Zen Ultratab A700 3G: Cheapest Tablet with 3G SIM

Budget tablets in the range of 6-10k with 3G support are not unusual anymore. But they all give 3G through a USB dongle, which means further expense and an extra investment of 2-3k. It may not shatter everyone's budget but a USB dongle sticking out all the time from your compact tablet can be irksome. Besides Swipe Halo Tab X74s, Zen A700 3G is the only other tablet below 10k, which runs 3G through a SIM. Aakash 2 which claims to have a 3G SIM version, isn't available yet.

A700 is a compact and light (360g) 7-inch tablet with multiple ports/slots, neatly arranged in one side, including external SIM slot, micro SD slot, HDMI, mini USB, and headphone slots. There is a decent 1.3MP front camera for calling and video chats. The speaker sound is decent but we enjoyed our content more with a headset. The device is good for moderate gaming, running Android based educative/entertainment apps available on Google Play, HD video playback, video chatting and some web browsing.

It's not very powerful and seems slack at times, but the touch response is by and large good. The display reflects a lot, especially when viewed from wide angles. A slightly superior RAM or processor instead of the current single core 1.2 Ghz processor and 512MB RAM would have been better. The tab has 4GB internal memory and can be pushed upto 32GB with a micro SD. It has the latest Android 4.0, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and a decent battery back-up of upto 4 hours after regular video playback.

Bottomline: For those who want a decent 3G tablet, this Zen A700 3G is a decent buy. You can also look at Swipe Halo X74S, as it offers 1GB RAM, a secondary camera and 1.5GHz dual core processor.