[HH] [Slightly OT] Recommendations for an ultra-cheap Android tablet?

[Shankar Viswanathan]

Just wanted to update this thread with what I ended up doing. After reading
several reviews on the off-brand tablets, I decided not to get any of them.
The reviews were mixed and I didn't want to risk spending $100 and end up
with a paperweight. I was tempted to get the base Kindle Fire after Amazon
dropped the price to $159, but that was still higher than what I wanted to
pay.

A few weeks ago, a coworker pointed out that Barnes and Noble was dumping
old Nook Colors on Ebay for ~$75. I had just read that the good folks at
CyanogenMod had ported CM10 (based on Android 4.1 Jellybean) to the Nook
Color. So I ordered one and promptly rooted it and installed the CM10
nightlies via a microSD card. My first attempt didn't go so well, the
performance was really bad and sometimes had trouble even booting up. The
culprit turned out to be the microSD card I was using - a class 4 card
pulled from my wife's old cellphone. The forums suggested using a class 6
Sandisk card - a quick trip to Staples, and an hour later I had a perfectly
usable tablet. The tablet boots completely off the SD card and removing the
card from the slot makes it boot into the stock Nook Color environment.

The UI is not as snappy on the hacked Nook as it is on the Nexus7 (quite
understandable given the considerable hardware differences), but is
adequately responsive. Youtube videos sometime stutter when in HD, but 480p
and lower streams play without any issues. The other preschool apps and
simple games also work without any hiccups. And yes, Angry Birds works too
:-)  Battery life seems ok for average use, although I haven't done any
real measurements. So far, the Nook Color has met all the 'must have'
criteria in my original list, including full access to Google Play apps. It
has no camera (and as far as I can tell, no microphone either), so Skype is
obviously out of the question. It also does not have any HDMI out. The
"drop test" results are not yet known (thankfully!). So, barring those, it
seems to meet my other 'nice to have' criteria as well. All this for ~$100,
including the microSD card and a basic case (a $50 Otterbox case seemed
overkill for a $75 device).

My son has been using it for a couple of weeks now (late Diwali / early
Christmas gift), and was very excited to have his "own" tablet, even though
he is still limited to < 1 hr usage per day. I have another class 6 Sandisk
microSD card that I can use for trying out other ROMs or doing some hacking
of my own.

Happy son & happy dad (at least so far)!
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