10. Fly Vision Tablet
PRICE IN INDIA
7,300
9. Mercury mTab
PRICE IN INDIA
9,499
8. iBall Slide Android Tablet
PRICE IN INDIA
13,995
7. Motorola Zoom
PRICE IN INDIA
35,590
6. Asus Eee Pad Transformer TF101G
PRICE IN INDIA
43,000
5. Lenovo Ideapad K1
PRICE IN INDIA
33,990
4. Samsung Galaxy Tab750(GT P7-500)
PRICE IN INDIA
32,500
3. Sony Tablet S
PRICE IN INDIA
29,990
2. Lenovo ThinkPad
44,871
39,000
PRICE IN INDIA
7,300
RATING
4.5
Fly is a fairly popular brand in India, best known for their entry-level mobile phones. The company has recently launched one of the most economical tablets available in the market, second only to the Akaash tablet. But money isn’t the only consideration of course, so read on to find out if the value of the Fly Vision meets its price tag.
DESIGN & BUILD
Fly is equipped with a 7-inch resistive touchscreen, which has a 16:9 aspect ratio and a resolution of 800 x 480. This means that one can use a stylus or fingers (but will need to tap the display with a little more effort) to access the various onscreen options.One side of the bezel has a brushed metal finish and on it is a singular ‘Home’ button.This tablet is basically in landscape mode and the top is where the buttons such as on/off, menu and return keys are placed. On the bottom of the slate are where all the ports are located. These include a full-size USB port, a mini-USB port, DC-in for charging, a 3.5mm audio jack, as well as a MicroSD card slot. There is a 2GB memory card that comes along with it and the storage capacity can be expanded to 16GB. The rear features a built-in speaker.While running Linpack, the Fly Vision tablet gave us a score of 1.908 MFLOPS on multi thread, while we got a single thread reading of 2.157 MFLOPS. Not impressive, at all.
PERFORMANCE
The Fly Vision tablet runs on a stock version of Android 2.2 Froyo. On the home page and the main menu, there are no enhancements present.The home screen is pretty simple looking and it appears like Fly has just added Froyo on this tablet without any customization from their end.The tablet runs on a 600MHz ARMv6 processor. In terms of power, this is obviously not the fastest, but you can’t expect too much from the price. This is evident while navigating through the interface and the lag that is noticeable onscreen. As compared to the Beetel Magiq, this tablet is pretty slow. The buttons on the top help in accessing the options such as settings, wallpaper, notifications, etc., right from the home page itself. So there is no need to go to the main menu, because this helps with just a single click. There is no camera on this slate.
PRICE IN INDIA
9,499
RATING
5.0
The budget tablet market has been getting a new member almost every month now. The newest addition comes in the form of the Mercury mTAB, a 7-inch tablet priced just under the Rs.10,000 mark. Back in the nineties, Mercury were pretty popular for their computer peripherals, mostly speakers. Today, the company has expanded into the tablet market as well and why not, with all the the hype surrounding these new gadgets, it’s only natural for a company to want to cash-in on some of the limelight.
DESIGN & BUILD
Taking it out of the box, the mTAB is pretty lightweight at 400g and is very comfortable to hold, too. It’s not particularly slim, though, which may be a turn off for some. The mTAB is built entirely of plastic, with a black bezel and white back. The front has a glossy finish, which easily attracts fingerprints. There are two physical buttons on the front, for ‘Options’ and ‘Back’. The front-facing camera is placed in the bottom corner, which we felt was a rather odd place. Overall the mTAB is decently built with no creaking parts.It has a decent set of connectors including mini-HDMI, microSD card slot, mini-USB with On-the-go functionality and a 3.5mm headphone jack. There are physical buttons for volume, home and power. For some reason, the mTAB simply refused to reset to the default settings.
PERFORMANCE
The mTAB is powered by a 1.2GHz single core processor and runs Android 2.3.3 Gingerbread. The 7-inch screen is capacitive, so using it is not too painful. It responds well to touch and two finger multi-touch is present as well. Unfortunately, the resolution is pretty low and also the colour gamut is not very wide, which causes major banding in photos and videos. The screen, while bright is not able to display rich colours, so the end result is a washed out image. Also, since there’s no ambient light sensor, you’ll have to manually adjust the brightness.Although there’s no SIM card slot, Mercury claim that there’s support for a 3G modem, but since they didn’t send the USB adapter along with it, we could not verify that. There are options in the settings for a 3G modem, as well as TV-out resolution settings.
