Chinese white-box vendors will start churning out Windows 8 tablets in May and the ex-factory prices for 11.6-inch units are estimated at about $300. 

While it might sound relatively cheap, don’t get excited yet. The price does not include the OS license, licensing fees for patents and margins. Therefore the actual retail price will probably end up closer to the $500 mark, which isn’t all that great, but it is a bit cheaper than the current crop of Windows 8 tablets. 

Mind you, the specs of a $300 white box tablet aren’t that great, either. We are talking about Celeron based affairs with 1GB of DDR3 memory, 8GB of storage and an 11.6-inch 1366x768 screen, Digitimes reports.

The high cost of Redmond’s OS is another worrying factor. In contrast, the prices of ARM based Android white box tablets are about $170, with no OS cost whatsoever.