By The good souls at NVIDIA have finally officially announced the Tegra Note, a reference platform tablet that will be used to show off the Tegra 4 platform and can be used by OEMs to create Tegra 4 tablets for as little as $200.
With the Tegra Note platform, NVIDIA partners can quickly bring 7-inch tablets to market, that pack awesome features – such as Tegra 4, a superb stylus, exceptional audio, HDR camera, 100% Android, and great gaming.
After being rumored for so long, this reference tablet is finally available. So what does this mean for you? Well, not much at the immediate moment. Let’s take a quick look at the base specs that will allow manufacturers to bring Tegra 4 tablets to use for the attractive price mentioned above:
- Tegra 4 Cortex-A15 with 72-core GeForce GPU
- 7-inch 1280 x 800 display
- 5 megapixel rear camera w/ VGA front camera
- 16GB of storage with a microSD card slot
- Front-facing “HD audio” stereo speakers
- A Stylus with tips for chiseling and brushing
- microHDMI
- Full stock Android (latest version)
- Over-the-air software updates from NVIDIA
- 10 hours of battery
This is not something you can go out and buy, but it’s something that will allow NVIDIA’s manufacturing partners to bring you the tablets you’re looking for. Some of these partners include EVGA and PNY Technologies in North America; EVGA, Oysters, and ZOTAC in Europe; Colorful, GIGABYTE, Shenzhen Homecare Technology and ZOTAC in Asia-Pacific; and XOLO in India.
Does this mean all the Tegra Note-based tablets from all these OEMs will cost exactly $200? Not exactly, but it does ensure that we’ll be seeing a lot of low-cost options in the very near future.
NVIDIA has no doubt had a tough time getting Tegra 4 to catch on with stiff competition from Qualcomm’s Snapdragon line being most manufacturers’ go-to chipset. NVIDIA is trying, though, with products from ASUS, HP, Toshiba and Kobo already announced and available (not to mention their own NVIDIA SHIELD gaming handheld, one which we reviewed not too long ago).
Will any of you look to snap one of these up if someone decides to bring out something decent?
It would need a spen-like accuracy for me to get one.
Spen-like accuracy would mean Spen-like price, it is not cheap to license Wacom tech.
i wonder if the quality is any good.
last tablet i had that was based on an nvidia reference model(tegra 2) was mostly very bad.
its only redeeming qualities where price, and raw power.(about twice the power of an original galaxy tab, for half the price)
Drop the stylus, bump it up to 32GB internal storage, add a decent rear camera and release it with a 1080P 8″ screen and I’m *SOLD*. As it is right now, this thing is gonna straddle an uncomfortable line between the new Nexus 7, the old Nexus 7 (720p), the Shield and the oodles of budget Android 7″ tablets out there. Moving up to 8″ or something like 8.9″ or so would instantly put it in a category with a LOT less competition. Right now, Samsung’s got the market sewn up for “quality” 8″ tablets with the Note 8 and Tab 3 8″ and neither one of them are exactly touting world-beating specs.
It really needed to be 1080p. With it’s supposedly powerful GPU, it should be able to fill that many pixels with ease compared to their tablets. They short changed themselves.
yeah but its hard to complain about a $200 tablet with a stylus and an a-15 processor
Yes, but it is harder to complain about one with 1080p for $230 with nearly endless developer support.
this is true, but with the lack of stylus it doesn’t have the entire market. This would slot in just fine when the next cheapest stylus tab is $400.
I’m extremely reticent to purchase anything with an NVIDIA chipset after the terrible performance I encountered with my TF201. I would almost prefer a MediaTek processor over an NVIDIA chipset – I picked up a BLU Life Play for my father and it’s much smoother than any Tegra-based device I’ve used.
That wasn’t all Nvidia’s fault. Yeah the Tegra is sketchy compared to Qualcomm’s S4 pro and above but Asus had some part in that.
You sure those issues weren’t due to ICS not supporting TRIM by default?
Too bad it’s just another capacitative stylus =(
It is pressure sensitive, as demonstrated in the Computex demo. However, how good it is is TBD, but it is not $379 like Samsung’s closest model. This could really change the landscape for the educational market and similar, as they don’t have any cost effective way of writing on a tablet today.
This would be great. We need some good healthy competition to the Note (I own a Note 2). I love the stylus functionality and have been using it since Palm. Maybe this will make Samsung get on their game with the software updates. I’ve been waiting for my N2 to be updated since the release of the S4, still nothing.
To me the ultimate tablet would have tightly integrated keyboard/docking, like the transformer (I own a Transformer Prime) AND a stylus with lots of functionality – like we’re seeing with the new Note 3.
Once (if ever) the Nexus line of phones and tablets come out with an integrated stylus – Samsung is definitely going to have to get on the ball with the updates.
Another series of Android tablets to launch this week use Intel’s new Clover Trail processor and offer impressive performance for a mid-range device that outperforms many tablets with quad-core processors…
Ramos Technology has partnered with Intel to introduce the i-Series with 8″, 9″, 10″ and 12″ models– all feature HD displays and GPS —
Intel’s new processor with Hyper Threading technology runs four threads simultaneously and outscores many mainstream quad-core tablets in benchmark testing.
The most compact model is the i-8($199) with an ultra-sleek design and is the world’s thinnest 8″ tablet and features a 7.9-inch HD screen, similar in size to the mini iPad – and almost as compact and easy to carry as a 7″ tablet, but with 40% more screen space, which makes viewing tablet content much easier – and the new i-8 matches most features of the Nexus 7 — including GPS – plus MicroSD storage…
More about the new Ramos i-Series a t- -Tab l e t Sp r i nt–
I don’t really care about the screen (even the OG Nexus 7 looks fine to me), but how much RAM does this thing have?
if it had the res of the new n7…id buy this over the n7…i love the look of their design and i want it…would be a perfect tablet google shoulda went with nvidia then qualcom