Pandigital unveils new Android tablet line

Electronics maker Pandigital announced today a new line of low-priced Android tablet computers. The first three to ship are the Pandigital Planet (out now), Nova (available this week), and Star (shipping mid-August). The Planet and Nova start at $189 (MSRP) and the Star at $159. A fourth "flagship" tablet will ship in September, says Pandigital, but no further details are available yet on that one.

All three tablets have Wi-Fi and HDMI connectivity and feature 7-inch full-color resistive touch-screen displays. Each tablet runs on the Cortex A9 processor and has an embedded hardware 3D graphics engine. As for memory, the Planet and the Star each comes with 2GB of onboard memory, and the Nova includes 4GB, and you can expand that with a MicroSD card up to 32GB.

Each Pandigital tablet measures 5- by 7.5- by 0.5 inches (HWD), and each weighs less than 14 ounces. All three new tablets come with a rechargeable lithium-ion battery and get up to 6 hours of use (performance varies based on use -averaging longer for reading with no Wi-Fi and shorter for continuous streaming video).

None of the announced tablets run on Honeycomb, the latest Android OS; the Planet and the Star run Android 2.2 (Froyo) and the Nova ships with 2.3 (Gingerbread). But Pandigital noted that all three tablets are upgradeable to new Android versions.

Pandigital tablet owners can purchase apps at the GetJar app store (and any of the other free Android app stores online) but not from the Android Market. They'll also be able to access Barnes & Noble's eStore for e-books and other publications and to lend many of the e-books for 14 days. Also included are custom apps developed by Pandigital, including the Wi-Fi Connection Wizard for finding and connecting to available wireless networks.

Are you in the market for a tablet? And would these prices tempt you? Let us know, below.

The Pandigital Planet tablet.

—Carol Mangis