I have not been paying any attention to the bottom end of the market for smartphones and tablets of whatever OS. But an email from one of the many on-line sellers today has fair knocked me sideways. A 7" Android tablet, updatable to Honeycomb 3.0 for £132? Can they be serious?

Good timing for a stocking filler maybe?

The Etab 7 Inch Tablet Android 2.2 with 1GHz CPU 512MB DDR3 WIFI is what I am talking about here. It is nothing extraordinary, with a 7" Capacitive Multi-touch 800 x 400 Display and 4GB of internal storage. It does support microSD to 32GB so its not all bad. This is, by today's standards, an entry level device. But its not a bad one by any means. Particularly with Honeycomb support.

I did look around XDA and elsewhere for independent support, but there does not appear to be any. This device is actually the Haipad M7, there are a few YouTube videos, one from the manufacturer in torturous Chinglish (turn the audio down). So anyone buying one is pretty much into the what-you-see-is-what-you-get territory. There do not appear to be any ROMs as such to play with.

But that aside, you're getting Android 3.0, with the full set of Google apps, including Android Market. So there is a lot of capability on offer. With its built-in WiFi and a 3G-friendly contract this could be used for all manner of mobile purposes such as in-car Sat Nav using Google Navigator, for instance.

For £132 you're getting a fairly powerful bit of kit. Not bad at all if the want/need is there.

NB: The above link is what I think is the cheapest price available right now. That website also has a link to the Android 3.0 update file. If for any reason you cannot access that link I do have a copy of it that I could make available via DropBox or suchlike.