iView 760TPC Tablet Review

This is my initial review of the iview 760TPC android 7" tablet. In looking for the right tablet I went about figuring out what I would use one for. I have used an ipod touch first generation to watch movies, listen to music and play some games during my long commute to work. I do not use it to read books since I find the screen too small for that. It is fine as a pocket portable computer. Since the battery started to go, I decided to get something bigger in screen size. I do not exactly like having to constantly use itunes to load content on this device; it’s basically a very cumbersome process. I tried the Sony PSP as you can tell by my recent review of that experience, but I was disappointed that it's not really good for reading things such as PDF books. Also, it does not connect to my home network well, and watching movies on it is uncomfortable since you can easily hit a key and it goes haywire. I will still use it to play games.

Since I consider the ipad the Rolls Royce of tablets I made it a point not to get one just yet. I like to do things the hard way as a true wannabe tech geek, I guess. I have played with both the ipad2 as well as the Kindle Fire. The ipad 2 is just great, but I did not see myself carrying this rather large tablet on the train, as well as spending $500 plus for something that could easily get damaged (I would be on pins and needles everyday). The Kindle Fire is nice, but I found it quite limiting in storage and other content options. The first time I played with one, my friend Paul had very little content in it, and it seems he had some trouble getting it to play netflix, streaming smoothly from his home network.

I had heard that android tablets were not that great, my brother got the HP tablet $99 deal, but I heard that even though you can load android on that, it’s an obsolete kind of device, and I did not find one for $99.

I was extremely and pleasantly surprised when my friend Phil dropped by and gave me a great tip. It seems that there were these tablets coming out that were below $200 that work pretty well and came with the latest android OS. The only problem: They were being sold in China. I just recently had a bad experience with a package from China, the product came crushed because of the inadequate, thin, bubble wrap, and good luck trying to get a refund; just shipping it back will cost you a fortune.

            As luck would have it, good all newegg was having a sale on this thing, and after reading the great reviews I jumped in and bought one. For around $130 bucks; as my friend Mr. Nero says: “How could you go wrong”!

           

Let’s get down to the goods:

-       It’s a 7” TFT Capacitive Touch Screen (it’s multi touch but don’t expected it to be like the ipad)

-       The resolution is 800x400 (it’s not a retina display, but it can play HD files and those look fantastic)

-       512 MB of memory and 8 gigs of hardrive space

-       It can take micro SD cards up to 32GB (beats both the ipad and the Fire)

-       Comes with Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) but you can upgraded to Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) version 4

-       802.11b/g/n Wireless LAN

-       2 lbs.

-       7.5" x 4.75" x 0.50"

-       It has a pretty fast processor

-       Battery life (after you tweak it a bit) is about 5-6 hours

-       3D performance is good
-  2 megapixel camera (you can make skype video calls)

-       Precise accelerometer (for the racing games)

-       Rooted Android (which means you can go to the android market and get a bunch of apps, mostly FREE, including all the angry bird games, and you can “home brew it” adding a lot of functionality)

In a nutshell, after testing it for a few days and adding all the tips and tricks and adjustments (like disabling the telephony apps for better battery life, updating to the latest android market and installing superuser and file browser), I can say the following:

It's probably not as easy to set up and use as an ipad or Kindle, but if you get it and do the little required work on it, you will be handsomely rewarded with a great little device.

It plays all the video files you can think of, you can read ebooks, PDF books and news and info from the web. Angry birds plays really well. You can also play all those newer games that would choke my old first gen ipod touch.

Since it comes with a mini USB and a mini HDMI port, you can hook it up to a HD big TV, add a mouse and keyboard and use it as a stand-alone computer. That alone is worth more that the $130. Since you go through HDMI you get both sound and video with no quality loss. Your 1080p HD video will look like 1080p HD video. The Android market and the Android apps are pretty good (you can get a lot more on the ipad, true). You can also get apps from Amazon android store, but why bother?

Since it has wifi you can check and reply to your emails, and also do some word processing and spread sheets with the included office apps.

You can watch utube videos and you can watch any flash based content on the web. Hulu restricts you to HULU plus, bummer.

      When comparing it to the ipad, the ipad is way better (but not as flexible), but you pay a lot more and it is also bigger and heavier. I find the 7-inch size very nice for travel. When comparing it to the Kindle Fire, no contest, I would get this. The Kindle fire does seem to be a bit faster since it has a faster processor, but this it a heck of a lot more flexible and it offers unlimited storage through micro SD. I have heard that when you load ICS the performance is way better, but I’m not up to that point yet. I will continue to test and enjoy this wonderful product. In future posts, I will recommend some apps and games as well as tell you about any cons I find. So far, I’m amazed about what this cheapie tablet can do. For the money it's a steal! Did I mention it comes with a free leather case? And I left my plastic protector on, so FREE screen protector as well, thanks to my friend Tim for that tip plus the help of my trusty exacto knife and a piece of thick plastic under the included screen protector, cutting it down so the buttons would not be covered.
You can buy this tablet at newegg here:

iView 760TPC Tablet at newegg