Ever since Apple introduced its iPhone to the market several years ago, technology has advanced in leaps and bounds in the area of consumer oriented smart phones. The market is now practically flooded with these devices, and not all of them will cost the earth.
Today we are reviewing the Slate2 8 Inch Android with Multi-Touch tablet.
Coming in at the cheaper and of the price range, this tablet comes with all the standard features such as SMS/MMS capability, Wi-Fi, 3.5mm audio jack, speakerphone and a built-in camera.
What really stands out on this tablet is for its 8 inch screen size – with a respectable 800×600 pixels, it’s packed with a whole raft of other features.
Weighing in at 572 grams and dimensions of 210.5mm high, 160.5mm wide and 14.7mm thick, this tablet is no lightweight toy.
Although it only comes with 2 GB of internal storage, it can take a 32 GB SD card (in fact, ours came with one) so you will not have to worry about storage issues. It also contains a USB 2.0 port for easy file transfer.
The inbuilt media player can handle nine audio formats (AAC, AAC+, MP3, WMA, WAV, AMR, M4A and OGG), six video formats (MP4, WMV, 3GP, h.263 and h.264) and also supports BMP, GIF, JPEG and PNG images. You can also stream movies without much fuss.
The LCD touch screen works well in all light conditions, and the built-in accelerometer turns smoothly.
During testing the 720MHz processor and 256Mb of RAM worked quite well for the Android 2.2 operating system. While not as fast as some competitors, it needed to use a lot less processing power.
The only real downside of the Slate2 is the 4500mAh Li-ion battery only gives a maximum five hour battery life. That was in Flight Mode. If you’re intending to use the Slate2 as an all-day media centre, make sure you are near a power source. We also noticed that this device does not contain Bluetooth and while this is only a minor issue, users that rely heavily upon getting files from their friends may wish to steer clear.
Overall, for the price bracket that the Slate2 8 Inch Android with Multi-touch Tablet is in, you can do a lot worse in terms of value for money. We found this to be an enjoyable experience without the price tag of its better branded competitors. Getting your hands on this device will be quite difficult as the product has been discontinued in most countries.
Rating: 7 / 10
Pros:
- Good value
- Features
Cons:
- Low storage space
- Battery life
- Heavy
- No Bluetooth