Notebook Hunter

For $249 the Pendo Pad (also known as the Dodo Tablet) is not very good when compared to almost any other tablet currently available. Not all tablets have to be very high spec, but a resistive screen along with Android 2.1 does hamper the usability. Even among low-end tablets there are better options available, and most of the time they cost less as well.

A 7in resistive screen with a pixel resolution of 800x600 isn’t especially attractive, and neither is Android 2.1. Capacitive screens are much more responsive to use, and most modern tablets are using Android 3.0. Apart from these two unfortunate features, the low-end specs are otherwise very much excusable. The key features are a RockChip 2818 (1GHz) processor, 0.256GB of RAM and a 2GB flash drive for storage. If the storage is too small for you, which is likely, there is a Micro SD slot that can significantly expand storage.

Otherwise there are the features you’d hope for in a tablet, including a camera, microphone and speaker. No Bluetooth support was listed, but there is an audio jack, Mini USB 2.0 port and Mini USB 1.1 port. Inexpensive tablets have their place in the market, but for the time being the more expensive ones are dramatically better buys.