Walmart Debuts Three Sub-$100 Tablets With Google Services (bloomberg.com) 115
Walmart is rolling out three Android-powered tablets this week, all priced under $100. From a report: The devices, under Walmart's Onn store brand, include an 8-inch version for $64, a 10.1-inch model for $79 and one at the same larger size with a detachable keyboard for $99, the retailer said in an email Monday. All have Google's Android operating system, 16 gigabytes of storage and promise 5.5 hours of use before a charge is needed. The new gadgets are part of Walmart's broader push to revitalize its electronics section and, if successful, could provide a jolt to the sluggish tablet market, which declined in 2018, according to data tracker Strategy Analytics.
Walmart has a history of shitty in-store devices. (Score:5, Interesting)
They've even taken over classically good names and used those to push shit.
My dad contacted me in November or so for advice on a new, cheap tablet. I advised him to go to Best Buy and get a Fire, or Barnes and Noble for their Samsung answer to the Fire which was probably better.
He went to Walmart because it was closer and bought an RCA that cost a bit more than the other two.
Absolute shit.
It's sluggish, has a resisistive touch-screen with old-school shitty sharpness. RCA used to be a good brand, but the old RCA apparently doesn't exist anymore.
Walmart has some convincing to do before I'll buy their stuff. The Amazon stuff is no-name under the hood, but quality. The Barnes and Noble stuff is straight-up Samsung. Granted, the Amazon versions are handicapped and need hacking to get a good store and interface, but that's doable. If they want to beat quality, they had better have a lot more than price to go on when quality is available cheap.
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Gamers Nexus [youtube.com] did a nice review of these. The title of the video is "Walmart Gaming PC: How to Do Everything Wrong"
yes but this is not that pad (Score:2)
walmart is obviously planning to take a byte of the amazon apple. will need something competitive with kindle.
one thing that attracts me is it wont have the limitations of the silk browser
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On the other hand, find a non-smart 4k TV other than the 'Sceptre' Walmart housebrand.
Truth: Last I looked Fry's had the same TV (branded Silo) for a little more money.
It's not terrible, QC is shit, but if you get a bad one, just take it to the nearest store. Speakers suck, but they all do.
Re:Walmart has a history of shitty in-store device (Score:4, Interesting)
Anyone else on a crusade against WiFi?
I'm getting tired of shitty, unreliable connections becoming the norm. I put everything I possibly can on a wire, even my TV. I would turn my WiFi off all together if I didn't think my wife and teenager would revolt. I'm evening thinking about some sort of USB hub with Ethernet to charge my phone so I can turn off data and WiFi in the home and get faster app downloads while I sleep.
WiFi is great while I'm at a coffee shop or moving around at work, but if I'm not actively moving around it's an annoyance.
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I'm getting tired of shitty, unreliable connections becoming the norm.
Get a better wireless router.
Then you'll discover the weakest link in having a reliable connection is your broadband ISP.
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My wireless router is awesome. I've turned off the AC and sort of want to turn off the rest. That ASUS impresses me.
I've been part of an elected body that met at different places all over the state. WiFi was often overly relied on and underly available when we had our meetings at random hotel banquet halls and the like.
In apartment complexes, office parks, places where there's a lot of people together, WiFi quickly and easily turns to shit. I'm in a single-family dwelling, my WiFi works great, and I wan
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Wow that was some long play sarcasm there I'm impressed.
I was taking your serious until you said "ASUS" and "personally know someone who's sterile due to an encounter with transmitting equipment".
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The sterility thing is no-joke. It was military grade equipment, but what we're dealing with at home is weaker versions of the same.
The fact you gravitate toward Apple networking equipment doesn't weaken my RT-ACRH13.
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Well I'll admit I'm a data center NetOps guy for a major telco so I gravitate towards that type of hardware. Since I'm not going to pay for a Palo at home I'm currently running a Ras.Pi (BSD/pfsence) off of the AT&T gateway to a Ubiquiti EdgeRouter to three separated networks
Network 1: Wifi via Eero mesh network for laptops, xbox's, phones, etc = fairly easy to join and get internet while being somewhat secure.
Network 2: Fiber network connecting to Eero Pro's for TV's, set-top boxes (roku), desktops, e
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I'm in a rent-house, I asked my landlord if I could wire it up for Ethernet, he gave a very enthusiastic yes. I think I upped the value of the home.
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Nope I use modern equipment == wired TV/Setop-box's/AV/desktop's to a Eero Pro and then wireless to the main Pro to firewall then AT&T gateway. The XBox's, Sonus speakers, etc are completely wireless.
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How does that help with the shit unresponsive 'OS' that constantly crashes when you try and change channel/source?
