get a used ipad
I have an Acer Iconia A200 that’s worked real well. It’s currently listed on Amazon for $279.98 but I’ve seen it as low as $249. I don’t know if this would meet your needs or not.
I totally love my Nexus 7.
good question - sister has a $700 IPAD but refurbished Android tablets can be had for under a hundred
Running an Acer a500 three-ish years now. Still has 4.0.3 android, but works well enough for generic interwebbiage.
Newer device would support newer os.
YMMV
Running a RAMOS knockoff tablet. Half the price of a Galaxy, third of the price of an Ipad.
Android 4.2.2
http://www.ramos-tablet.com/
It’s buying straight from China, but they’re all made there anyway. . .
There are a bunch of online companies that sell really inexpensive tablets which aren’t from major brands. I’ve seen them for under $100.
Of course, most also sell name brands you know as well.
I got lucky. I opened a new account with Compass Bank and got a Samsung Note 3 for free. But I think that’s no longer available.
Asus Transformer. Good deals to be had. I just picked one up WITH the keyboard/docking station for $329. Less without the docking thingy. If you can deal with Android, it is a good tablet.
my wife wants a tablet that does wifi and phone. Is there such a beast?
I have an Insignia Flex 10.1 that I picked up at Best Buy(Insignia is a Best Buy house brand).
Paid $180 for it, which was about $100 less than any other tablet and they were mostly 7 inch. They usually run about $200. 16gig internal.
It works great. I have no complains about it at all.
Features:
It’s not an Apple Product. #1 in my book.
Mine runs Jellybean 4.2.2, but, it looks like Kitkat now.
It’s very light, easy to read (when the screen is clean) and has an hdmi port as well as a slot for SD memory (not included).
I use it to read books, for starcharts for astronomy, games, watching Mystery Science Theater 3000, and many other things.
I’d get another in a heartbeat.
Did I mention it wasn’t an Apple product?
ASUS makes a nice light laptop (I’m using it now), the Big Box store was running it for $250 at the time, now they have the next iteration (slight bump up of the processor speed) bundled with a printer for low to mid $300s.
I have a $99 TMax tablet (from the warehouse club), same CPU as some of the Samsungs but a quarter of the money; if you MUST get a tablet, it’ll work fine (I’d say go with the laptop). And I carry one of those roll-up silicon keyboards and plug it into the (included with the tablet) USB adapter instead of using the popup virtual keyboard. The pad senses if there’s a real keyboard present and doesn’t pop up the virtual.
Laptop vs pad, the laptop should always prevail in, ahem, my somewhat older demographic, because I can actually see what’s on the screen, also touchscreen interfaces are reminders of how quickly civilization can revert to sheer barbarism.
Good luck!
You could buy a 7” Nook tablet for $129.00. It runs a proprietary B&N version of Android and receives frequent updates to keep everything current. We like ours and sometimes use a bluetooth keyboard instead of the virtual keyboard.
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/p/nook-hd-barnes-noble/1110060426
Download the KingSoft Office suite free from Google Play and you are set to do some real work.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=cn.wps.moffice_eng