Skip to main content

What to look for when you're shopping for TABLETS this season.

In this day and age everyone is plugged in. What if I told you there is a great site where you could find unique electronic gifts for everyone on your shopping list during this Holiday Season, and all at great discounts? Would that get your attention?

Well if it did, I'd love to introduce you to one of my favorite sites, nomorerack.com. NoMoreRack is a site I do a lot of my electronics shopping on these days, due to the incredible savings, up to 90% off!!! But they have lots of other things too, jewelry, clothes, shoes, bedding, cutlery, wallets, and the list goes on... all at ridiculously discounted prices! So if electronics aren't on your list, you may still be able to utilize their wonderful discounts, and I recommend you go check them out! They even have great gift guides to help you find gifts if you are in a gift giving rut this holiday.

I'm going to be writing a collection of posts on great electronic gifts to give this season, and today I'm starting with this guide to getting the right 7" Tablet!

7" Tablets- Compact but get the job done!

Nomorerack.com has great tablets for everyone, to fit every budget, and in every size and color you can imagine!

The fastest, newest, and, in my opinion, best, 7" tablet for the price, is the Google Android 4.2 (Jelly Bean) Dual-Core MID 1.6 GHz 8GB Tablet, pictured below.

If none of that jargon means anything to you don't worry. I'm going to break it all down and compare it to some other 7" tablets you may be more familiar with: the Kindle Fire HD 16GB, the Barns & Noble NOOK HD 8GB, and the Samsung Galaxy 3 Tab 8GB.

Price: Lets find the best bang for your buck!

Google MID: $74, and comes with everything show above!
Kindle Fire HD (16GB): $129.91 (after $70.08 instant savings from Office Depot- no longer in stock)
B&N NOOK HD: $119
Samsung Galaxy 3 Tab: $179.99

Memory: The more GB for the price, the better!

The MID has 8GB of internal memory and is expandable to 32GB, the Galaxy also has 8GB, but it is expandable to 64 GB, which means both of these tablets offer an amazing amount of memory for music, pictures, movies, apps, etc., but you will have to spend another $16+ to get the extra memory (depending on how much you want).  From what I can tell the NOOK (8GB) and Kindle (16GB) are not expandable, so you are stuck with what you get. Also, you want to remember that the operating system (android market) generally takes up about 2GB of that initial memory, so you will have to subtract that from what they say you have (they try to trick you).

Processing speed: The more GHz the faster the tablet will run!

Kindle Fire HD and Galaxy 3 Tab have a processing speed of 1.2 GHz and the Nook HD is 1.3 GHz, which are all decent speeds in the tablet market, however the MID is considerably faster than each of its competitors at 1.6GHz. This means you can expect that it will transition from screen to screen more smoothly, and movies/ games will run much better on the MID.

Operating System: This one gets a little complicated...

Nook HD runs Android 4.0, which is one of the older Android operating systems. Kindle Fire HD runs Android 4.0.3 (Ice Cream Sandwich) which is an updated version of the 4.0 that the Nook runs. Galaxy 3 Tab runs 4.1.2 (Jelly Bean), and the MID runs Android 4.2, which is an updated version of the Jelly Bean OS...

So what the heck does all that mean? Well, with each OS update/ upgrade there are obviously going to be improvements to the running of Android, Android processes, and Android apps, but that's not the only thing you need to think about... How many times have you gone on your phone to download an app and not been able to because it wasn't compatible? Well most likely that was because your OS was not new enough, and was thus not compatible with the newer apps.  So, when shelling out the dough for a new tablet you want to make sure the OS is up-to-date so you know your tablet will be able to keep up.

My conclusion is that I wouldn't buy a Kindle Fire HD or B&N NOOK HD for anyone who's going to be using it for things other than reading and checking e-mail. They may have brand recognition and commercials on TV, but they just don't stack up! The Samsung Galaxy 3 Tab is pretty good, but at more than twice the price of the Google MID the only thing that's better is that it can expand to 64GB rather than the 32GB, the processing speed is slower, and it's running an older OS. So I think the best bet is to register on nomorerack.com (you and I will both get $10 to spend, YAY!) and check out the Google MID yourself! Registering is really easy, you can choose to just use your facebook account if you want, or if you'd rather check out their site and register later, you can do that too!


Great for kids: 
If you are looking for something for younger children and you don't need it to be the fastest tablet in the world, the 7" iRola MID Google Android 4.2 (Jelly Bean) 1.2 GHz 4GB (expandable to 32GB), pictured above, is only $59.00 and comes in 12 unique colors.

Or for $69.00 you can get the 7" Google Android 4.1 OS 1.2 GHz 4GB Tablet (expandable to 32GB) with a usb keyboard case and matching stylus included (pictured below). That one comes in Pink, Black, Orange, White, Purple, or Blue.