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Where you been? We were thinking they locked you up in a padded room or something.
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You have posted you trademark insanity when logged in before drinkypoo. Everybody knows who you are.
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What kind of TV so that I may avoid that brand?
I've got a Vizio now, that was given to me. I'm pretty sure it will display HDMI input without a network signal. I'm looking to get a LG OLED one if I can get the cash scraped together (I avoid credit).
None of the TVs I worked with under previous employment had that issue (yes, as a tech I've worked with many more brands than I've owned), and it sounds like something that would sound every consumer protection alarm around. ("channels" are something I haven't
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On the other hand, find a non-smart 4k TV other than the 'Sceptre' Walmart housebrand.
All TVs are non-smart by default. The smart features only work if you explicitly enable them and enter your WiFi password.
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My parents have consistently been buying LG TVs for quite a few years - they have had need of a few, they how a lightning strike take out their first LCD, a hammer-handed oops when changing out a TV stand when changing out another. I think they're on three in a row.
I've known they were shit for a while, but my parents who, despite having set aside their hostility towards modern tech, still aren't tech junkies. They don't follow this sort of thing enough to know about every brand out there. Hell, I don't
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I like my 9 year old non-smart LG tv, still does what I want - which is mostly a monitor for the DVR and occasional live TV for sporting events.
RCA, Westinghouse, and Magnavox are just Licensed brands now, you can use them like a red flag to quickly rule out the ones that are junk.
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I think the most interesting part of the this conversation is LG.
LG stand for "Lucky Goldstar".
Lucky was a brand not sold in the U.S. but was the same stuff that was sold under the Goldstar name in the U.S.
Goldstar was one of those shitty, bought from Walmart, the button would fly off and leave a sharp piece of metal sticking up tape-decks that were cheap utter crap. I think it's amazing a shit-fest could turn itself around and become one of the most respected names on the market.
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The Koreans did a lot of that over the last 20 years, look at Kia and Hyundai, Kia was once the laughing stock of the industry, now they're rated higher than BMW for customer satisfaction and reliability in many surveys. I think they did that as a self-defense mechanism, there's no way they could compete with China in the race to the bottom so they had to move upmarket.
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I had a Hyundai Tiburon.
Good powertrain. The rest of the car was sort of crappy. It would outrun my old Celica in a quarter mile, and even at the top end when I first got it, but the Celica was a way, way better car. The bearings were going out on my back wheels causing tires to wear out quickly and not even taking it to Hyundai with money in my hand could get anyone to fix it.
I look at the Genesis and the Veloster and wonder if they would be worth having, since I've heard they're better now. I don't kn
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Yeah, my mixture of a piece of junk, and surprisingly good in other areas car was an 03. Got the shit-end of it.
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I have to slightly disagree. I purchased a 40in RCA for my parents. The picture quality is actually quite good. The speakers are basically useless but that is fixed by adding a soundbar.
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I didn't even know RCA made tablets
They don't. Some Chinese tablet-manufacturer licensed the name, and for a buck-a-tablet (or whatever) they get to slap "RCA" on their gadget and on the box.
Grandpas with fond memories of the Radio Corporation of America then buy the tablet, thinking it must be good.
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wasn't it one of the ones that actually died as its own company back in '09 or so?
Earlier than that...
From -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
In 1986, RCA was reacquired by General Electric, which over the next few years liquidated most of the corporation's assets. Today, RCA exists as a brand name only; the various RCA trademarks are currently owned by Sony Music Entertainment and Technicolor, which in turn license the brand name to several other companies including Voxx International, Curtis
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This article is particularly interesting to me.
Since we were on the subject of family, Walmart, families, and Snapper mowers....
This is my Snapper. [app.goo.gl]
My Snapper has quite a history. My dad gave it to me. He inherited it from his dad. He bought it from the man who is now my father-in-law back when he ran the small lawnmower repair/sales shop in our hometown. My father-in-law is now the local I.T. guy, and the only brought up in this thread who still lives there. My grandfather swapped the engine at one tim
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They've even taken over classically good names and used those to push shit.
I hope you're not thinking of Packard Bell?
RCA used to be a good brand, but the old RCA apparently doesn't exist anymore.
Ye gods, man, where have you been since the late 70's? Since the mid 80's RCA has existed only as a licensed brand name to whoever pays Sony a fee.
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At least the Walmart stuff has Google Play Store support, though. The Kindle Fire tablets do not, and their selection of application kinda sucks in certain areas.
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From what I see, it's an Amazon Fire competitor that runs Android 9 instead of a bastardized Android 4.4 that can't easily be made to access the Play Store. And it's about the same price. That's a winner in my book.
