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LG officially announces the G Pad 10.1, a mid-range Android tablet

Looking for an affordable 10-inch Android tablet? On Monday, LG officially launched the 10.1 G Pad, the biggest in its family of value-oriented tablets.

The 10.1 G Pad is the newest and largest of four tablets in the G Pad line of Android slates. Unfortunately, its specs haven’t been boosted for the larger screen: the 10.1 G Pad only sports a comparatively low-resolution 1280 x 800 IPS screen, a quad-core 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor (most likely the 400) and 1GB of RAM. The screen is particularly disappointing, considering the LG G3 smartphone sports a 5.5-inch display with a 2560 x 1440 resolution, the best panel currently on a smartphone sold in the United States. The difference in resolution will be clear when switching from one LG device to the other.

On the other hand, the G Pad has some of LG’s nifty software features from the G3, including QPair, which allows LG smartphones to connect to LG tablets over Bluetooth; LG’s dual window multitasking; and “knock code,” which allows users to knock the tablet to wake it up. The device will run Android 4.4 KitKat, the most recent release version, and thankfully a microSD slot for expandable storage is included.

Price and availability are not immediately available, but LG says the G Pad 10.1 will make its debut in the United States “later in the month.” The tablet’s smaller sibling, the G Pad 8.3, has a suggested retail price of $330, so expect something in that range.

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