
Onda V1701 Android 4.0 Tablet
Last Friday ordered a cheap, $87.99, noname 7" Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich Tablet from Hong Kong. It arrived today. Considering they shipped it Monday morning, I thought Wednesday afternoon delivery was pretty fantastic for $7 shipping.
This is a pretty spiffy device. Nice article and demo video on
Red Ferret and here's it's incredibly
non-descript order page.
Here's it's specs:
Quick, just out of the box impressions:
It came in a decent if generic enough box. I opened it up and started playing with it right away. I has the Google Play store, so after entering in my google account info, I immediately downloaded some apps I had previously bought for my phone as well as all the usual free app suspects: twitter, facebook, dropbox, pandora, etc. etc.
The device has a 5 point capacitive touch screen, that's very responsive. You can pinch to zoom and all that good stuff. Keyboard is very snappy too and kept up acurately with my typing.
I installed Sketchbook Pro and tried some drawing. There's a tiny ammount of lag, but not annoying and pinch to zoom in Sketchbook pro made it fairly easy to zoom in and out drawing and erasing on the small screen. My Sensu capacitive stylus brush also worked fairly well in Sketchbook Pro too.
I installed Android Comic Viewer and pulled a CBR from my dropbox and the pages turned nice and quickly.
I installed Songza, and while the external speaker was a little tinny, the device streamed music nicely in the background while I played around with other apps.
No problem with Youtube. And I'm looking forward to trying the HDMI with my TV a little later.
All sounds good so far right? What's the catch? Why is this Dual Core, 1 gig of ram, 8 gig of onboard storage 7" tablet so cheap? Well mostly because of the screen. The screen is only 800x400 resolution and at the 7" size it's not the sharpest. The viewing angle is pretty substandard by today's standards, and the brightness level leaves a bit to be desired. So if a meh screen is going to really bug you, this might not be the device for you.
But beyond the screen, it's a very snappy device, very responsive, and ice cream sandwhich Android 4.0 feels much more modern to me than my aging 2.3 Gingerbread Evo phone.
If you're a hacker/hobbiest etc. and your looking for a cheap Android tablet or second device to toy around with... I'd reccomend this highly. At half the price of the Nexus 7, if you can deal with the dated screen res and viewing angle, you're going to be quite happy with the purchase.
If you're looking for a first device, I'd still reccomend an iPad or a Nexus 7... both of those devices are well worth the cost and will serve you well as a primary tablet, but if like me, you already have an iPad, but want to dabble abit in Android, or I suppose if that extra hundred for the Nexus 7 is just more than you want to swing, this is a very snappy device that you should enjoy.
Onda V701