I looked at some $100 Android tablets about a year ago, and all of them were garbage. The Nexus 7 is the cheapest Android tablet I'd buy.

I have the Nexus 7. Bought it while on vacation thinking that if I didn't like it, I would just give it to my toddler. It turns out I love it and take it with me everywhere. The performance is good, and the form factor is perfect for me.

YRMV.

The Nexus 7 certainly seems impressive, I'm not looking to use for full video etc. though.

By garbage, do you mean mainly in terms of things like screen res and low CPU power?

I just found this for instance for £35 http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/321040730821?ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX...

Which I'm sort of tempted by just for email.

It's not just the processing power that matters: battery life is really important to making a tablet useful.

"Up to 6 hours" (as quoted for that Binatone) won't cut it, I don't think, even though the hardware's otherwise well able to handle email and similar. Unless you're really assiduous about plugging it in all the time you're not using it, it'll be dead every time you pick it up!

Cheap tablets probably make excellent status boards, though, left plugged in and running a browser.

The under $100 category has improved a lot in a year. You can get Android 4.1 and Google apps for that price now. Even cheap tablets have capacitive touch now. Screen resolution will still suck at that price.

There is supposed to be a $35 to $50 A-Pad coming from China that runs Android 4.0 on a 7 inch color touch screen. I heard it was supposed to be in the USA before Christmas 2012. But I never saw them for sale anywhere.

I had considered an Android tablet after Apple screwed me over on my iPod Touch 5th generation and locking me out of iOS updates (No 6.0.2 and above locked at 6.0.1) and iOS 6.0.1 causes nothing but app crashes. I am told to just buy a new iOS device to make the app crashes go away. I figure I'd spend my money on an Android to see if it would work better.

Just found this interesting looking tablet: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/281048847748?ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX...

It's 1024*600, with 8GB disk, 512MB RAM.

Anything that runs Android 4.1 and comes with Google's apps (Maps, GMail, Play Store, etc.) and has capacitive touch should be OK-ish.

You should be able to find a 7" tablet like that for the price you are looking for, but they will be from obscure third tier OEMs like "YuanDao N12 Deluxe 7 Inch Android 4.1," or "Teclast P76e 7 Inch Android 4.1," to give two examples I found. The screen resolution will be mediocre. Don't expect software updates.

If you can afford it, buy a Nexus 7 instead. For twice the money you will get a tablet that gets timely updates and that you will be happy with for at least twice as long as a craptablet.

I bought a no-name tablet in a e-bay clone here, it will arrive in some days.

It has the same specs as the one you posted a link, and the seller sold several of them so far, and everyone is liking it, when it arrives I tell you if it is good or not :)

I bought it on purpose, because it is cheap, and the seller was shipping it with a cover with keyboard (and I want the tablet to read e-books and use instant messengers and write e-mails, and I HATE, HATE, HATE touchscreens, specially for typing).

Link of the one I bought: http://produto.mercadolivre.com.br/MLB-459935513-tablet-wifi...

Kindle fire hd

Not if you live in Belgium, though, as a family member discovered: the Amazon App store isn't available there, for some obscure reason, which makes it hard to get software on there. It's fine if you live in the US or UK, though.

(Does Google Play work in Belgium, incidentally?)

Yes.

Amazon app store only work where amazon have real offices, that is US, UK, Germany, Italy and Japan, I might be missing one or two...

This is very nice, because I am from Brazil, make kindle fire apps, and cannot download my own apps...