Either you lead or follow and Chinese manufacturing houses have been chasing Apple’s designs for years. The iPad is just their latest victim. You can’t blame them, really. It’s the hottest device since the rotary phone.
We’ve seen a steady stream of clones flowing onto the web for months. Here’s the seven best starting with the just-found iPed.
iPed
The iPed is the latest iPad clone to hit the scene. It packs the usual Android build into a casing that looks a lot like the real thing. It even ships in a box that’s nearly a photocopy of the iPad’s retail box besides the iPod label is replaced with iPed. Sneaky.
inPad
The Inkia inPad is clearly an iPad clone. But while it might look the part, it probably won’t be the same with only a 600Mhz CPU and either 128MB and 256MB of RAM powering the Android 2.1 build. At least it has 2 USB ports, though.
LifesPad
Make no mistake, while the LifesPad might not have the sterotypical iPad casing, it’s still an iPad clone. But at least there’s some higher-end hardware powering the device: 1Ghz Freescale CPU, 512MB of DDR2 RAM, 3G modem, and Android 2.1. Not bad, eh?
Meizu Mbook
Meizu is the original iDevice cloner. Their tricks first started way back when the original iPhone launched and they fired up the photocopiers again for the iPad. The Mbook packs an unknown 1.5GHz CPU, WiFi, 3G, GPS, and an 8.4-inch screen all in a casing clearly inspired by the iPad.
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Android 2.1, 1Ghz ARM Cortex-A8 CPU, 512MB of RAM, and a 10-inch display. You would think all that tech would be enough to grant the clone a proper name right?
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Take the iPad, replace the silver styling with white and add a slide-out keyboard that can double as a stand. It looks like it runs Windows 7, too. Not too shabby.
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This knockoff is a bit rough and oddly-shapped. It still might sell by the dozens in Chinese markets, though. The 7-inch tablet does have an 800Mhz ARM11 CPU along with 2GB of flash memory. That’s more than enough to run the Windows CE 6.0 OS.