Editorials
Bad Black Friday Buy: Mach Speed X-Treme $39 Tablet at Sears & Kmart
Black Friday is known for great deals, but there are some bad Black Friday deals like the Mach Speed X-Treme $39 tablet at Sears and Kmart.
Typically the worst Black Friday buys are found at CVS or Big Lots, but not to be outdone, Kmart and Sears are trying to sell the X-treme Tab 7″ tablet with Android 4.0 to Black Friday shoppers for $39.
While a $39 Android 4.0 tablet sounds like a great deal, the Mach Speed tablet is a purchase shoppers should avoid. There are many reasons to skip this tablet, especially for shoppers who might think they’ve stumbled on to the tablet gift of the season.
The Mach Speed X-Treme $39 Tablet is a bad Black Friday 2012 buy.
Not everyone needs an iPad or a top of the line Android tablet, nor can they afford one, but that doesn’t mean they should settle for an extremely outdated tablet without access to the Google Play Store.
The details on the Mach Speed X-Treme $39 Tablet on sale for Black Friday 2012 are scarce, but we do know that it is uses a resistive touch screen. While modern devices use a capacitive touch screen that response easily to the lightest touch, a capacitive screen requires a stylus or an actual push on the display to register a touch. Most modern smartphones and tablets use a capacitive touch screen, but if you’ve ever used an old smartphone you may know the pain of a resistive touch screen.
The video below highlights the difference, and should show users why they will appreciate a capacitive touchscreen.
The Tablet Mach Speed X-Treme $39 Tablet includes a MicroSD card slot to increase storage from the 2GB included, which is a nice touch and the tablet offers WiFi connectivity.
It’s unclear if this model is able to access the Google Play Store for apps and movies, but it is unlikely that support is available right out of the box. Some users report success installing Google Play on other Mach Speed tablets, so it may be possible for users with the know how.
In general the cheapest Android tablets offer a bad user experience for most shoppers. Common complaints from owners of past cheap Black Friday tablets are poor screen resolution, bad access to apps and quirks like the need to hard reset the tablet to get WiFI working on a regular basis.
Shoppers would be better off looking for name brand Android Tablet Black Friday 2012 deals or at the very least, spending a little more for a Black Friday tablet with a capacitive touch screen.
KenHFL10
11/20/2012 at 9:29 pm
There’s a Brand New Series of Price-Perfermance Android Tablet available at a site called TabletSprint — with all models having launched in November and made by Ainol Electronics, which received a “Best Tablet of the Year” award at CNET Consumer Electronics Show 2012 – Two models feature 10-inch displays with high resolution screens; The Novo 10 Hero includes a powerful Dual Core CPU and a 1280×800 display for $225; and a similar model The Novo 10 Captain offers Quad Core CPU and a 1920×1200 Liquid Crystal display (like Apple’s Retina screen) for $275 (Nearly 1/2 the price of an iPad & Surface with comparable freatures). All provide pretty nice specs and pricing — There’s also a new 7 inch tablet, The Novo 7 Flame for $189, that has many more features than the Nexus 7 and offers a 1280×800 High Resolution screen, Dual Core CPU, 32GB Memory, MicroSD portable storage, an HDMI connection to your TV with full 1080p (HD) that’s great for movie downloads; Two Cameras – a 5 MegaPixel camera with video recording and AF and Flash and a 2 MegaPixel Webcam; Plus Bluetooth, Ethernet, WiFi and an option for 3G… Ainol electronics has also introduced the world’s first quality – “$100 tablet” — the Novo 7 Legend launched last week, and has many of the same features as the Novo 7 Flame — TabletSprint also offers with each tablet, a nice perk, with a FREE 3G/4G 500MB monthly data plan with full internet access/VoIP calling in the U.S. — visit their site for more details —
jesse smith
11/26/2012 at 12:56 pm
Fant install play store on mach speed xtreme 7. Please help 9105159549 or [email protected]
cagedalarm
01/23/2013 at 9:30 pm
You can use the Amazon Android App store and be set. Google isn’t the only source.
Charlotte Booth
02/14/2013 at 8:47 am
That’s right, I got the Amazon App store and it works great. Lots of free Apps.
timothymbutterworth
01/11/2014 at 9:52 am
I have one of these. I have been relatively unhappy with it. I am looking to swap out Android with Kail, openSUSE ARM or Fedora ARM on it.
This device does not work with Google Play at all and Google will not support installing it. I was able to get the old Android Market to install and work. It locks up constantly and generally is not worth buying. Amazon App store is not Google Play and will hopefully just go away like all the other third party app stores as Google needs to do a consolidation.
If you install two or three app Repos on this devices the performance will decrease to unusable. Downloading also locks up the device to an unusable state.
The 512mb of RAM is one of the worst aspects of it along with the poor wireless performance. My cheap prepaid Verizion cell phone out performs it with Android 2.3.
It may work decently as a Linux developer device though.
The screen is horrible for input, slow lags and has all sorts of problems.