My kid has the Fire 8 and is on her second year of solid use from it. Yes, it is slow - painfully at times. It also hangs up and sometimes has an audio stream play forever even when you launch new ones. Cycling the power fixes it.
But, her Fire 8 runs Netflix, plays videos, and plays a few educati
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RCA used to be a good brand, but the old RCA apparently doesn't exist anymore.
RCA branded tablets manufactured by Alco Electronics Ltd. [phys.org]
The RCA Corporation you knew in your youth was purchased by General Electric in 1986 and its various divisions and assets were then liquidated.
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The Amazon Fire HD line of tablets are not "no-name under the hood." They are designed by Amazon and manufactured by Quanta.
The first-generation Amazon Kindle Fire (without the "HD") was designed by Quanta for Amazon.
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I have to say for $50 you're getting some nice hardware, your $50 worth anyways. I don't much care for the Amazon eco-system and software. For instance my wife purchased some additional levels of a Thomas the Train game for my son to use on a tablet locked into kid-mode. Since it's logged in as him and not me, the stupid levels aren't there. SO of course my wife logs the thing in as me so he has the levels (she keeps asking me for support but refuses to call Amazon like I told her). My son proceeds to
Re:Walmart has a history of shitty in-store device (Score:5, Interesting)
You're looking at it rather narrow-mindedly - you're in the tech field.
He comes from something different.
I don't know how I came from my family. I was raised in an isolated rural town that was based on ranching and the oil industry. Despite my parents actually being tech-hostile at the time I took up an interest in it and had to rely on books and magazines to learn about technology because I couldn't get my hands on it. Dad was oil-field, mom was a mom and eventually did some work for the school district, and the town in general was 20 years behind the rest of the U.S.
My parents have opened up their minds a bit since them, I first moved them into the 20th century. They thought I was going on a losing venture when I went tech, but I gave them a tour of one of my old workplaces and they changed, and opened their minds after that. They moved themselves into the 21st.
To my dad RCA was a good brand, RCA has a long history of making really good stuff, great TVs from the 70's and 80s, and my dad drew upon that. He didn't know the name was bought out by a shit-farm like Curtis-Mathis, Magnavox, and other formerly good names were. In fact he spent a bit more than he would have on the good ones, my dads biggest failing was in not listening to his son who is at least a little bit of an expert. He wasn't being cheap, he wanted to stay in his sub-burb instead of fighting notoriously shitty Baton Rouge traffic (they left West Texas a couple of years after I did).
I of course covered the thinking that led to this shitty purchase in my top-level, you just wanted to insult someone without putting my reading or thought into it. We need to focus more on underhanded tactics that Walmart and the companies they partner with that exploit formerly good names to sell crap to older customers who don't know what they're getting into.
It's our responsibility to call this stuff out for what it is. In fact I'm thinking about buying one to test it out and give a public review to see if it's good or just more dump-fodder. Anyone want to sponsor it?
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Part of this is certainly on my dad. He asked my advice and did something different. He's stuck with what he bought.
This doesn't excuse the Walmart, licensed name shit-farm.
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"You're looking at it rather narrow-mindedly
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That's way more effort than a shit posting AC deserves.
I got the reasoning behind going to Wal-Mart and seeing the "RCA" product on the first read, cheap never crossed my mind.
Asshat was simply trolling.
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I do tend to over-explain and drone on....
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There is cheap and then cheap. It completely depends on why it's cheap.
I have a good tablet I use for on the go, but wanted something a little bigger for strictly "couch use" so was looking to find a sub $200 CDN 10" tablet that didn't suck. The only real contenders I found in that price range were OPs RCA tablet from Walmart, an Acer Iconia tablet, and the new-ish to Canada Amazon Fire 10HD. The Fire won out for me because of the hardware spec - 32 GB of storage and 2 GB of RAM compared to everyone else
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Care to elaborate? Can you play your own videos from the card, sideload aps?
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The biggest "lock in" out of the box is that there's no Google Play store to get apps, only the Amazon app store. But that's not all that hard to get around:
https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/get-google-play-on-fire-tablet
When I did that it took about 10-15 minutes to do. As for playing your own videos from a card or the local network, even if you don't do the Play Store add workaround, there are video players in the Amazon app store including VLC, so that works fine straight up. The main thing to notice
An article with specs (Score:4, Informative)
The article in the post is crap. The subject itself is the complete thing.
Here's a URL with specs, I've copy/pasted some of it below:
https://www.slashgear.com/walm... [slashgear.com]
Looks decent for kids or just internet and Kindle reading.
