Should you buy a cheap tablet?
It’s been a fair while since anyone has been talking about a new tablet release if it isn’t the latest ipad pro – and possibly for good reason. Sales of tablets have been on the decline since late 2013, and while the market is hardly dead – still shipping tens of millions of tablets a year, it might be a valid question to ask, should you buy one? And if so, at what price point? Nowadays you dont have to shell out a load of your hard earned cash for a tablet with something like this Vankyo S20 for around GBP125? Lets try and answer that in this video! But first, if you haven’t already consider subscribing for more videos like this one every monday, wednesday and friday!
So, why buy a tablet at all? Well, the form factor makes it an easy device to use around the house, while travelling or whatever else. Sure, you could use your phone, but the larger screen and normally bigger battery means you can more easily and comfortably enjoy your netflix show or whatever else. They are generally easier to browse the web on, and make for a great moving picture frame to share those holiday pics to guests. They can also be great for video calls, whether working from home during a pandemic or catching up with the family. Speaking of family, they’re ideal for keeping the kids entertained with movies and games or even youtube kids.
So why buy a cheap one like this then? Primarily it’s a worry free experience – If you’ve got kids, you dont have to hand them your $$$ iphone or ipad everytime they want to play a game or rewatch Frozen. Travelling is easier too as you dont have to worry about it getting lost or stolen. It’s a great thing to give to a grandparent to keep in touch, but not worry if they knock it off a table by accident.
It’s also a really low barrier to entry – so while tech enthusiasts like me – and my core audience – probably don’t care for one, it can be handy to have one around for just in case you want to chill in bed one morning watching some netflix, or to keep younger guests entertained.
There are some downsides to going this cheap though. Build quality, while not terrible, isn’t overly fantastic, and the internals aren’t too much better. You’re looking at a UNISOC Octacore – which while that sounds great, is actually just a 3 year old CPU, and a mediocre GPU, along with just 3GB of RAM, and my UK model has 64GB of built in storage with a microsd card slot on the top. All that means it’s a bit slow. Not unbearably – but you do notice it. Mostly when loading websites or youtube it’ll take just a couple seconds longer than it should, but for the price it is hard to argue.
Another area that suffers is the cameras. While it is good it’s got both front and back ones available, they aren’t fantastic. In fact, far from it…
While they’ll be serviceable enough for keeping up with the relatives, you won’t be shooting the next hollywood blockbuster like you could on your phone. The speakers aren’t brilliant either. It’s a set of 2 bottom or side firing speakers, depending on how you hold it, which are clear enough, but a little quiet even on max volume, and yet still have a bit of clipping and distortion to them. Luckily it does have a headphone jack, so rest easy.
One thing they didn’t skimp to hard on was the display. While it’s only 720p, which on a display this size is noticeable, it’s an IPS panel meaning surprisingly good viewing angles and colours. Content consumption on this was actually pretty good, even if it’s not the brightest panel I’ve seen.
Battery life is also pretty good, it’s a 6000mAh unit which they claim can give you up to 10 hours of usage, although is probably more like 6 with decent brightness, but that’s still plenty for most, and it has a Type C port for charging which I’m very happy to see.
So, should you buy one? Well, I’m certainly glad to have this one around. It’s a useful gadget that, at least at this price point, doesn’t cost so much that I wouldn’t consider picking one up for the occasional use. With that said, maybe don’t go for this exact one, as they seem to be running what is now a fairly common scam among Amazon sellers, where you leave a 5 star review and they’ll give you a “free gift”. They explicitly asked me in every email they sent not to show that card, which means I really needed to. But the product itself seems decent, even if the marketing behind it is less than perfect.
S20 on Amazon: https://techteamgb.co.uk/vankyos20
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