ARCHOS 70b brings Honeycomb goodness for a mere $199 starting in January

It’s almost amazing to see the evolution of tablets, since pricing has swiftly changed our perception of what’s considered to be the golden price. This year alone, we’ve seen a strong push with devices like the Amazon Kindle Fire and NOOK Tablet making it oh-so affordable to own a decent Android based tablet. Well, Archos is no stranger when it comes to making tablets of its own, but their latest one might give the competition a good run for its money.

Essentially an enhanced version of the Archos 70 IT Gen 8, the company just announced the Archos 70b internet tablet that’s being billed by them as the first Android 3.2 Honeycomb tablet under $200 – well, it’s actually $199. For the money, its hardware specs seems reasonable enough to appease basic users with its higher resolution 7” 1024 x 600 capacitive display, 1.2GHz processor, 512MB of RAM, Wi-Fi, 3D Graphics accelerator, microSD card slot, and HDMI output.

Obviously, the benchmark for the sub-$200 tablet is the Amazon Kindle Fire, so it’ll be interesting to see how this one will be accepted by people. Thankfully, it’ll have the benefit of having full access to the Android Market, making its app ecosystem very diverse right from the start. For $199, there’s no arguing it’ll attract budget conscious consumers, but don’t expect to pick this one up before Christmas – rather, this Honeycomb flavored tablet will become available starting in January.

source: Archos