MyProffs

ViewSonic ViewPad 10 review is a 10in tablet with two strings to its bow - using an Intel Atom processor, it can boot into either Windows 7 or Android 1.6. Price from: £199 inc VAT

Review

Viewsonic ViewPad 10s looks much better compare to the original ViewPad 10, which has Windows 7 and Android 1.6. The Tablet runs Android 2.2 (with Tap UU), Nvidia Tegra2, Cortex A9, 512 MB of DDR2 RAM, 16 GB flash memory, 10.1-inch capacitive LCD at 1024 X 600 and weigh at 750g.

The Design

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The ViewSonic ViewPad 10e sports a 9.7-inch TFT-LCD (1024x768 XGA) capacitive touchscreen. The device is surrounded by a black bezel that features three touch sensitive buttons for menu, home, and back. The tablet only Camera is at the front; a 1.3 megapixel offering designed for video calling rather than taking pictures of things you see.

The back is matt black back with ViewSonic logo that fits in with the whole "budget" label ViewSonic has given this tablet. The device is thin (241.6 x 188.6 x 9.1 mm), the good news is the tablet isnt ugly and fat, and the build quality is certainly better than many devices we've seen - including HP and it's phone and tablet offerings in the past; yes HP Pre, we are talking about you.

The main action happens on the top edge of the Android tablet. You get a power in (there is no USB charging supported), micro USB connector for side loading content from your PC, a headphone jack, mini HDMI out to connect it to a TV, and a micro SD card slot for expanding beyond the internal memory.

Software

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ViewSonic's approach to the 10e is that you are getting it for a price that is considerably cheaper than the Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime. The big difference with this tablet, over rivals, is the software. Asus, for example, runs software which is 100 per cent certified Android, from Google, the ViewSonic ViewPad 10e does not. Ah the wondrous joys of Android, certification, fragmentation, and being able to run the operating system without the 100 per cent approval of the company that makes and creates it.

That means that you won't get the official Android Marketplace. You can load it on, if you are clever, via nefarious means.The ViewPad 10e isnt as bad as it sounds. ViewSonic get around the sticky problem by pre-installing a third party app store called 1Mobile Market.

This alternative app store, and it seems to have most apps. But not all. There is, for example, no Skype or RockPlayer, but there is Angry Birds, Dropbox, Dolphin, and others that you'll want. The 1Mobile Market store also offers all the standard Google apps, so you can, after a couple of minutes of downloading, be up and running very quickly with the likes of Gmail, Google+, and Google Reader.

You can also download, via a browser, the Amazon App Store, and between the two stores you should be able to get apps you need. The Amazon App store has Skype for example, as well as lots of games, but like 1Mobile Market there are holes. Downloading Tiny Tower via 1Mobile Market didn't work and Amazon doesn't list it - shocking.

ViewSonic also goes some way to giving you some apps pre-loaded like Amazon's Kindle app and a movie player. Without doubt, however, you're going to need to start getting on those third-party stores to beef-up your collection of amazing apps.

Is better to  download a better keyboard like Swiftkey, download a browser that won't crash on you every couple of minutes - either try Dolphin or Firefox - and get Gmail on pronto if you plan to the ViewSonic for email.

If the lack of Google certification will worry you, then you'll likely be even more disheartened to see manufacturers still putting Gingerbread on their tablets. With Google having explained that this version of the OS is unsuitable for large-screen devices, it's fairly concerning to see it still happening.

The good news is  that the 10e will be getting an upgrade to Ice Cream Sandwich in February 2012. But again, like the current OS (Gingerbread, Android 2.3), it won't be a certified version. That means, once again, no app store.

The Engine room

The 10e isnt faster Sadly, slowly sorry,  the ViewPad 10e comes with a 1GHz Cortex A8 CPU, 512MB of RAM, and 4GB storage for apps, video, music, pictures and other files. While that should be enough to get you enjoying Angry Birds and watching low-res movies, it isn't enough to do anything substantial. Film support includes MPEG1, MPEG2, MPEG4, AVC, VC-1, Flash video, motion JPEG, VP6, DivX, XviD and WMV9.

Overall, the menus seem slow with everything taking that little bit longer to perform than it should. Even when watching movies the array of different video playback apps installed on the device struggled with anything of any decent quality. If it's HD you want to watch  forget it.

What Good

Aside from Apple iPad the speed of this pad is mind blowing and is reasonable easy to use. You get 802.11g Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.1 +EFR, HDMI output (hence you can connect straight to your TV), 16GB of storage via a bundled microSD card and has 1.3-megapixes front camera.

BBC homepage loaded in an average of six seconds and even streaming online video works smoothly. The tablets is low-cost competition, however, is with its battery life. In an idle state, connected to a Wi-Fi router and with the screen on medium brightness, it lasted 8hrs 34mins before running out of juice – more than double the life of the Samsung Galaxy Tab.

What Bad

Even though the tablet running one of the latest versions of Android, like many other android tablets before this doesn’t include all standard Google application including the market it comes with the App Center (run by German company called Android PIT), however you can install Android Market.

The tablet it isn’t light and its all-plastic construction (however it doesn’t look too bad) hence cannot compete with even the first-generation iPad (although it wasn’t intended to compete head-to-head with iPads).

There is no physical button on its front, all the controlling includes back, menu and home are on a toolbar at the top of the screen, and however you will soon get use to it.

Key Specs

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