My wife had been dropping hints some some time about having a tablet of her own. Not wishing to blow upwards of a couple of hundred quid right now, I’d been looking at cheaper options. The device would mainly be used for email, Facebook and a bit of web browsing, with a relatively modest number of apps installed, so we she wouldn’t be placing massive demands on the OS and resources.
Could something sub-£100 be any good? I was looking on the Argos website for two reasons. Firstly, they’re consumer-oriented and secondly, the chances of getting a dodgy import are small. There are downsides to this approach, though. A lot of the specs are really quite low and the really good offers turn out to be out of stock. I regard 16gb of RAM as pretty much essential and most cheap offerings are only 8gb. You can expand the pool with an sd card, but apps really need to be in the main storage, imho, and there will also be system files and caches that fill the space up.
Then I found an Acer Iconia 7” with £20 off, and it was actually in stock. At £50, you can’t go wrong and I took the plunge. We’ve only had it a few days, but I’ve been very impressed. Out of the box, about 12gb of storage is available. It uses the Google launcher and comes with commendably little bloatware – what there is seems to be Acer’s duplication of things like Google docs (which is downright perverse!), which are, quelle surprise, non-uninstallable. Not having Facebook burnt indelibly in was a pleasant surprise – though it was one of the apps I installed.
There’s no GPS and only 1gb of RAM, but we’ve still only populated about half the storage. The camera is rubbish (what do you expect for £50 and on a tablet at that?), so there won’t be hundreds of photos and my wife isn’t a heavy music downloader, so there are two space-eaters out of the equation. The screen isn’t the highest resolution – newspaper apps are perfectly readable, but you can see the rough edges. Again, not a major issue and also fine for quick looks at imported photos. Most importantly, Google Play is supported, so there’s access to all Android apps.
As with all technologies, things mature. Software updates are increasingly cosmetic (though security can be a consideration too). The thing is running Android 5.0.1 with no sign of updates. That’s fine and there are no major features that are conspicuous by their absence. It’s a bit like cameras, CD and DVD players. The hardware has stabilised and parts and manufacturing are known quantities. The first portable CD player I bought cost £150 (and had a battery life of one disc!). The last was about a tenner.
So, I can’t speak for every cheapo device out there, but the answer to the question in the title is (so far): Yes, as long as you buy carefully.
and I've always been impressed with the quality of workmanship, ios and suppprt from Apple. Unfortunately they are and imo always have been way over priced 
