LG announced the G Pad 8.3 back at the beginning of September, an event which marked its return to the tablet game, having abandoned it in 2011 when the Optimus Pad failed to make much of an impact. However, although it gave us all the tech information we could want, it failed to provide a release date or a price for the tablet.
The wait is over now, though, as LG has announced it’ll be on sale through Best Buy on November 3, but if you simply can’t wait, then it’s available to pre-order right now at BestBuy.com. The price? It’s yours for $350. If you’re in the UK, then the tablet is expected to go on sale at the end of October at a price of £260, but only through the online retailer Micro-p.com.
Handing over your cash gets you an 8.3-inch screen with a 1920 x 1200 pixel resolution, and a quad-core Snapdragon 600 processor running at 1.7GHz. There’s 2GB of RAM, plus 16GB of internal memory, and a microSD card can be used to increase this by a maximum of 64GB.
Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean is the operating system, and although it doesn’t have a 3G/4G option, LG has added QPair, which connects the tablet to an Android phone to display text messages, incoming calls and other information. Other LG software features include QSlide 2.0, for running two apps at the same time, and QuickMemo to annotate documents and photos. The tablet also has a 5-megapixel camera rear camera, a 1.3-megapixel video lens, and a 4600mAh battery.
LG has slightly undercut its primary rival, the Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0, by about $30, but it’s $20 more than the basic 16GB iPad Mini. Will the G Pad 8.3 be enough to tempt Android tablet buyers back to LG?