Loose screw inside the case

A wave of tablets is beginning to sweep across the tech world. The most-talked about devices will be high-end units, such as the Apple iPad and Motorola XOOM. But among the crowd will also be low-price, bare-bones machines, such as the LY-706 that I cracked open in the gallery above:
http://www.techrepublic.com/photos/100-ly-706-mid-android-tablet-teardown/6191704

At $100 the LY-706 (also know as the MID 706) is roughly 20 percent the price of an iPad or Samsung Galaxy tab (sans contract). But even with such a low price, do you get enough bang for your buck? Neither TechRepublic's Mark Kaelin nor I think you do. The LY-706 is underpowered, uses old technology, and the build quality is sub-par. But, perhaps we expect too much for a device that costs about the same as a nice dinner for two.

What do you think?

I've owned 2 of these cheap Android tablets. One stuck at 1.6 and the other at 2.2. Unless you trust the hacked firmware releasers. I've bricked 1 unit. The cheap tablets are nearly worthless if they do not have a capacitive screen. Unless you are going to use it as a photo frame and music/media streamer.

The resistive screens, (Think stylus required) are so cumbersome that although capable, it is frustrating to use many apps. Resistive screens are extremely sensitive to pressure changes. As an example... when playing a game like Angry birds, if the pressure of your finger changes even slightly, the tablet will sense removal of your finger. It can be extremely frustrating. Figure on connecting a mouse and keyboard to get any usefulness out of the resistive tablets or only use apps that require very little, very controlled input. Multitouch is non existent even though many cheap tablets claim they supports multi touch.

I'd suspect the Hynix chips in image 57 are 1 gigabit chips in a 128Mbyte by 8 configuration. Two chips would give you 256MBytes of RAM or 2 gigabits for those who love larger sounding numbers.

Hi
I bought a MID 706, and the video play back is very slow, while the audio with it is decoded in real time.
I bought it only for viewing videos and it is totally useless for that.

These devices contain 256 MB memory and almost all are with 4 GB flash although the OS on them generally formats only 2 - 2.5 GB of it.

I've recently bought one of these tablets. First off the OS over them is just borrowed from a phone and does not scale to the screen. The screen is very low DPI with enormous characters. The touchscreen is ultra low response and the product is not robust. The touch sensitive sensor is just behind a transparent film and it easy to crack the sensor.. The battery life is not optimized for the device and even if it is in standby it consumes much energy and the device will deplete it in 2 hours time. There are lots of application incompatibilities. Games can not detect sensors. Programs can not find application paths etc. I also have a Galaxy TAB and these devices are not comparable to a decent tablet like it. They are only good for cheap price but apart from that they are simply "quality free" and useless.