ood value Android tablet for reading and basic browsinh

 
   A1CS 10.1" A10 CAPACITIVE MULTI-TOUCH 8GB TABLET, FLASH 11,SUPPORTS IPLAYER, ANDROID 2.3, WIFI, MIFI, HDMI, 2160P WITH CAM

By mrphil

I bought this tablet after a fair bit of research on the various Android tablet forums. For the price difference between this capacitive multitouch version and the cheaper resistive variety, it was worth paying the small extra amount to get the capactive version.

The tablet itself is sturdy and well built, it certainly doesnt feel "cheap" and its not excessively heavy, I have no issues holding in one hand whilst reading. If you have used an Apple iPad the first thing you'll notice is this tablet looks a bit like a deformed narrow iPad - the screen is a netbook style 1024x600 widescreen LCD whereas an ipad is 1024x768 4:3 display. Because the LCD screen used in the A1CS tablet is designed to be used in landscape only, when rotated to portrait which a lot of Android apps force, the screen is hard to read. This is particularly apparent on a black background, the BBC News app in portrait mode causes eye strain after a while.

The capacitive multitouch touchscreen is very good and definately recommended. However, as some have noted on the reviews for the resistive version of this tablet, it is fine when running on battery, and near-unusable when connected to the mains charger! A quick play with the touchscreen diagnostic app shows that when connected to the charger, the detected finger position jumps around all over the place. As soon as the charger is disconnected the touchscreen becomes accurate. The internal battery though is good so with a bit of planning its easy to avoid using whilst on charge. I have managed around 4 - 5 hours continuous web browsing from a fully charged battery. Wifi reception is as good on this as I get on my iPhone 3GS. Amusingly includes an in-built stylus which cannot be used on a capacitive screen, presumably a hang-over from the original resistive design.

There is a fair few bugs in the Android build on this tablet, all are minor such as locking up during sleep mode and needing a manual reset to wake up. These are the kind of bugs that whilst not significant, could be confusing if the tablet is given to someone non-technical.

Some of the pre-installed apps included Kindle, YouTube, and Facebook. Of those, Facebook needed to be upgraded to latest version before it would connect, not tried Kindle but seems to work OK, YouTube app has some glitches, specifically its fine if kept in landscape but if you rotate the device too many times it caused th display driver to freeze and the tablet must be reset. After downloading the Vevo app, between that and Youtube app there is loads of video content and it works very well generally. Angry Birds Seasons ran absolutely fine.

Android Market is free version only and even then LOTS of the free apps seem to be missing... my workaround has been to use Google instead and search for the "APK" of the apps I want, APK being the file format of Android apps and once the APK is downloaded clicking it will cause it to install. The pre-installed web browser Dolphin is slightly faster than any of the other major browsers I downloaded and tried, but expect to wait a little for each page to load. And forget Flash content, Flash 10.1 is installed but its not fast enough to play content from iPlayer and other sites.

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