In terms of specs, the Walmart Onn tablets are nothing really to write home about. Both models run on an unnamed 1.3 GHz processor with 2 GB of RAM and 16 GB of expandable storage. The 0.3 megapixel front camera and 2 megapixel rear camera might as well be non-existent. The 8-inch and 10.1-inch models differ only in size and, presumably, battery size but both have 1280Ã--800 resolutions.
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It's un-upgradeable Android. That means in 1-2 years time it's obsolete and probably vulnerable. You must really not give a fuck about your kids!
Nearly all (if not all) tablets are not upgradeable, and have a shelf life of around 2-4 years. Do you also complain about buying a pizza which can only be eaten once?
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Samsung does a decent job with their tablet support, certainly not great but they do provide at least quarterly security updates for 3 years on most of the Tab S line.
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The 0.3 megapixel front camera and 2 megapixel rear camera might as well be non-existent.
A 2 megapixel camera is 1080p... They apparently have some pretty high expectations for a sub $100 tablet.
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Re:An article with specs (Score:4, Informative)
So absolute garbage even by the standards of 5 years ago. Sounds like Walmart. They'll sell a ton of them to their clueless rube customer base.
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>"Here's a URL with specs, I've copy/pasted some of it below:
https://www.slashgear.com/walm [slashgear.com]... [slashgear.com]"
They still don't tell you that the screen is most probably PLASTIC and not glass. That, alone, is a huge no-no. It will be unresponsive and scratched to hell in no time flat.
Even the lowest-end Amazon Fire still has a glass screen.
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We need better specs, the cameras are stupid, shouldn't have been included if they are that bad.
Crysis? (Score:4, Funny)
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A Beowolf cluster of them probably could.
With Google Services? (Score:2)
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Tablets are a failing market because only clueless idiots would buy one.
Says the Anonymous Coward who a) doesn't have kids and b) has never left his mom's basement to set foot on an airplane.
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What do kids need with a tablet? There are bugs to find, holes to dig, and knives to make.
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I find my Amazon Fire tablet is really useful when I'm in the kitchen and need to look at a recipe. My phone's screen is often too small for reading recipes while cooking and I'm definitely not putting my laptop on a kitchen counter. But the Fire tablet can sit on the side with print large enough for me to see it - and while displaying a good amount of the recipe. Tablets aren't perfect for every use case, but they do have their place.
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When tablets started making a splash, laptops tended to be bigger than they are now and phones were a lot smaller. So I do think it's true that in many scenarios where you might have pulled out a tablet 5 years ago, a phone is now sufficient or the laptop is small enough to bring along and the battery life is adequate.
Kids seem to be the sweet spot for tablets. Tablets are relatively cheap, and large enough that they're easy to use.
But their market is only so big, especially sinc
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It's close but not truly apples to apples
1) fireOS is not Android. there are differences between the two
2) the $30 is not "you own the device" cost. The $30 is "here is this advertising medium, pay more to make it just a tablet"
I'd buy a decent $60 android tablet over the equivalent hardware $30 fireOS device
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I have a Fire 7 (I think, couple of years old) and the ads aren't that bad. They are all preloaded so they play outside of wifi, but it's just the start screen (they do cause a delay for staring up).
The UI does sort of suck, but you can side load the full Google services suite, including the Play Store (offers a massive amount of apps/games compared to Amazon).
My use cases:
1. Bathroom time gaming (and around the house "I'm bored" gaming). They are stupid little games I will admit.
2. Netflix offline view
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fireOS is not Android. there are differences between the two
Yes, but it is forked from it. One of the big differences here is that FireOS 8 is forked from Android 7 and the Onn devices are running Android 9. That is a very notable difference.
Best Buy's house brand Insigina Tablet (Score:2)
Headline should read... (Score:2)
...Walmart to produce yet another line of electronic very-soon-to-be-landfill.
I foolishly bought a Walmart own-brand USB thumb drive. It failed within 2 weeks & I lost all the data on it. Luckily, I didn't trust it and used it to only transfer copies of data. Now it's landfill (I doubt the local recycling service does anything more than export it to a developing country where it becomes landfill).
I want one...on one condition: (Score:2)
Seems to be a lot of posts dismissing these as being too cheap, insufficiently-flashy crap (and, to be fair, they kind of are from the sound of it).
I'll still happily run out and buy an 8" model...just as soon as someone works out root access and a way to install LineageOS on them.
Not exactly an HD gaming platform or anything, but strip out the Google bloat and everything I need and want from a tablet (casual reading, casual video, casual listening, web-browsing, etc.) will pretty much fly nicely on even th
Jolt to the sluggish tablet market? (Score:2)
Good luck! Nearly everybody who wants a tablet, already has one, or five. There are other several $100 options, including Amazon Fire ($40) and Insignia.