Trio Français - meet Archos's new trine of affordable 4G-enabled Helium tablets

French electronics vendor Archos announced a new lineup of 4G-enabled tablets under the Helium brand - the Archos 70 Helium 4G, 80b Helium 4G, and 101 Helium 4G. The first one is a 7-inch tablet with modest specs - it has a 1024x600 IPS display and is powered by a MediaTek MT8732 1.5GHz quad-core CPU, paired with 1GB of RAM and 8GB of expandable storage. There's a 2-megapixel main cam with LED flash, and a 0.3MP front cam. The whole thing runs on a 2500mAh battery. The operating system is Android 4.4 KitKat, and we find the dual-SIM slot a rather interesting option for a tablet.

The other two have the same chipset, but the Archos 80b Helium 4G has a bigger, 8-inch screen with a 1280x800 resolution, and the 101 Helium 4G ups the screen diagonal to 10.1 inches and the resolution to the same 1280x800 pixels. The 10-incher has better cameras, too - a 5MP main unit and a 2MP front cam. The battery capacity is, understandably, different as well. The 8-incher has a 3600mAh unit, and the 10-incher fits in a spacious 6500mAh juice pack. Nice!

Obviously, the Helium line is not about high-end devices, but bringing fast 4G connectivity to affordable low and mid-range tablets. There's a niche to be filled in there, so good on Archos for making a move on it. The new tablets aren't priced or dated yet, but they will probably receive an introduction at CES 2015 very soon.