While there should be plenty of tablets to choose from next year, the pickings are still slim for anyone that wants an iPad alternative this holiday season. One potential option, the ViewSonic G, has begun rolling out to retailers this month, including Office Depot.
Priced at $399, or $100 less than the cheapest iPad, the ViewSonic G offers a 1GHz Nvidia Tegra 2 SoC, 512MB of RAM, a 16GB SSD, and a 10-inch multitouch display with a resolution of 1024x600. That's plenty of real estate for basic use, but you can buy a docking station with HDMI output that'll let you watch 1080p videos on a larger display.
The slate itself carries a USB 2.0 port, a microSD slot, 802.11n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 2.1 connectivity, as well as a front-mounted 1.3-megapixel camera for video conferencing. The device weighs 1.55lbs and reportedly maxes out around 8-10 hours of battery life – both of which are slightly worse than the iPad's 1.5lb body and 9-10 hour runtime.
On the software front, ViewSonic's product runs Android 2.2 (Froyo), and there's also talk of hardware-accelerated Flash. It seems like VIewSonic is advertising its own "G Tablet Apps Store," so we're not sure if the slate ships with the standard Android Market.