Low life
Like the iPad, the Viewpad 10e’s screen is the perfect size for reading e-books, so all you need do is download the Kindle app or Google Books – both available from 1Mobile – and bibliophile heaven beckons.
Kindle app in action
The only fly in the ointment is the Viewpad's battery life. Fair play to ViewSonic for being honest about the 2,700mAh power pack only offering around 5.5 hours and, indeed, between four and five hours is all you can expect. Loop a 720p video and the lights go out at just over the 3 hour mark.
Great value if you can cope with its battery life limitations
Verdict
As it stands the Viewsonic ViewPad 10e is a rather impressive large screen tablet with an attractive price tag. There are a few rough edges, like the absence of the Android Market and mediocre battery life, but nowhere near as many or as serious as I’ve encountered on other budget tablets. Battery life aside, its other shortcomings can be easily dealt with or should be eliminated by the imminent ICS update that it's due. ®
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Viewsonic Viewpad 10e tablet
COMMENTS
> 'alas no USB charging'
> "Fair play to ViewSonic for being honest about the 2,700mAh power pack only offering around 5.5 hours "
> The combination of these two factors makes for a massive fail."
Massive fail ? Really ? From my own tablet use, and that of others I known with one, the normal usage tends to be
- stick tablet in dock/on charging slab
- watch tablet in dock OR take out and veg on sofa/where-ever for a few hours or so of surfing and video watching
- stick tablet back in dock
I really don't know anybody who relies on a tablet for all day usage away from power. I'm certainly not saying they don't exist - far from it, i've heard people who do - but I personally think there are enough people who *don't* need that to make calling this tablet a "massive fail" a bit short-sighted (to be generous to you).
Re: The saving
I disagree. To people who are actually short of cash 200 quid is a lot cheaper than 330 quid. If you don't think so then you're probably not the target market, but there are plenty of people in the UK today who'd find 330 quid out of the question but 200 just about doable.
Re: The saving
Just on the point of storage a few quid more will get you 32GB for this as it has an expansion slot.
£130 is also about two-thirds of the purchase price again so it's not a trivial price hike.
I agree though that this does show the difficulty rivals face in trying to compete with Apple tablets - it's difficult to beat their price to any significant extent without intolerable compromises being made.
This looks like one of the best attempts yet to me.
Re: would
that depends on whether or not the saving of £400 (a mortgage payment right there) was important to me.
Re: The saving
But then you're up into territory where you could have bought a laptop, instead of a toy for browsing the web, which the cheap-o Android one will do a serviceable job of.
