Which Introductory Tablet
 

Well I've been really holding off on getting a tablet but I'm thinking I would like to pick up a relatively inexpensive one not only get myself first hand experience what tablets offer but to have a portable device ever slightly more convenient than my phone.

I'm close to being sold on the nexus 7 as the perfect introductory tablet at the $250 price point with the latest OS available but I wanted to get the opinion of you guys who are undoubtedly more into tablets than me.

For $250 price does the nexus 7 clearly trump the lenovo ideapad? (Lenovo being a brand I'm familiar with and have some faith in)

Or would forking out some real money for one of Asus' offerings like the $400 tf300t be worth it?

Buy a used touch pad off Craigslist and put android on it. That's a cheap alternative, and if you don't like it you can sell it without a big loss. My wife has a 7 inch tab for her purse, but the kids like the 10 inch for movies and gaming.

The market is flooded with used sub $200 Tegra2 based tables sporting ICS. They are the best cheap alternative for a good intro to tablets. Stay away from the cheap chinese junk, they are cheap because they are nearly useless.

I really would not be buying any right now. With windows 8 coming out in about 3 weeks, we will see a bunch more tablets coming out and prices for some of the older ones should get cheaper.

Look at the kobo arc coming mid november.

I may look into getting a used Asus then if they are getting jelly bean.

I doubt we will be seeing windows 8 Arm edition or mobile kernel for a while and I have no intention of waiting.

And I definitely won't be looking for a cheapo Chinese as I'm very picky about the screen quality.

Mainly I'd be using the tablet for it's browsing, youtube and hopefully watching e-sports streams(flash support)

I have the older Lenovo IdeaPad A1. It was $200 when I bought it and it is ok but put it beside the Nexus and it doesn't stand a chance. The newer IdeaPads are better in overall specs, seen one in the States, it was a 10 inch and it was a lot better.

Most sites would say just wait since the Windows 8 slates are coming out as mentioned.

I really despise the Nexus 7 not having expandable storage. It is just a major dealbreaker for me. There is little out there that takes advantage of the Tegra 2 chip, never mind the Tegra 3. For your needs, a used/refurbed Tegra 2 based device would be best. There are even a handful that should see Jellybean, namely the Motorola Xoom. That would be where my money went if I didn't have an Iconia A100. The Iconia is also a great tablet, but I am doubtful Acer will be giving me Jellybean which is not a problem really since it has been ported by the Cyanogen team already if I really wanted to have it.

Android doesn't support flash anymore, but i would wait a month or so, lots of rumors of a 32GB N7 coming out.

As in flash was pulled from the market/google play but can still be obtained from a third party? Or it was somehow completely disabled and you can't get it functional even if you got the software from a third party?

Having a fully functioning browser with flash support is fairly important to me as I do watch alot of streamed media and I don't want a individual app/player workaround for everything.

A big selling point for the nexus 7 to me is that nexus devices continue to be supported by google with updates. I'm still using the original Motorola Milestone(Droid 1) and it only made it as far as Android 2.1.1 which kinda sucks.