Pandigtal Novel – Tablet for $199 Android 7″

Pandigital creates digital photo frames. Available soon is their entry into the tablet market.  The Pandigital Novel is a reader and web browser tablet. It’s got a 7″ 800×600  touch screen with a battery life of 5 or 6 hours. Like the Nook, it will be integrated with the Barnes and Noble ebook store.  The device will do many things you’d expect from a tablet and since it’s running Android, you might even eventually get the full web including Flash, though they don’t say whether it will run Android 2.2 or access the Android Marketplace. Its reader functionality can handle ePub and PDF ebook formats.

As you might expect from a tablet, especially from a Digital Photo Frame company, the device has a picture browser, as well as a calendar, video and music players. Things I like about this tablet. I dig the double bezel. If the white border happens to be a durable rubberized sheath, I think it’s a good idea. It also comes with a cradle and USB cable. Which means it has a USB port. Nice. Also they go the simple route by accepting high capacity SD cards. That’s the right thing to do. Too bad there’s no camera. Seems like another $15 wouldn’t kill them or their customers.

If you don’t want to spend $199 on their tablet but are desperate to part with some money, Pandigital also makes a stylish LED desk lamp for only $40.

I’m copying their specifications for the device below because it was hard to find them from the home page. There are some unknowns here. Is the touch screen capacitive. Would it accept pen input? What is the onscreen keyboard like? What kind of durability, shatter, scratch and water resistance? What version of Android? Boot speed? Do you turn this thing off typically or just make it hibernate? Can it access the Android market place so one might be able to add DocsToGo or something? Does it have an accelerometer so could it play games?

General

Screen Size                        7”

Panel                                   Digital TFT LCD

Resolution                          600 x 800 pixels

Operating System             Android

Dimensions                       5.5 x 7.5 x .5 inches

Weight                                 16 oz

Audio                                    MP3, AAC, WAV

Images                                JPEG, BMP, PNG, GIF

Video                                    MPEG4

Internal Memory                 1GB

Card Reader                       2-in-1

Expandable Memory         SD/SDHC, MMC/MMC+ up to 32GB

Virtual                                   Full touchscreen / Virtual Keyboard

Tactile                                  Volume Up/Down, Power On/Off

WiFi                                      802.11 b/g/n

USB Port                             1x mini-USB 2.0

Headphone Jack               1x 2.5mm stereo headphone

Battery                                  Built-in rechargeable Li-ion (AC adapter included)

Menu Languages               English, French, Spanish

Operating System              Windows 2000/XP/Vista/7, Mac OS X

Certifications                       FCC, CE, UL

Compliance                         RoHS, WEEE, CARB

Warranty                               1-year