You don’t need to pay whatever Samsung expects you to pay for its Galaxy Tab to get an Android tablet. Not since Walgreens began offering a $100 model that runs Google’s popular OS.
What do you get for your one Benjamin? The Maylong M-150 comes with a 7-inch 800×480 touch-screen that’s resistive rather than capacitive, so no multi-touch. It sports a 400MHz VIA VM8505+ processor along with some amount of storage that Walgreens doesn’t reveal on its online product page. There’s built-in 802.11b/g, a microSD card slot, and a dongle for Ethernet or USB connections. According to product reviews on Walgreens’ site, a camera is also part of the specs, though it’s not mentioned in the product description.
The M-150 has Internet Explorer and YouTube as part of its app package, which also includes music, video, and image players/viewers. You can also download other apps, though the UI has an “app market” icon instead of the Android Market one. It most likely doesn’t include the latest version of Android, and it’s doubtful that you can upgrade the OS.
Also unknown is its battery life, and forget instant on: This video on Engadget shows the M-150 taking over a minute to boot up, and slow app loading in general. But the clip reveals the tablet being able to provide access to a remote Windows PC via an VNC app, so it’s not completely crippled.
Apparently, the $100 price tag has stoked interest in the M-150, as Walgreen’s product page shows the tablet already being sold out online and not available in stores. Once more come in stock, would you consider buying one? It may not be the ultimate tablet — far from it — but, if nothing else, it may do enough to keep your kids from borrowing your iPad all the time.
