Lenovo Announces a $199 Ideapad tablet

Pricing pressure in the tablet market will jump as Lenovo is readying a $199 entry-level tablet for the U.S. market.

ZoomThe Ideapad A1 is not especially thin (0.5 inches) or light (0.88 pounds), but it scores big with a low price tag that includes a capacitive touchscreen. There have been $200-and-below and even $100-and-below Android tablets before, but they came with rather inconvenient resistive touchscreens.

It's not the fire sale opportunity the HP Touchpad was (and still may be when HP brings the tablet back), but $199 is still much more accessible than the average $499-$599-$699 Android tablet on the market today and it comes with an app market that isn't dead. More consumers may be willing to try such a tablet for $200 than for $500.

When it becomes available later this month, the 7-inch (1024x600 pixel) A1 will include 8 GB of memory (expandable via an SDHC slot) and Android 2.3. Don't expect dramatic hardware features -- the A1 will be based on an older ARM single core Cortex-A8 design. So it is unlikely that the tablet is upgradeable to Android 3.1. Still, for $200, it's hard to complain.