Sprint offering ZTE Optik 2 Android tablet for $30 -- with two-year contract

Most consumers are perfectly fine with using their tablets as Wi-Fi-only devices, but there are some -- and with some good reasons -- who would prefer to have cellular capabilities for accessing the Internet on the go. Sprint is trying to appeal to those users with a dirt-cheap deal, though it comes with a big caveat.

A couple of years ago, Sprint offered the ZTE Optik 7-inch Android tablet for what was then a bargain price: $99, as long as the buyer purchased a two-year service agreement. Flash forward to 2014, and it's not difficult to find a $99 tablet with no strings attached, so the wireless carrier has been forced to up the ante with the new Optik 2.

Sprint will offer the new tablet for a mere $29.99 with a two-year contract. The Optik 2 is, not suprisingly, a solid, if not spectacular, tablet spec-wise: quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, 8GB of built-in storage, 1,024x600 7-inch display. While that sounds promising enough for the price, the same limitation from which the original Optik suffered will hobble the new model: it lacks 4G LTE service.

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