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Design, Look and Feel What I immediately loved about this tablet was that, despite the name, it wasn't an iPad clone. It was obviously smaller, but also had a different button layout.
The front of this tablet is black and looks pretty sleek. There are a few touch sensitive "buttons" on one side and a dual coloured light to say when the device is on and when it is being charged. The back is white and has some small tidy print to identify the ports. Around the perimeter are three buttons, two for volume and one for power. Despite being genuine buttons as opposed to touch sensitive areas, they are discreet and may even take some looking for if you aren't familiar with the device. In addition to these buttons there are the ports. Two mini USB ports (one to connect to a computer and one to connect a device such as a keyboard), a mini HDMI port and a charger port. There's also a microSD card slot and a pinhole reset button. At first glance this seven inch tablet looks sexy. Shiny black and white, not as thin as some but certainly not bulky. A closer look may, in some cases, reveal signs of poor build quality. For instance, I noticed that the reset button was not accuratelt aligned with the pinhole and the red 'charge' led was not correctly aligned with the casing. Little things, I know, but when something begins to feel less than perfect, you expect other problems to follow. Usability When I first saw this tablet I questioned whether a seven inch touch screen would be adequate for general use, espdcially as the main stream tablets are at least 10 inches in size. After getting things set up I was pleasantly surprised. Although not as responsive as top end touch screen devices, the screen responded to touch reasonably well. As I rotated it, the screen quickly reorientated. Web pages displayed perfectly and navigating them felt natural. I find myself thinking now that a 10 inch tablet could well be too big! If you use one of these you will understand why there are currently rumours flying around that Apple may be looking into their own range of 7 inch tablets.
The pleasing thing about this capable tablet is that it's running on Android. There are thousands of amazing and useful apps and games available and it's Flash compatible (unlike Apple's offerings). PerformanceThe 1Ghz processor and 512mb RAM can be felt as soon as you power up. The system loads up fast and isn't laggy afterwards. YouTube videos work fine although the BBC iPlayer was too laggy to be usable. Strange, because videos on the BBC News website play fine. As previously mentioned, web pages load quickly and there's no sign of struggle when navigating menus and options.
I've twice had this tablet totally crash. Once, when I first tested it and the battery was actually working. As the battery is fixed, you have to press the reset button. The second time was after the battery had failed meaning I only had to remove the charger to power it off. The integrated camera is almost useless, but, fine I guess for video calls using software such as Skype. Overall Apart from the fact that this didn't work (the battery problem), I really liked this tablet. I think a bit of trouble shooting may have got iPlayer working. I would have been interested to see how the mini HDMI connection worked out on a large screen. The three hour battery life would have been a bit of a push, but I'm sure you'd usually have it on charge anyway.
The biggest concern with the device was actually the charger. The wall outlet end connected to the mains supply by two narrow prongs. The adapter supplied to put it into a British socket allowed the charger to almost fall out. If you were to try to disconnect the two from the wall there's a real danger of touching the prongs whilst they are live! I would certainly have looked for a replacement charger if I had kept this tablet. Since this article was written... Apple have now released their mini tablet (so I'm obviously not the only person who liked the feel and usability of a 7 inch tablet).
These 7 inch android tablets now come with more powerful multi core processors and faster RAM. Definitely worth investing a few extra pounds for the extra power. Especially for streaming, gaming and video playback. Android is now available in later versions (Jellybean at the time of writing). I would definitely advise against getting anything less than the current version of Android. This is because as apps are updated or new ones are released, they will not necessarily work with older versions of the operating system. Finally, capacitive touch is becoming the norm, even on the budget tablets. Steer clear of anything with resistive touch. Even though it's tolerable, it's far from enjoyable once you've experienced the sensitivity of capacitive touch. Have I missed anything? If you would have liked to have seen more information or feel that the article is missing something, get in touch here.
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