Carphone Warehouse debuts Windows tablet that's cheaper than a console game

The race for the cheapest tablet on the market is heating up as Carphone Warehouse, which merged with Currys/PCWorld owner, DSGi, earlier this year, slashed the price of its Windows 8 tablet from £69 to £49, making it by far the cheapest brand new tablet you can buy from the high street.The tablet, the Hipstreet W7, looks very similar to the Linx 7 that we reviewed recently bar two important changes. It only has 16GB of onboard storage and its display is a 1024 x 600 pixel model.The rest of the specification though is carbon copy: Windows 8.1, Office 365 for a year, 1GB RAM, rear and front cameras, a microSD card slot, a quad-core Intel Atom processor, Bluetooth, microUSB, micro HDMI port and, according to Carphone Warehouse, even GPS onboard.We don't expect it to be a stellar performer or to surprise us. The Linx 7 deal (about the same price if you trade-in an old tablet) is better in our view.However, if you want to buy Office 365 Personal, then this is a no-brainer as it is the cheapest way to get one AND get a "free" tablet at the same time.Hipstreet may not be a household name but it is a popular low-cost brand with online US retailers like Best Buy, TigerDirect or Walmart. Both Tesco and Argos have released their own cheap Windows tablets in the run-up to Christmas.Check our review of the Linx 7 tablet.

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