Cut-price supermarket tablets

Shoppers went crazy for the supermarket's cut-price tablet last Christmas- will its higher-spec successor prove just as popular this year?

Tesco’s ventures into electronics don’t always go smoothly. Just witness the chain’s unfortunately named Isis televisions, which are now being off-loaded at knockdown prices in supermarkets around Britain.

But when the supermarket gets tech right, it can change the way people think. Tesco swept aside iPads and other expensive tablets last Christmas with its iconoclastic £120 Hudl tablet.

It sold nearly half a million Hudls, with the gadgets selling at a rate of around 3,000 a day across Britain in December. The chain ran out of units twice.

The no-nonsense Hudl – and its new successor, the £129 (€163) Hudl 2 – have been a breath of fresh air in a market polluted by marketing speak and balderdash.

This year, both Apple and Samsung have stooped to adding gold finishes to their tablets, as if that makes them worth their aspirational price tags.

It’s reassuring that consumers can see through this sort of rubbish. Hudl 2 does all the same things for a fraction of the price of iPad Air 2 or Galaxy Tab S. You’ll pay even less if you’ve been hoarding Tesco Clubcard points.

It’s £10 more expensive than the last Hudl – but you can get an awful lot of technological tweaks for that money.

It’s now Full HD, so TV and films look great. The screen’s now 8.3in, around the size of an iPad mini, which for my money is the ‘sweet spot’ in tablets.

Crucially, Tesco bosses are paying attention to the way people actually use the machines. Rather than pretending we’re all going to go home and run a business on it (Samsung) or write awful poems (Apple), Tesco realises that tablets tend to be shared, family devices – and highly useful as a ‘Mute’ button for young children.

Hence Hudl 2 has support for child profiles, where you can limit access to the internet, like a domestic Kim Jong Un, or ensure children don’t spend the day on Angry Birds when they’re meant to be doing homework.

For a budget tablet, this Android does all the meat-andpotatoes tasks (email, Facebook, video, music, games) perfectly. While it is available in stores in Northern Ireland, There are currently no plans to extend the Hudl 2 to the Republic.