Okay Geek Farm
Velocity Micro's Android Tablet Family Announced, Starting $150
Jason Tsay
If you’ve been following the whole cheap Android tablet thing since CES, you’ll probably remember a slate that came out of nowhere unexpected: the Cruz Tablet. Well now there’s an official press release and it turns out that “Cruz” is actually the name of their whole Android tablet lineup. This lineup, starting at a price of $149, seems very promising so let’s take a closer look with a hands-on video and spec sheet.
The first Android tablet coming from this company known for making crazy fast custom rigs is the Cruz Reader. But don’t be fooled by its name! It’s actually more similar to an iPad than a Kindle. The $199 slate has a 800 x 600 7” resistive touchscreen and 256 MB of RAM. The amount of built in storage is also 256 MB but a 2 GB SD card will be included. It also has other useful features such as an accelerometer, web browser, and a claimed battery life of over 6 hours.
Later on in the year, the Cruz Tablet (pictured above) will launch. This $299 sibling to the Reader has a 800 x 480 7” capacitive display, 512 of RAM, 4 GB of storage, and a bundled 8 GB memory card. This appears to be the multimedia centric arm of the Cruz lineup.
At the low end of the Cruz family is the Cruz StoryPad. Intended for younger children, you get a choice of pink, blue, or green 7” tablet. It’s claimed to be very kid-friendly and drop resistant (hope it will have OLPC XO build quality). Velocity Micro insists that their product will be “letting children read, learn, and interact using a simple and intuitive touch interface.”
Hands on with the Cruz reader
