The Galaxy Tab A7 is down to just $129, and it’s great for Xbox cloud games

It’s Black Friday / Cyber Monday for another few days, and there are still savings to be had on gifts for your loved ones, or indeed, yourself. You may wonder why I’m including an Android tablet in a deals round-up on a Windows site; well, the answer actually lies in Xbox.

This Android 11-based tablet is ideal for light media consumption, Netflix, Amazon Kindle, and so on, but for me, where these portable tablets really shine is Xbox cloud gaming. If you’re into cloud gaming, this would make a great Xbox deal for Black Friday and want something slightly larger than a 5-inch phone screen for cloud gaming.

The Amazon sale also includes a free cover for good measure.

This is by no means the greatest tablet out there. The A7 is one of Samsung’s lower-end tablets designed specifically to be super affordable. Intensive games like Genshin Impact or the upcoming Diablo Immortal won’t run particularly well on this thing, and multi-tasking will be slow to middling at best. However, when you’re using a single app at a time, such as Netflix, Amazon Kindle, or indeed, Xbox Game Pass, this is where I feel this tablet shines the most. I use the older Galaxy Tab A pictured above, which is less powerful and less sleek than the new A7 Lite. And I ironically picked it up in a Black Friday deal a couple of years back.

At 32 GB onboard storage, you’re not going to have a ton of room for games and apps on this thing, but thanks to Xbox Cloud gaming, you don’t need it. Xbox games are designed emphatically for TV screens, and their UIs and text scaling rarely does particularly well when crushed down onto a phone’s display. Like the Nintendo Switch, these games generally look and play better on a larger screen, particularly if you’re factoring in touch controls taking up a portion of the display as well (although, you can always pair a Bluetooth or USB-C controller to this thing, too). That’s why I typically recommend that people grab a bigger tablet for cloud gaming. Not only are you separating your gaming experience from your phone (which often spams you with distracting notifications), but the games just present better, too.

There are more expensive and more powerful tablets out there, like Samsung’s own Galaxy S7 series (which is also discounted for Black Friday, by the way). But for Xbox Game Pass’ cloud gaming, basic Office use, Netflix, and web browsing, you really don’t need something on the higher end in my view. This A7 gets the job done.