The G Pad 10.1 will go on sale from early August for $399. Which sounds nice until you see the US pricing. LG has also announced bricks and mortar pricing for its Android Wear G Watch.
LG’s making a play towards the affordable end of the tablet spectrum with the G Pad 10.1, announcing it’ll go on sale in early August for $399.
That scores you a 10.1″ tablet running Android KitKat with a 5MP rear camera and a small quantity of LG-specific software. It supports the knock code security feature found in the LG G3 — as well as a handheld Selfie mode — I warn people again that using a tablet as your camera is still a very daft looking thing to do, but I know I’m fighting the tide there — as qPair, which allows you to pair an Android smartphone to the G Pad 10.1. You can’t then take calls on the G Pad 10.1, but you can then reject them.
The black model will go on sale in Betta Electrical, Good Guys and Bing Lee stores in early August, while the red G Pad 10.1 will be an exclusive to Harvey Norman for, according to LG, at least six months.
The only obvious pain point here is that the same tablet sells in the US through Best Buy for $250. Even allowing for GST and a small amount of shipping/smaller market cost, that’s still a pretty painful Australia tax to throw into the mix.
I’m waiting on a review model to give a more nuanced appraisal of LG’s offering, but they’re at least pitching at the part of the tablet market where Android’s done very well historically, namely the budget space.
At the same time, while the LG G Watch has been on sale through Google Play for a little while now, LG’s also confirmed it’ll be available through Harvey Norman, JB Hi-Fi and Dick Smith for an outright price of $259, which is slightly cheaper than the Google Play price once shipping is taken into account.
The G Watch will also be a pre-order bonus for the first 1,000 Vodafone customers signing up to a $70 Vodafone Red plan for the LG G3 smartphone. Telstra will have a similar offer after the G3 goes on sale, with a presale offer involving a prepaid credit card bonus, while Optus has already launched presales for the G3.