Skytex Skypad Alpha2

Pros: Good design, great battery life, solid construction, rich feature set, low price and free upgrade to Ice cream Sandwich (Android 4),

Cons: Poor wireless reception, plastic screen, no 3G or 4G phone connectivity, single external speaker, odd camera placement.

Summary: After two weeks with the Skytex Skypad Alpha2,7" Android tablet, I've been pretty surprised and pleased with both its sturdy feel and its rich feature set. With its 1.2GHz ARM Cortex-A8 processor, it handles most tasks with relative ease.It had no problem handling hours of playing Angry Birds, and I was able to enjoy hours of music and videos, stored on a micro SD card. Speaking of music, the sound quality is not bad with headphones plugged in, but it only has one external speaker which doesn't really have the fidelity to be of much use. I found its 800x480 WVGA Capacitive screen with 5-points of touch to be responsive and clear. Even with its mediocre resolution, reading E-books was comfortable and easy on the eyes.It does have an HDMI out, but I haven't used it yet, so I reserve my comments on this feature for now. I would have liked to have seen access to Andriod Marketplace, but it does have an connection to 1 Mobile Marketplace, which has a decent selection of both free and paid apps. The main problem I ran into was poor wifi reception. At home I have a wireless router where I have no problem receiving strong wifi signals on my HTC Inspire 4g or my Toshiba Thrive 10.1" Tablet. But with the Skypad Alpha2 , I can more often than not connect with only poor reception, making it sometimes difficult to download apps or stream audio or video. At malls or other hotspots it's usually about the same when trying to get online. Maybe it's just my particular tablet, because I haven't heard many comments about this in other reviews. Lasly, I would have liked to have seen 4G or at least 3G phone capability offered as this would have made it a real contender for a 5 star rating.
Although the Skytab ships with Android 2.3, there is an update package to Android 4.0 available for free on their support site. The upgrade process was relatively straight forward and took less than 10 minutes.
Overall, I feel the Skytex, Skypad Alpha2 is a good, well made feature rich, 7" tablet, which offers you access to the apps you need to be more productive as well as giving you a good gaming and entertainment experience for under $200.00