PRICE IN INDIA
13,995
RATING
6.0
The brand has been quite popular in the PC peripherals business for a long time and only recently entered the mobile phone field. Taking things up by a notch, they’ve launched the 1GHz infused, Android Gingerbread toting ‘Slide’ tablet. Keeping the Indian price low has never been an issue with the company with the iBall Slide priced at Rs. 13,995, and here’s what you get for that price.
DESIGN & BUILD
The first thing you’ll probably notice is the lack of a rear camera, which is a bit of a downer seeing at a 2MP camera lens is staring at you in the face for video VoIP calling support. The 7-inch capacitive display is actually quite bright and the though resolution i.e. 800 x 480 is identical to the likes of the Beetel Magiq or the Reliance 3G Tab, images appear much sharper and colors a little more dense. An adapter cable has been provided. On one side of the device is a microSD card (up to 32GB supported with 8GB of onboard storage), mini HDMI out, USB ports for data transfer and on-the-go separately, a power switch to shut off the device, a 3.5mm handsfree, DC charging socket and a microphone.
PERFORMANCE
Running on a 1GHz ARM Cortex-A8 processor with Android Gingerbread (2.3) the iBall Slide offers no customized UI. The stock interface is very responsive, though and from animations to accessing and opening apps, it’s an extremely speedy performer. The UI worked out to be much more fluid compared to the others in its segment with enough juice to play full HD (1080p) content almost flawlessly.Linpak MFLOPS scores clocked it in at 17.357 (Single Thread) and 15.906 (Multi Thread), which seems just a little low and yet oddly it was a far better performer than the others. AnTuTu’s coring put it in the same league as HTC’s Desire HD mobile handset.
PRICE IN INDIA
35,590
RATING
6.5
The one that started it all i.e. Motorola’s Xoom, was the first commercially available tablet to rock Google’s Honeycomb OS. Launched in early 2011, Motorola took their own sweet time in bringing it to India, perhaps they were aiming for a fashionably late entrance. The company has launched two variants of the Xoom in India, a Wi-Fi only model and a 3G + Wi-Fi version as well both with 32GB of internal storage.
DESIGN & BUILD
An aluminium frame makes up most of the body which is smooth and does not attract fingerprints. The upper portion is plastic with a rubber coating, where the GSM, 3G and Wi-Fi radios are placed. At 730g, it weighs the same as the Acer ICONIA Tab 500 but somehow it doesn’t feel as heavy, probably due to better weight distribution of the components.There’s a volume rocker on the left while the SIM card and memory card slot and 3.5 headphone jack is placed on the top. There are two white LEDs hidden in the bezel. The one just above the charging port lights up when the tablet is charging and is switched off. The other one is placed on the right and is a narrow horizontal slit that glows when you get an alert like a new e-mail.
PERFROMANCE
The Xoom comes with 3.1 (or is upgradable, in case you bought an old unit). Motorola hasn’t done anything to the interface at all, it’s pretty much stock Android. However, the improvements are apparent right away. The sluggishness and jerky behaviour is almost non existent. Unlocking the device, switching orientations or browsing the menus is a lot smoother and responsive to input.The taskbar, which is the third icon from the bottom now let’s you view up to 17 previously opened apps so you can quickly switch whenever required. However, not all of them will run in the background but you can at least quickly access them this way. Another big and highly anticipated feature that everyone’s been waiting for is GTalk, now let’s you sign into multiple accounts. When you open the app, you can choose which gmail account you wish to sign into.The 10.1-inch screen carries the same 1280x800 pixel resolution and the Xoom is powered by Nvidia’s Tegra 2 CPU which runs at 1GHz. The internal memory is 32GB and is the same for both, the Wi-Fi and 3G models. Overall, Honeycomb seems a lot more user friendly now but it still has some chinks in the armor like the bug which makes the tablet unresponsive when charging is still present.
