suited to gaming.

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