Right now I have a Verizon Ellipsis 7. It’s cheap and it didn’t get good reviews, but it mostly suited my needs for years, until recently. It ran out of space, (it comes with 8 GB, most of which was already being used by the installed software) so I bought a storage card, only to learn that this tablet won’t allow apps to be stored on a microSD card. You can only transfer music and pictures. Then, the glass got a crack in it. I’ve been using it anyway, since the LCD isn’t damaged, and trying to decide whether to replace the screen or to replace the whole tablet. I only use it to read e books, stream videos and music, play Plants vs. Zombies 2. I should be able to get a reliable tablet for the $50 to $100 it would cost to replace the screen on my Ellipsis, right? I just want to be able to go online, access all the books I bought on Google Play, and upgrade my storage space, when needed.
The 2013 Nexus 7 is still available. Highly recommend this. Pure android device, mine has been updated to Marshmallow, the latest version of Android.
EDIT: A bit above your price point, I see.
I would be willing to go up to about $200, if the tablet is likely to hold up for four or five years. I didn’t think about newer versions of Android. My current tablet is still using Jelly Bean, which has been compatible with every app I wanted to use, but that might not be the case for much longer.
It really, really depends on how hard you want to push the tablet, performance wise.
The best really cheap 7" tablet is the low end Amazon Fire for $50. It is a remarkably decent tablet for the price. Not a top performer of course, but a lot better than those no name tablets that dummies keep buying.
Amazon sells other, better tablets for more money. Of course. But note that they are subsidizing the tablets in hope that you will download content from Amazon, bringing in more bucks. The razor is cheap, it’s the blades that will cost you.
Note that you don’t have to buy any content from Amazon ever. It’s a regular Android tablet (well, FireOS is a Android variant) and you can run most of the usual apps, read, watch movies, etc. on any of them. So you are getting the razor for below cost and aren’t necessarily buying any blades.
Of the uses you mentioned, the big one is watching video. I’m not sure how well the low end tablet does on that. Given the specs it should be quite decent performance … but the resolution isn’t great.
Just start at the low end Fire Tablet and work your up, reading reviews and specs until you see one that matches your needs.
You can then compare that tablet with other makers’ tablets at a similar level and see if any are worth the money for any improvement.
Note that Amazon had a good return policy, support, etc. That counts a lot.
BTW: If you get a rootable tablet (and current Amazon tablets with OS 5 are), you can set it up so that a lot more stuff can be moved to the SD card.
(BTW: A month-plus ago would have been a really good time to buy one of these. Lots of amazing deals. We got a 10" tablet for someone at the price of a 7" one.)
I bought a Digiland DL701Q for $50. It stood up very well for a six-week backpacking trip, as my all-purpose connected device.