PRICE IN INDIA
43,000
RATING
7.0
Lenovo teased us with the LePad but never actually got to putting it into production. Thankfully, Asus saw a window of opportunity and capitalized on it by creating, quite frankly, the best hybrid device seen to date. We give you the Transformer TF101G - a tablet for leisure and a netbook for work.
DESIGN & BUILD
The Transformer comes in two parts, there’s the tablet itself and the keyboard dock which further expands its functionality. Let’s start with the tablet. Measuring just 12.9mm in thickness, it’s really slim and light too, at just 695g. The Galaxy Tab 750 still remains the slimmest and lightest 10.1-inch tablet though. The TF101G is built extremely well and it just feels like it costs a premium.The tablet sports an IPS panel and a scratch-resistant glass for added protection.Connectivity wise, we have a 3.5mm headphone jack with support for a microphone as well, mini-HDMI (Type C) connector, microSD card slot while the left side houses the SIM card slot (For the TF101G model only) and the volume rocker and power/sleep button.In the rear,it has a 5MP camera without flash and a front facing 1.3MP camera for video chat. While the TF101G does accept SIM cards, it does not support telephony functions. It comes with 16GB memory.
PERFORMANCE
The Transformer is powered by Nvidia’s Tegra 2 processor and runs Honeycomb 3.2.1. Asus haven’t done a lot of customization to the interface other than a few widgets and different icons for the on-screen menu buttons. They’ve also thrown in some of their own widgets like MyZine which keeps circulating through your latest photos, music and web pages in a single window and a custom weather widget.The interface is quick and fluid with very few signs of slow down.
PRICE IN INDIA
33,990
RATING
7.5
If you look at the pictures more closely, you'll notice the K1 and the tablet portion of Le Pad are virtually identical. The company announced this along with two other tablets a couple of weeks back in a rather grand spectacle. This is Lenovo's first foray in the world of Android tablets and it faces stiff competition from the iPad 2, Motorola Xoomand the Samsung Galaxy Tab 750.
DESIGN & BUILD
The K1 tablet is built to last, something we've come to expect from Lenovo. The fit and finish of the aluminium body is really good and the brown leather back gives a premium feel while also helping with the grip. The rounded edges and wide bezel allows you to hold it firmly without your fingers interfering with the touchscreen.The 10.1-inch multi-touch screen is rich and vibrant although a bit reflective at times. The microphone, power button, volume rocker, orientation lock and microSD card slots are placed on the left while the SIM tray is on the right for the 3G model. At the bottom we have a mini-HDMI jack, 3.5mm headphone jack and the docking/charging port. Lenovo uses a proprietary connector for data transfer instead of the microUSB.
PERFORMANCE
The Lenovo K1 runs on Android Honeycomb 3.1 so we automatically get multiple sign-ins through GTalk, shortcut to more previously opened apps and overall snappier performance. Instead of stock Honeycomb, Lenovo has heavily customised the interface with plenty of useful widgets and bundled apps without compromising the performance of the tablet by a great deal.The shortcut widget lets you directly jump to gallery, music, email, eBook reader, Internet or settings. Lenovo have added plenty of alternatives to the stock apps like mSpot for music, a custom video player as well as gallery. A shortcut at the bottom brings up a carousel on the right for frequently used apps which can be chosen by you.The 1GHz dual-core Tegra T20 ensures everything runs smooth and the 1GB of RAM complements it well. You also get 32GB of onboard memory plus you can further expand that via microSD card. The little button we mentioned earlier is also an optical trackpad. You swipe up to go forward and down to go one step back. While this is handy when browsing a web page it's really annoying when you're watching a video.
PRICE IN INDIA
32,500
RATING
7.5
Nokia’s dominance knew no bounds, which made it difficult for other manufacturers to be heard in this cut-throat segment. Fast forward to 2010, and the tables had turned with Samsung emerging as the new superpower in the mobile space. Apple’s gamble with the iPad paid off well and since then no one has been able to really tap that success. Google seems to finally be getting their act together with the Honeycomb 3.1, and all that’s needed is some well-designed hardware to complement it.
