Nobody, not even Tesco, expected last year's Hudl Android tablet to be such a runaway hit, but runaway hit it sure was. To date, Tesco has sold over 750,000 Hudls so it makes a lot of sense for the UK supermarket chain to follow up the award-winning device with another, more powerful replacement.

In that respect, the Tesco Hudl 2 is a success already. From our brief play with the device at the launch event in London we can immediately tell that it is faster, lighter, has a far better screen and, most importantly, is larger than the previous version. But, and this is the killer, the £129 price is just the same.

The screen this time around features an 8.3-inch 1920 x 1800 display (slightly more than Full HD and 273ppi). It looks simply stunning, especially for the price, and is bright and vibrant. The processor in a 1.8GHz quad-core Intel Atom CPU which ensures that apps and actions are quick to launch, and screen swipes are quick and smooth.

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Other hardware features include a 5-megapixel rear facing camera and 1.2-megapixel front facing webcam, but we'll have to reserve judgement on quality for the review phase as the light in the launch venue was dim and not ideal for a camera test.

There are stereo speakers with Dolby optimised audio, but again is something to test more accurately in the Pocket-lint labs, not a noisy, journo-filled auditorium. As is battery life, which is quoted at eight hours but in what usage scenarios we aren't yet sure.

You get 16GB of on board storage, but that can be expanded by up to a further 32GB through microSD. And it has dual-band Wi-Fi, much like most modern tablet devices.

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One of the criticisms of the original device was that it was smothered in Tesco hubs and portals over the Android operating system and the same it true here. However, we genuinely don't mind. The widgets offer access to Tesco services, such as Blinkbox movies and music, while a special homescreen page is dedicated to feed information about Clubcard points and curated content, including recipes, which will update regularly.

We don't know if you'll be able to choose not to have them on the screen, but they are inoffensive and a small price to pay for the, ahem, small price to pay.

Other nice new features include profiles for all the family, where you can set all manner of child safety options in order to restrict what apps, content and websites a younger member can access. Each family member can also have their own desktop pictures and customisation.

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Indeed, customisation is a big deal with the Hudl 2 generally. It is available in eight colours - blue, orange, black, red, turquoise, white, purple and pink - as are the different covers you can buy. This gives you the option to mix and match and personalise the experience.

The Tesco Hudl 2's success will depend on whether it can fend off increased competition in the cheaper tablet space this year, from Amazon primarily with its colourful new Fire HD range. But with the specifications on offer for the remarkably low price ticket it has every chance of emulating the first Hudl's performance.