ViewPad E70 Preview

Despite their relatively low price, ViewPad tablets never seem to impress us with exceptional performance. Even so, Viewsonic is fully committed to make an affordable tablet, which may interest people who don’t want to drop $499 for an iPad. The ViewPad E70 was displayed at the CES 2012; it was running Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) and it will be priced at $169. The E70 is powered by a 1GHz single-core processor of an unknown model and it uses a 7” display with 800×600 pixel resolution. Other than these specs, there’s nothing notable about the ViewPad E70. It feels underpowered and the 1GHz processor could be an older model, previously used on Android 2.x smartphones. The low resolution display doesn’t help user experience either, but ViewSonic asserted that the E70 is originally intended to be used as the second or the third tablet in the family. For an Android 4.0 tablet, the $169 price tag is not a bad thing, although the Novo7 is available for $99.

Overall, the ViewPad E70 is pretty much exactly what a customer wants from a low-cost tablet. The E70 runs the latest version of Android OS and although it is unresponsive and laggy at times, that’s to be expected from a very cheap tablet.