Firstly, I will update this review as time passes. I have been using this tab for the last few days now, and it started out as more of an evaluation, as I would have returned this in favor of the HP 7 VoiceTab. But I’think’ I will keep this one.
First things first, this model supports 4G. I guess that’s a plus for future use.
Upon booting you will be greeted with a very laggy Dell logo, which might scare the crap out of you. The tab also froze for a second in the homescreen, which hasn’t happened since. First thing to notice about the tab is the wonderful screen - it’s crisp, vibrant and full of life. The screen is great and the touch is good. Watching movies/videos is a pleasure to behold, and the tab can easily handle 1080p videos with 10mbps bitrate. The tab features Ambient Lighting Sensor, hence there’s the option for auto brightness. The Intel SmartVideo option promised a couple of advantages, but turning them on turned every video to a stack of green lines. The inbuilt video player doesn’t have enough audio codec support, so you are better off downloading some third party app like VLC or MXplayer.
The tab comes preloaded with MaxxAudio. I had no idea what its does, so I disabled it. Which was a mistake. The speaker of the tab and sound quality in general is an embarrassment without this MaxxAudio app. The volume gets too low and loses all clarity. However, with the MaxxAudio active, the sound quality of the tab is very good, albeit not great. Clarity is surprisingly good. For music, is preferable to use a good quality headphone. The position of the speaker is bad for gaming or watching movies though, as holding the tablet in the landscape mode covers the speaker and muffles it.
One feature I was really confused about is the voice calling option. Turns out, the tab has no earpiece(as was evident in the picture). So you can avail the call options by using only the speaker, or a headphone. This is equivalent to the loudspeaker option in mobile phones.
In order to evaluate performance, I loaded some of my owned games - GTA Vice City, GTA San Andreas, Asphalt 8: Airborne, Hitman GO, Temple Run 2. Vice City runs smoothly on highest. San Andreas runs smoothly in medium settings. Airborne runs smoothly in medium and ok-ish in high settings. Hitman GO works like a charm. Surprisingly, Temple Run 2 suffers from noticeable lag in the Best visual quality. Even in lowest visual quality there is some lag, which is not noticeable, but definitely present. Other puzzle/platformer games like Cut the rope 1/2, Badlands, etc. run quite well. Some of the games like Asphalt or Hitman GO hanged a couple of times. One case required a forced shutdown.
Although the Atom Z3460 processor is capable of handling moderate multitasking, there are expected slowdowns while literally heavy multitasking. Especially while doing CPU bound jobs like file extraction. I loaded a large PDF file 1000 pages long, and there was some noticeable time taken for each page to load in Polaris. Adobe Reader did a better job though. There was no lag at such moments though.
The back camera is ok. Nothing more, nothing less. It does a decent job with it’s average auto focus feature. However, there are two major drawbacks in the primary camera - the tremendously low color saturation and the lack of clarity. Every picture taken under any condition will lack the proper coloration and will look muddy/hazy/faded. The primary camera is capable of capturing 1080p videos(which are very grainy, but not that bad actually) and maximum of 5 megapixel pictures. The front camera is an embarrassment as it produces very bad image quality. It is capable of capturing 720p videos and 1 megapixel pictures.
The battery quality ranges from average to good. Definitely not great. Standby time is great though. Charging time is on the higher side too.
Of the 16GB internal memory that is provided, around 10GB will be accessible to the users. The tab has it’s fair share of bloatwares, but not it’s own file manager, which is a pity. The Polaris office is a good addition though. It supports almost all modern document file formats. The tab supports 1 micro sim and 1 SD card which I have tested positively with my 32GB class 10 card. Upon heavy gaming, the part beside the camera gets a little heated up, but not to worrisome levels. Kitkat version 4.4.4 is preloaded with the tab and comes with all the features expected from a non-rooted device. For more options however, it is obviously better to root the device at one’s own risk. Also of note is the back cover, which provides a great grip.
I have not tested internet facilities and speed yet with 3G/2G. I will update this review with any other substantial info within a few days/weeks. Overall though, I am satisfied with the tab. It is good option for casual gaming, reading and watching videos or listening to music. Just don’t expect hardcore multitasking.