DESIGN & BUILD
The Tab 750 is the slimmest 10.1-inch tablet in the market and the lightest as well at just 565g.Samsung have achieved this by using plastic for the chassis instead of aluminium. Now, before you cringe at that thought, it’s a very high quality plastic that doesn’t creak if you apply pressure.The glossy screen features an 800 x 1280 pixel resolution and Samsung have used a PLS TFT display with Gorilla Glass to make it scratch-resistant.The power and volume rocker buttons have good feedback and you can easily find them even in the dark. There’s also a 3.5mm headphone jack and a slot for the 3G SIM card. The Galaxy Tab 750 comes with stereo speakers that are placed on either sides in landscape mode.Notice that there’s no memory expansion option, so you’re limited to the built-in storage, which is 16GB. The rear portion has a 3MP auto-focus camera with a single LED flash.
PERFORMANCE
Samsung has launched the Galaxy Tab 750 with Android Honeycomb 3.1 and has ported their TouchWiz UX UI over as well. This puts it ahead of the curb compared to the Xoom, as far as out-of-the-box functionality is concerned. Where stock Honeycomb is a bit dull and boring even, TouchWiz is a lot more colourful and lively.Navigation is quick and painless thanks to the dual-core Nvidia Tegra 2 processor under the hood and 1GB of RAM.The TouchWiz UX UI is borrowed from the Galaxy S II, only modified a bit for the larger screen. Samsung has included a bunch of different widgets and wallpapers for you to choose from. You can fine tune the widget by adjusting its size as well.Samsung has also installed their own icon set and have modified the notification tab, which makes it a lot more user friendly. What used to be tiny toggle switches on the stock Honeycomb for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, etc. are now bigger and easier to spot. In ‘Settings’, Samsung have added the ability to connect to Kies, their syncing software, via Wi-Fi. There’s a new ‘Mode’ option in the brightness setting, which lets you choose between Dynamic, Standard and Movie. This changes the colour tone of the display. Power saving mode lets you manage the battery life.
PRICE IN INDIA
29,990
RATING
7.5
Sony made a debut in the flourishing tablet market with two distinctly designed devices – Tablet S and the Tablet P. The Tablet S sports a stylish and sophisticated look, while the Tablet P turns heads over its dual screen, clutch form factor. Interestingly, Sony’s claim to fame in portable devices has been its PSP, while the PlayStation phone didn’t take too much time to lose the fizz after its launch. We managed to lay our hands on the latter, the Sony Tablet S, which was released in India, earlier this month. Let’s unfold its attributes one by one to find out if it can keep up with the performance exhibited by some of the key players.
DESIGN & BUILD
Sony devices are known for stylish looks.The Sony tablet S isn’t an exception and sports a sophisticated look in black and silver.About 1.5cm at its thickest part, the rear grid-like design ensures a firm grip, even while holding it in one hand. Besides the front and plastic that extends from the upper edge, the rest of the device along with its slanting side edges is maintained in silver. A reset, volume and main power buttons run along the left edge, while you’ll find a compartment for SD card and micro USB port on the right edge. The backside shows a 5MP camera and it also has a 0.3MP front facing camera. The power port is on the lower edge.The front is glossy with a 9.4-inch TFT capacitive touchscreen display featuring 800 x 1280 pixels resolution. At 625 grams, it is heavier than the iPad 2 and Samsung Galaxy 750. The tablet has a thick side, which is made of a silver plastic panel - it feels a little cheap.
PERFORMANCE
The Tablet S runs on Android Honeycomb 3.2, which we’ve seen earlier on the Samsung 750 (layered with the Samsung Touch UI) and the Motorola Xoom. This version of the Android OS has been specifically crafted to suit the need of tablet users. Sony has enhanced the UI with several tweaks exclusive to its tablet like the favorites icon has been added on the top left next to the Apps icon. Moreover, a row of quick launch buttons are placed on the right upper corner - Browser, e-mail, remote control and news feeds. On hitting the icons, all apps appear in a neat, large matrix, which can be instantly added to the home screen. Likewise, just long press on the main screen and you notice all screens appear in a low on the upper side.The scores show that the Sony Tablet S is indeed a bit faster, than the Samsung Tab 750.
