Is the pricing an apples-to-oranges comparison? Not really. At least not from the perspective of everyday consumers, most of whom aren't well versed on the virtues of dual-core chips, not to mention the advantages of Android 3.x (or 4.x) over Android 2.x.

Neither the Kindle Fire nor the Kobo Vox has a camera. And the Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus, with its 1.2GHz dual-core processor, is bound to be faster. The Kindle Fire has a dual-core processor, but Amazon hasn't revealed the chip's clock speed. The Vox has an 800MHz single-core CPU. The Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus has 16GB of storage; the Kindle Fire and Kobo Vox each have 8GB.

Still, it's hard to justify a $400 tablet when perfectly respectable $200 slate--which, by the way, lets you read ebooks, watch movies, listen to music, play games, run apps, browse the Web, and check email--has most (if not all) of all the features you'd want from a tablet.

True, some users may want a front and back camera--or at least a front camera for video chat. But that's probably not a checklist item for most folks. After all, your smartphone has a pretty good camera already, right?

Fierce competition is driving down the price of tablets, and that's great news. The Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus is a quality piece of work, but it may be too fancy for its own good.