[noirsoft]

I just bought a new 8 inch tablet per the subject line. Best Buy exclusive Insignia brand 8 inch Windows 8.1 tablet (Windows with Bing) for $99.00



Quick review: Speakers really are bad in that they have almost no volume (headphones okay) screen has decent viewing angles in both portrait and landscape. In addition to 16GB micro SD card, has 10GB system C: drive for Windows & apps (So total of 26 GB included) Performance seems okay, though I've had a few odd multi-second freezes (may be my bad internet connection at this hotel) but it then recovers and runs without problems. Overall: NINETY NINE BUCKS? WOW!

[Laura Knotek]

That's a really great deal! $99 is cheap.

[noirsoft]

Argh. I can't believe I mistyped the subject. It should be "8" inch tablet, not "9" inch tablet. Is it possible to edit and fix that?

[ohgood]

no gps or cellular data ?
no hdmi or dlna ?

[noirsoft]

Definitely no Cellular. It does not specifically say GPS, though it does have a "Windows Location Provider" device. Not sure if that means GPS or based on network connection. It does have MicroHDMI out, but did not come with a cable, so can't test.

[ohgood]

Definitely no Cellular. It does not specifically say GPS, though it does have a "Windows Location Provider" device. Not sure if that means GPS or based on network connection. It does have MicroHDMI out, but did not come with a cable, so can't test.

I'd bet that's just a Wi-Fi connection plus a script to figure out where you are by ip.

gps doesn't matter to some folks, I prefer a solid chip and good track history. some of the cheap tablets are getting a hand out by att / tmo in the hopes someone will subscribe to the non free service through their cellular antenna. my daughter's tablet was $110 and has aGPS with free tmo data (250mb/month 3g, then throttled to 3.1baud!) for life.

I've seen some Japanese spec tablets that had great antennas and chips but the lifetime data was for orange or some foreign to me service.

well, have fun with it!

[Laura Knotek]

Argh. I can't believe I mistyped the subject. It should be "8" inch tablet, not "9" inch tablet. Is it possible to edit and fix that?

I've edited the title.

[WillysJeepMan]

Thanks OP for drawing our attention to this tablet. I just returned from Best Buy after picking one up. (I had $15 in rewardzone bucks burning a hole in my pocket )

I've always associated "Insignia" with "junk", but I have to admit this device feels very solidly built. The screen quality is impressive even with the protective plastic on. I've convinced myself that some defect will require me to return it so I figure I'll keep the plastic on a bit longer.

MicroHDMI, microSD, and microUSB were all "must-haves" on my list. The only thing missing from the list was an active digitizer. I had been looking long and hard at the Dell Venue 8 Pro - but lack of HDMI was a show-stopper.

I'll give it a good shake-down test. If it holds up it will be quite a bargain at $100.

[dgr_874]

Does this come with a free trial of office 365?

[azcruz]

Does this come with a free trial of office 365?

Box says 1-year subscription...

[WillysJeepMan]

Does this come with a free trial of office 365?

It comes with a 1 year subscription to Office 365 personal. Since I already have Office 365 Home, this personal subscription was not only not worth it for me, but dangerous. If you already have Home (5 PCs/Macs/Windows tablets + 5 tablets) and then activate Personal, you'll wipe out your Home subscription and end up with Personal (1 PC + 1 tablet) Be warned!

One of the first things that I did was to run the updates. One of the updates hung and I ended up rebooting. Upon rebooting, I could log into Windows but got stuck on the "Personalized Settings" (not responding) before the start/live tiles appeared. I let it sit for 10 minutes. I shut down and rebooted about 6 more times. The final time, before logging in, I disabled WiFi and was then able to fully boot up. No problems since then.

I ran some more tests and things ran fine. Very nice little tablet for $100. But I packed it up and will wait for Christmas (I'm very difficult to buy gifts for so I told my wife she can give it to me for Christmas) :)

​

[dgr_874]

It comes with a 1 year subscription to Office 365 personal. Since I already have Office 365 Home, this personal subscription was not only not worth it for me, but dangerous. If you already have Home (5 PCs/Macs/Windows tablets + 5 tablets) and then activate Personal, you'll wipe out your Home subscription and end up with Personal (1 PC + 1 tablet) Be warned!

One of the first things that I did was to run the updates. One of the updates hung and I ended up rebooting. Upon rebooting, I could log into Windows but got stuck on the "Personalized Settings" (not responding) before the start/live tiles appeared. I let it sit for 10 minutes. I shut down and rebooted about 6 more times. The final time, before logging in, I disabled WiFi and was then able to fully boot up. No problems since then.

I ran some more tests and things ran fine. Very nice little tablet for $100. But I packed it up and will wait for Christmas (I'm very difficult to buy gifts for so I told my wife she can give it to me for Christmas) :)

​

That's great to hear! I don't have Office 365 yet and wanted to try it.

[squire777]

It's too bad that Best Buy Canada is not selling it otherwise i'd consider it

[dgr_874]

Has anyone had any issues with the only 1GB of RAM installed? I wonder if the dell venue pro 8 with 32 GB memory and an extra 1GB of RAM would be worth the extra 100 bucks?

I have a 75 dollar best buy gift card that will expire soon so I wanted to use it fast.

