Recently, a tablet was displayed at the IFA and it caught a lot of attention because of its features and mainly because of the manufacturer. We are talking about none other than the Archos 101 G9 tablet, which is all set to go on sale. On first view, it is no different from the standard Galaxy Tab or iPad but there are some differences that might make this purchase worthwhile, the relatively reasonable $370 price tag being one of them.
The G9 features an impressive dual core processor clocked at 1GHz, which is quite sufficient and is supported by Android Honeycomb 2.3 that comes bundled with the standard Google applications. The screen as the name might have revealed is the normal 10.1”. The resolution is 1280×800, a little over 720p and the screen is all capacitive with no physical buttons to speak of. As with previous Archos screens, it does a great job of displaying crisp colours with superb contrast.
The unique thing about this tablet is that the camera on the front panel is capable of recording video at 720p. This is the primary camera of the tablet, in case you were expecting something bigger and better on the back. For $370, the base model comes in with 8GB memory, which is probably not enough to capture too much 720p video but there is a rumor that a 250GB variant that is going to be released soon. The base model surprisingly has HDMI out facility, which can be used for playing Android 3D games on a larger screen. The 250GB version is going to use a Seagate Momentum hard disk which is as good as an SSD for the data transfer rates in the offing.
This French tablet manufacturer looks good to take on the tablet market but only time can tell how effective it will be. It may just be able to match the Tab but the iPad is an entirely different story according to experts.
