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First $99 Windows 8 Tablet Shows up in China

66Would you buy a $99 Windows tablet? You could be about to get your chance. Intel has been promising since April that we would see $99 Windows 8 tablets this year and one of the first has just made an appearance in China.

Kingsing is a name few will recognize (unless you frequent AliExpress or other international marketplaces) but this Chinese OEM has pulled off the feat which HP and Toshiba are still trying to accomplish.

The Kingsing W8 might not be much to look at, but this tablet runs Windows 8 and sports a 1.8GHz quad-core Intel Baytrail-T CPU with 1GB RAM, 16GB internal storage,  a pair of 2MP cameras, and a microSD card slot. It has an 8″ IPS display with a screen resolution of 1280 x 800, which is much sharper than I expected, and a 5 point capacitive touchscreen.

The 4.5Ah battery is expected to offer 6-8 hours of runtime, though that is of course a manufacturer’s estimate. There’s also a mike and stereo speakers. In terms of connectivity the W8 has Wifi, Bluetooth, and 3G (WCDMA/EVDO/TD-SCDMA). Given the cost I’m not sure how that last is possible but that is what is being reported.

kingsing w8  2

The W8 has specs which are similar to a lot of Android tablets n the market, but also slightly better. The tablet takes advantage of Microsoft’s new minimum hardware requirements, specifically the 1/16 rule (1GB RAM, 16GB internal storage), and looking at the price it probably also benefited from one of the free Windows 8 licenses MS gives away to makers of cheap tablets.

TBH, I was surprised to see this tablet show up in China; I had expected Toshiba to release a $99 Windows 8 tablet first. Toshiba has a $99 Android tablet on the US market which runs KitKat on a quad-core Intel chip. It’s called the Excite Go, and while the specs aren’t as good as the W8 mentioned above I still thought the Excite Go would make a good candidate for a quick conversion from Android to Windows 8 (after Toshiba doubled the internal storage from 8GB to 16GB).

You can find the Excite Go at Best Buy, if you like. There aren’t a whole lot of reviews yet so I can’t say whether it is any good, but I was thinking about buying one to review it.

That tablet caught my interest because it has what looks like a powerful CPU at an impossibly low price. I’m curious how Toshiba pulled that off, and whether they ended up with a usable tablet when they were done.

Liliputing

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Comments


jjj July 30, 2014 um 11:30 pm

Funny how this news has been out there for a while and then in the last 24h everybody decided to notice it.
As far as i can tell it has no 3G but it supports an external dongle and it got lost in translation.
To be fair it’s not cheap for the specs, this is China pricing , you can get the Teclast P78HD with full HD screen and the RK3188 at 81$ http://item.jd.com/1110284.html
The Intel based version P79HD is 105$ but 1920×1200 screen is quite a lot more than 1200×800.
As for the Toshiba tablet ,it might be bellow the min resolution allowed by M$ and the SoC is not that fast. Anyway adding 8GB and a higher res screen would push the price a bit higher.
As for price, Google for "Intel contra revenue" and then check Intel’s results , ok i’ll share that one for Q2 – mobile and communications revenue 51 mil, op income 1.124 loss – so they lost 1.1B in a quarter on 51 million revenue , must be some kind of record.
And don’t buy that tab,save your money for the deluge of SoCs about to arrive.
Qualcomm, Mediatek and Marvell will all have A53 based SoCs soon, Rockchip ,Mediatek and Allwinner have A17 or A15 based SoCs arriving. Should be lots of fun.

Nate Hoffelder July 31, 2014 um 12:07 am

I follow a blogger who keeps an eye on Chinese tablets (Mike Cane). He only mentioned it today.

jjj July 31, 2014 um 12:28 am

Was just an observation not a criticism.
Anyway, here are some sites in English covering the China market most rather poor, you can also try to follow Chinese sites but Google Translate is terrible.
And i made a mistake in my comment, the Teclast P78HD is using an Alwinner A31 quad A7 not the RK3188.


DebbyS July 31, 2014 um 1:00 pm

Your Best Buy link didn’t work, but from it I found:

Toshiba-Excite Go-8GB-Gold $99.99 w/free shipping & a few ratings/reviews:

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/toshiba-excite-go-8gb-gold/7183008.p?id=1219256831388&skuId=7183008&st=excite go&cp=1&lp=1

Toshiba – Excite 7c – 8GB – Silver, clearance price $94.99 w/free shipping, more ratings/reviews:

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/toshiba-excite-7c-8gb-silver/4616007.p?id=1219098810635&skuId=4616007&st=excite go&cp=1&lp=2

DebbyS July 31, 2014 um 1:01 pm

sorry, links so long… but when that happens I usually copy to notepad and make sure they’re all one line. :\

Nate Hoffelder August 2, 2014 um 9:59 am

I saw the 7c but decided not to mention it. It’s a weaker CPU and the tablet got poor ratings when it debuted.


$65 Window Tablets Discovered at a Hong Kong Trade Show – The Digital Reader October 14, 2014 um 3:24 pm

[…] see them early next year. As I look back over my archive I see that a $99 Windows tablet first showed up in China in July, followed by the first $99 Windows tablet being announced in late September (from HP, to be […]


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