I hope this helps you in all your tablet shopping endeavors this holiday season... Also, check out my 9' tablet comps here, and  10.1" tablet shopping guide
Happy Holidays! ~ Megan

Comments

  1. Where can you get covers for the no more rack ones?

    ReplyDelete
  2. They come with the cover. Makes it a even better deal

    ReplyDelete
  3. Some of them do come with covers... the ones that don't you can generally find covers on nomorerack for about $14 (and those are the USB keyboard kind, which I believe they have for every screen size that they sell... and most of the tablets have 2+ USB ports so dont worry about taking up your USB port with a keyboard) IF you don't want that kind, you can look... They sell them by the screen size, so you can probably go to walmart, or wherever you like to shop, and find one you like.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Megan,
    You are making a bad assumption about CPU speeds in this review. In order to make a fair comparison, you would have to compare CPU types, number of cores, etc. CPU speed is not indicative of a faster processor, unless the processors are all of the same architecture.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Yes Bob, that is true, thanks for pointing that out... All of the comparison tablets in this post have dual-core processors (except I'm not sure about the NOOK), also, I've interacted with these tablets and based on that, I find the NOOK and Kindle best suited for those who are not expecting a lot of work out of a tablet - mostly reading/ checking e-mails. I am a huge samsung fan, I love their products but when it comes down to price, you get more for your money with the Google MID that was discussed in this post. Hope that clears things up :)

    ReplyDelete
  6. Hi, This has been really helpful. Looking into the Google Mid on Nomorerack it doesn't say it has a micro usb port to use a flash drive with. Do you know if you can use the charging port to use a usb flash drive? the samsung has that feature. Tthe riola has the micro usb but I'd like the better table if possible. Also, the Mid looks thick. Is it thicker than an iphone?

    ReplyDelete
  7. Do these have google market to download other apps? I see it has pre-downloaded games and apps..

    ReplyDelete
  8. What about picture quality? I almost picked up a $98 tablet for my daughter at Sam's club but when compared to the Samsung the quality was terrible. Not that I need anything sharp and beautiful but the quality was like comparing apples to oranges. The Samsung was by far nicer.

    ReplyDelete
  9. This review was quite helpful, but I do have a couple questions.
    1. What Apps does this tablet support? anything like Netflix?
    2. Does it also have Google play store or another app store?

    ReplyDelete
  10. Yes, im curious about the same. Do these have google play?

    ReplyDelete
  11. I would like to now if any of the shock proof protective cases will fit this tablet? I am worried about my Grandchildren breaking the screen.

    ReplyDelete
  12. These tablets do come with Google Play store so you can download any apps you want. Apps like Netflix are generally compatible with tablets running Android 4.0 or higher, so you shouldn't have a problem with running those type of apps on these tablets.

    The screen quality may not be as great as the Samsung, but it's close. They are not that big, you can compare the size and weight on nomorerack.

    Some of the Google MID tablets have microUSB ports for expanding the memory, but they also have multiple USB ports.

    You can find protective cases for these tablets, actually most of them come with them, and keyboards. Hope that helps!

    ReplyDelete
  13. These tablets are complete CRAP! My sister n law bought both my kids one for Christmas and they barely used them becuz awful. Very slow an locks up wont charge or hold charges. The charger that came with it will not charge. My daughter cant even get on app store and we have wifi..ahe can get on youtube. Makes no since. I factory reset an now there is no options just a blank screen!!! My sister also got one same brand same company hers is already broken too

    ReplyDelete
  14. Really? Man, it just sinks when things don't work the way you expect them to! The good news is that most of these tablets come with a 1 year warranty, so if you are having issues, you can always send them back to the manufacturer.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Aspira Pura - Pure Joy Bottled

I had the great joy of randomly bumping into this company on Instagram, where they offered to send me a few free bottles of their water to see how I liked it.  I must say I absolutely love it, it's like pure joy bottled!  Aspira Pura is an amazingly crisp water that I just couldn't get enough of. Which is most likely due to the reverse osmosis process that adds the minerals and electrolytes, which regular purified water doesn't have, including Calcium Chloride, Potassium Bicarbonate, and Magnesium Chloride.  Another great feature of Aspira Pura is the bottles, which are BPA free. I've found through trial and error that this means that even when they are shipped in the heat your water won't get that plastic taste... if you drink cheap Wal-mart water you know what I'm talking about.  Depending where you look, this water will run you about the same price / mL as Icelandic Glacial or LIFEWTR, but that's because you're getting the same great minerals, electr

SoloLearn - Learn Coding at your own pace

This was my first assignment in HTML at SoloLearn (there was more but it didn't pertain to anything realistic so I took those parts out): Learning To Code Hey! I'm Megan . I'm learning to code so I can develop websites and improve my blog. I learned it all at SoloLearn where they build your self-esteem and keep you motivated. My Skills HTML JavaScript C++ Python Follow Me

VigLink - for my bloggers!

VigLink is a way for blogs to make money, especially when google is messing up your AdSense (like they're doing to me for some reason). From what I understand they create hyperlinks on thing within your blog that you have talked about, but may not have thought to link to the company's site, because maybe they weren't your main focus. Then they give you $ for the traffic that those links (and some that you have already made) get.  In 2015 I made over $700 with VigLink, mainly due to a few of my Christmas shopping posts.  So they are totally legit! And you can make way more money than with AdSense (or at least I have in the past). Plus you can use both at the same time, so you can earn money from VigLink's links and from the ads that AdSense puts up. Win - Win!