[WillysJeepMan]

Has anyone had any issues with the only 1GB of RAM installed? I wonder if the dell venue pro 8 with 32 GB memory and an extra 1GB of RAM would be worth the extra 100 bucks?

I have a 75 dollar best buy gift card that will expire soon so I wanted to use it fast.

I haven't used it heavily enough to determine the impact of having only 1GB RAM.

As for whether or not the DV8P is worth $100 more, I'd say that it depends.

On the DV8P PLUS side:
- full MS Office license (no Office 365 subscription)
- Active digitizer
- 2GB RAM
- 32GB storage

On the MINUS side:
- no HDMI port
- to utilize the active digitizer, add $30 for the pen

Personally, I have 4 other tablets and this Insignia was more of a experiment or something to tinker with. If a Windows tablet was going to be my primary tablet, then I would choose the DV8P, hands-down.

[dgr_874]

I took the plunge earlier tonight. No major issues so far. I'll report more in a few days.

[deadwrong03]

Is there a front camera?

[spectre51]

Would also be interested to see what people think of the 1gb of ram. Been looking at the DVP or the Thinkpad 8 but for quite a bit less this tablet is intriguing. The 1gb of ram though has me holding out.

Posted via Sony Xperia Z2

[WillysJeepMan]

Would also be interested to see what people think of the 1gb of ram. Been looking at the DVP or the Thinkpad 8 but for quite a bit less this tablet is intriguing. The 1gb of ram though has me holding out.

Posted via Sony Xperia Z2

It isn't the 1GB of RAM that should be the only issue to consider, but also the 16GB storage.... which after all is said and done is about 4GB free. I have a few legacy apps that I'll be installing on it. I should be able to install them to the microSD card. Without support to install Modern UI apps to removable media, that 4GB will be a barrier before the 1GB RAM.

[spectre51]

It isn't the 1GB of RAM that should be the only issue to consider, but also the 16GB storage.... which after all is said and done is about 4GB free. I have a few legacy apps that I'll be installing on it. I should be able to install them to the microSD card. Without support to install Modern UI apps to removable media, that 4GB will be a barrier before the 1GB RAM.

Yeah missed that initially. 16gb is no where near enough.

Sent from my Xperia Z2

[dgr_874]

A Few thoughts after a couple of days..

Had to return the original one for a different one as there was no Office apps installed on it so I could not activate the free trial of Office 365. I brought the second one home and set it up without issues.

Pro's

PRICE, PRICE, PRICE! I can not say enough about how nice of a price this is at. Only 99 bucks for a full windows tablet in your hands.

Battery life has been pretty good so far. Not spectacular but decent.

The tablet is pretty smooth even with the 1 GB of ram. Very rarely do I notice it slow down or stutter.

Comes with a 16 GB SD card.

Cons

16 GB of memory sucks. After I activated and downloaded my office 365 suite I had a lousy 1.5 GB of free space. Since metro apps can't be downloaded to a SD card on Windows 8.1 and the hack to move them from Windows 8 no longer works, I quickly decided to remove everything I could and I ended up with about 4.5 GB of space. I don't think that much will serve me for long at all. Hopefully Windows 10 will allow metro apps on a SD Card.

Screen is slightly blurry to my eyes but still acceptable.

Overall, I think I enjoy the tablet enough to keep it. It works for me because I have many other computers and tablets around the house that will easily make up for any shortcoming this device has. I have my surface pro if I really need more horsepower on the go. If you wanted to do any sort of real work on an 8" tablet, this is not the device you are looking for. Spring for one with minimum 32 GB and 2 GB RAM. But, if you want a simple table for mostly internet browsing or casual games and don't want to spend a lot, this may be what you are looking for.

I'll be happy to answer any questions anyone has.

[noirsoft]

link on bestbuy.com now
Insignia 8" Flex Tablet Intel Atom 16GB NS-15MS08 - Best Buy
On storage, since I use a Surface Pro as my daily driver, I don't need to install a lot of apps on the mini tablet, so the 10GB of built-in storage is enough for OneNote, Nook and a few games, and the 16GB SD card is a nice bonus (since replaced with a 64 GB card)

[MP2100]

Deadwrong03,
Yes there is a front and rear camera. Pretty nice for $99.

[MP2100]

Would also be interested to see what people think of the 1gb of ram. Been looking at the DVP or the Thinkpad 8 but for quite a bit less this tablet is intriguing. The 1gb of ram though has me holding out.

Posted via Sony Xperia Z2

The 1 GB RAM is (surprisingly) not a major problem. Task manager shows 700 to 900 MB in use all the time. But that's with between one program running, and 8 programs running. It seems to be swapping background programs out of memory? I don't know how that could be, since there so little space.

The 16 GB of flash memory is the worse limitation. It fills up fast. That's why they included the 16 GB micro SD card. Again, I appreciate the SD card being included in the low low price.

[WillysJeepMan]

1GB RAM may not be a problem because it is running the 32-bit version of Windows 8.1. I'm still waiting for Christmas to permanently unbox mine, but I'm looking forward to running some vintage Win16 apps on it. I have tons of "Microsoft Home" Infotainment titles on CDROM (as well as other CD-based apps) that I'll install on it.