I got to test out a number of Tablet PCs at one of the education projects I’m helping out. My opinion is that they are complete crap and even worse than I expected at the 81 USD price mark, for several reasons:
- Of 6 units I tested, 2 were obviously defective (one would not charge past 12% and one constantly emitted a high-pitch squeal)
- Overall build quality is poor
- Devices show deep scratches, bubbles under the protective film, and other physical damage as delivered
- Most of the cases I saw (I only checked a dozen or so out of 40 units delivered) were black or white, with some hot pink thrown in. This is a horrible thing for distributing to a group of kids.
- Battery life is the worst I’ve ever heard of for any tablet PC – under 30 minutes of normal use
- The touch screen is unresponsive and frustrating (removing the protective film made it a bit better, but resulted in really bad smudging)
- Even though the battery capacity is so limited, charging time from near empty is around 80 minutes
- Even the power adapters are crap; they get very hot and the cords are too short
- This tablet is the second slowest I’ve ever used – the first being a very similar Chinese unit I tested two years ago
- This tablet features perhaps the only graphical user interface I’ve ever used that doesn’t support drag and drop
- The Android OS loads so slow, it has time to show off 3 boot screens/loading sequences
On the positive side:
- The accessories for the tablets are good. The case, USB keyboard, and USB/ethernet dongle work just fine.
- The product markings make for a fine conversation piece (iPad5, iPad6, iPad10, 4G, 64GB)
Software info:
