ViewSonic has taken the wraps off its latest Android tablet offering, the ViewBook 730, with an aim to appeal to both folks looking for a full-featured color tablet and a device that fills the same niche as a Nook Color ereader. The ViewBook 730 also features optional stylus input so users can writer or draw directly on the device’s touch screen.
“We recognized a need for a tablet device that offers users an excellent multimedia experience with a very affordable value proposition,” said ViewSonic VP of business development Michael Holstein, in a statement. “Our new ViewBook 730 enables consumers to do all the fun things that they want to do on a tablet without the added cost for features they don’t need.”
The ViewBook 730 features a 7-inch 800-by-480-pixel backlit touchscreen display, along with Wi-Fi abd Bluetooth wireless networking. The device runs Android 2.2—no word on whether it will see tablet-optimized released like Android 3.1 HoneyComb—along with a 1 GHz ARM Cortex A8 processor; the unit has 8 GB of onboard storage and supports up to 32 GB more via a microSD slot. The tablet sports HDMI output for pushing 1080p video to a big screen, along with a front-facing VGA camera for video chat. The ViewBook 730 also features stylus input, so users can easily write directly into applications, highlight excerpts from a book, or draw directly into the bundled Sketcher app. The ViewBook 730 also comes with Amazon’s Appstore pre-installed, along with Amazon’s MP3 downloader and Kindle applications.
ViewSonic says the ViewBook 730 will be available by the end of June for a suggested price of $249.99.
