When I think of tablets, I think of the usual suspects — Apple, Motorola, Asus, HTC, and the like. Viewsonic never really comes to mind, but that hasn’t stopped them from pushing out their own tablets and smartphones, and their VP of Business Development Mike Holstein joined us at CES to show us what the company has been up to.
First up on the agenda were two new Android tablets, the Viewpad 10e and the Viewpad e70. The bigger 10e sports a 10-inch IPS display and is surprisingly light, but it only runs Android 2.3 Gingerbread. Don’t expect to be blown away by its performance as it sports a single-core 1GHz Cortex A8 processor, but its $279 price aims to make up for it (whether or not it succeeds is up to you).
Despite being smaller, the E70 is arguably the more interesting of the two — it’s a 7-inch Ice Cream Sandwich-powered tablet that only costs $169. It’s no barnburner with its single-core 1GHz processor and 4GB of internal storage, but budget shoppers could do worse. That said, they could also do better for just a bit more, as the budget segment Viewsonic occupies is growing more crowded by the day.
And lest you think that Viewsonic is all about churning out low-cost tablets, Holstein also took a moment to trot out the Windows 7-powered Viewpad 10pi. It’s a far cry from their budget offerings at $849, but its Oak Trail processor, 64GB SSD, and its ability to boot into Android make it an intriguing (but iffy) option for companies looking to trick out their workforce.