PRICE IN INDIA
44,871
RATING
7.5
Lenovo recently hopped on the tablet bandwagon with the IdeaPad and ThinkPad tablets. Like in the case of their laptops, the IdeaPad is targeted at the general audience, while the ThinkPad is skewed more towards office productivity.
DESIGN & BUILD
It is 10.1 inch build with 58.4 x 181.7 x 14 mm length.When held in landscape mode with the camera located at the top, you have a Mini HDMI port, a docking connector, a 3.5 mm audio jack and a micro USB slot all exposed on the right side. A SIM card slot and an SD card slot are also present, but they’re hidden behind a plastic flap. On the opposite side, you have the volume rocker and a hollow compartment to store the digitizer pen that’s included in the bundle. The pen uses a single AAA battery and comes with two additional tips. The power button is placed on the longer side right above the camera and on the opposite side features a full size USB 2.0 port, which has been cleverly placed.
PERFORMANCE
The Lenovo ThinkPad runs Android Honeycomb 3.1 and the hardware that it uses is similar to that used in other 10.1-inch tablets of its class – 1 GHz dual-core processor, 1GB RAM and graphics powered by Nvidia Tegra 2. This tablet is available in two capacity variants – the 32GB model costs Rs.44,871 and the 64GB model costs Rs.47,871. Since there’s a difference of a few thousand rupees between the two capacities, it’s wiser to go in for the latter, if your budget allows you.
1. Asus Eee Pad Slider(SL101)
PRICE IN INDIA
39,000
RATING
8.0
The most obvious reason one might buy a netbook instead of a tablet today is that there’s just no substitute for a real keyboard. Accessory makers have been selling Bluetooth keyboards and dock-like contraptions for a while now, but these aren’t the most comfortable or convenient to use. Sensing an opportunity in a market full of similar-looking iPad clones, Asus has developed the first Android tablet with a truly integrated keyboard.
DESIGN & BUILD
At 0.9kg, the Eee Pad Slider weighs at least a few hundred grams more than most 10-inch tablets, and is at least twice as thick. It’s also a lot wider, which allows for a decent-sized keyboard, but results in a thick black bezel around the screen. The front camera is positioned along the wide edge, so it’s on top when the Slider is open, but the rear camera is placed on what is effectively the device’s bottom, making it difficult to use and vulnerable to scratches.Capitalizing on its physical width, the Slider includes reasonably loud stereo speakers, a USB host port, mini HDMI video out and an easily accessible microSD card slot. The USB port can be used to connect a hard drive, pen drive, mouse, or even an external keyboard if you choose to. The only thing missing is an easily accessible rotation lock switch.The Slider’s screen is bright and crisp, and the 16:10 aspect ratio ensures enough space both for watching movies and for getting work done. Unfortunately there’s no built-in pointing device, which became a minor irritant each time we instinctively reached for a mouse or trackpad while using the Slider with its keyboard out. The CPU is a fairly standard 1 GHz Nvidia Tegra2, which is more than enough for most applications, including gaming.
PERFORMANCE
this tablet running Android 3.1, though the official specs list 3.2 as standard. Asus hasn’t carried out much customization, apart from a new default on-screen keyboard that takes up much more screen space, but is easier to use. Noteworthy apps include Amazon Kindle for ebooks; Polaris Office, which can read and edit MS Office formats; augmented reality tool Layar; and MyNet, which lets you browse shared media files over Wi-Fi. The usual suite of Google apps, including Maps, Latitude, Gmail and YouTube are of course available, as is an Nvidia app called TegraZone, which lists a number of games that are available for you to buy. All apps ran smoothly, and we had no problems multitasking even with 5–10 apps open in the background.The Slider won’t give you the benefits of running Windows and all your usual programs on standard PC hardware, but it might offer a better balance of battery life and flexibility between work and play. Asus’ other tablet offering, the Eee Pad Transformer, is also a strong alternative because it lets you ditch the keyboard when it isn’t needed and carry just the tablet around, to save space and reduce weight.
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