Cyber Monday 2012 tablet deals

REVIEW BY Sascha Segan, pcmag.com

 Amazon just slashed the price of its $159 Kindle Fire to $129 for Cyber Monday, making it one of the cheapest quality tablets you can buy.

 But while that is definitely a deal, a tablet isn't just for Christmas. I recommend the $129 Kindle Fire tablet for a tween or young teen. They're careless enough that you don't want to spend a penny extra on a breakable electronic device for them. Amazon's Freetime lets you control how much time they spend reading versus playing games, and the Amazon Appstore has plenty of great apps.

Kindle Fire HD 7" Review

But for grownups, I have some other suggestions.

For readers, the Barnes & Noble Nook Tablet $199.00 at Quill is currently $159. If you buy with a MasterCard today, you get a $20 gift card towards books, making the effective price only $139. The Nook Tablet offers a superior reading experience to the original Kindle Fire, especially for comics and illustrated children's books. It's also easy to turn a Nook Tablet into a standard Android tablet using the $29.99 N2A card $19.94 at Amazon, opening up hundreds of thousands of additional apps.

Nook Tablet Review

Love Amazon? You deserve a Kindle Fire HD $199.00 at Amazon. Yes, it's $199, but it's better in every way, especially for video, thanks to its higher-resolution, less-reflective screen. If you're addicted to Amazon Prime streaming video or you just prefer to buy, rent and borrow things from Amazon, this should be your new tablet.

Already have an iPad? Lots of people do. The iPad $528.95 at Amazon Marketplace can get Amazon Prime streaming video, so maybe what you really want is a truly great e-book reader like the $119 Amazon Kindle Paperwhite $119.00 at Amazon. An e-ink Kindle and a full-sized iPad make great companions, with the iPad offering a wide range of games and entertainment while the Kindle's e-ink screen gives you a much more restful reading experience than LCDs do.

Amazon Kindle Paperwhite Review

 The best small tablet on the market is actually Google's Nexus 7 . The key here is freedom: you can easily download books from both Amazon and Barnes & Noble here without hacking the tablet. It has a much wider range of apps, services and games available, and it's faster than the Kindle Fire HD. It's a little more complicated to use, though, and you don't get the free Amazon Prime streaming video.

Google Nexus 7 Review

You don't need to spend more than $200 to get a great tablet. The $129 Kindle Fire is a great Cyber Monday deal.

Microsoft isn't ready to chop prices on its new Surface RT tablets, but it is discounting one Windows 8 tablet through its online store. The Acer Iconia W510-1674 gets a $100 trim to cost just $399 for a 10.1-inch slate with 32GB of storage. You can also grab a 10.1-inch Iconia running Android from Target for $299.99, or $50 off the regular price.

Full-size Android tablets continue to receive the brunt of the price reductions, from $219.92 for a 9.7-inch Lenovo IdeaTab S2109 at Office Depot to a 9.4-inch Sony for $349.99 at Target (albeit one using an older Nvidia Tegra 2 processor) to $399.99 for Toshiba Excite 10 models from the Toshiba online store (running either a Tegra 3 or TI OMAP 4430 processor).

As usual, deals for an Apple iPad. any iPad, are few and far between, and are usually on refurbished versions. Even a legit deal, such as a Google Offers promotion that lets you purchase a third-generation iPad (the first one with Retina Display) for $580 for a 32GB version through Newegg -- a whole $19 off! -- is hardly what you can call a "deal," as you can grab a newer model with Retina Display and the same capacity through Apple for $599. If you want to buy an iPad this holiday season, just be prepared to pay full price for it and forget the various "specials" that just aren't too special. Review by Sean Portnay  

Happy Holidays!

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Laurie Davis

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