Archos is supposedly releasing a "premium" line in the summer with pricing expected (by pundits) to remain in the $300 to $400 range for a 10 inch tablet with Honeycomd (Android 3.x), a 1.6Ghz dual core processor and 3G capability. Some have suggested that they may even offer PixelQi screens on this line. It will be interesting to see if Archos (finally) lives up to its potential. They were first out of the gate with an Android tablet (the Archos 5IT) that was well executed, though plagued by FW problems for months after its release (a secondary concern is that while the hardware is capable, thus far Archos has yet to release FW for it based on Android 2.x, which is problematic because app developers are dropping support for Android 1.6 weekly. This SUCKS given that the A5 IT was @400 when released just 18 months ago AND when you consider that Android 2.2 has been out since the summer of 2010). Their next (current) generation of tablets offfered a lot of value for the asking price, but are plagued by build quality issues, poor implementation of key features (HDMI out, for example), and hardware problems - the cameras suck, for example, and the screens vary from model to model WRT quality. They've also hobbled all the current generation of tablets with inadequate RAM (128-256MB) and ridiculously small system storage allowances (230MB) - when you've got a minimum of 8GB of onboard storage, why allocate only 230MB for applications? Anyway, if Archos overcomes the quality control issue and includes a reasonable amount of RAM to backup that awesome CPU along with realistic system storage space, they may have something worth considering.
Further, Samsung has just released their pricing on the
Galaxy Tab II and it is VERY competitive for both the wi-fi only and 3G versions. Of course, this is relative...
Anyway, my point is that the competition is heating up and we should see much more competitively priced option in the second half of 2011.