Wikipad Announces Inexpensive Mobile Gaming Alternative to Razer Edge and NVIDIA Project SHIELD

The portable gaming market has been evolving briskly lately, as just a few weeks ago at CES 2013, we got our first hands-on look at both the Razer Edge gaming tablet and NVIDIA’s Project SHIELD mobile gaming device. Now there’s another kid on the block called the Wikipad.

The 7-inch tablet is similar to the aforementioned gaming devices in that it’s designed first and foremost for gaming and also has a controller attachment to give a more console-like experience. The Wikipad runs Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich and has a quad-core NVIDIA Tegra 3 processor (with 12-core GPU), 1280x800 (16:10) IPS display that supports 5-point touch input, 1GB of RAM, 16GB of storage (with the customary 32GB microSD slot), 2MP front-facing camera, and dual-band 802.11 a/b/g/n WiFi and Bluetooth 4.0.

Wikipad

There’s also a 3-axis accelerometer, gyroscope, and GPS on board, and I/O includes 3.5mm stereo headphone/mic jack, built-in stereo speakers, built-in mic, micro USB, and micro HDMI. The battery is a built-in 4100mAh lithium-polymer affair.

The most notable specification, however, is the price: the Wikipad will retail for a mere $249, which would be a good deal for the nicely-appointed tablet by itself, without the controller. However, that price includes the controller, and users will be able to access both casual and more intensive games from a number of sources including PlayStation Mobile, Big Fish Games, NVIDIA’s TegraZone, Google, OnLive, and more, and with the controller attachment removed, it’s a nicely appointed tablet on its own.

Wikipad

We’d heard about the Wikipad way back in May of last year (when it was slated to be a 10-inch device, which Wikipad scrapped in favor of the 7-inch form factor), but now that all the bugs have been worked out, the tablet will be coming to market this spring.