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What we have here today is the Elonex eTouch 700ET 7″ Android Tablet, one of the cheapest tablets that you can get. You can buy this one in Amazon or eBay for only about £70 or £80. I know that there are even some cheaper ones, namely ePad or aPad, but this one is different. This comes from Elonex, a famous brand in eReaders and Tablets, unlike the other noname brands.

From the outside,this one surely looks nice. In fact it looks a lot like the infamous you-know-what tablet. Yes, I’m talking about the iPad. Everything, from the color to the curve and button design…, all resembles the iPad except for the plastic back cover and the smaller 7″ screen. It comes with a big box with almost nothing inside. There is also a screen protector saying “Welcome to a world of wireless internet, music, video and apps at your fingertips”. Let’s memorize this, shall we?

Here is the specification of the devices:

• 7 inch resistive touchscreen with 800×400 resolution
• LNX Code 9 Processor with 128MB RAM
• Google Android 1.6 OS
• 2GB Flash Memory1x Micro SD slot
• Wi-Fi enabled
• Li-on battery with 3.5 hours of active battery life
• 1x USB 2.0 port
• 1x Speaker jack
• Weight 0.7 lbs

Everything seems to be okay, except the processor. I have no idea about its clock speed, and also I can’t figure out what LNX Code 9 is. (Actually when you pronounce L-N-X you will see it’s pretty… similar to something ^^)

Okay, so we have an overview of that. Now let’s dive in “the world of wireless internet, music and apps”.

Let’s be honest, that must be a joke. Really.

I thought the outdated Android might be a problem, but actually it has less problem than every others. The speed of the device is absolutely terrible, which makes it really hard for you just to navigate through menus and screens. Browsing the web is not as great as it should be. Even a simple mobile webpage takes forever to load, and it’s very slow to navigate the page. Also the screen is really unresponsive. I know it’s a resistive touchscreen but that’s not the problem. The problem here is that the screen sometimes recognizes the touch position in the edge or corner, makes the menu totally uncontrollable.

However, the real problem is its software. The device comes with loads of software that’s totally unusable, for example 3G Settings, Camera, Camcorder… Many applications have a lot of bugs. For instant, when I load up the My Music, My Photos or My Videos application, sometimes it says Not found, and sometimes it shows Loading forever, while actually I have the files in my microSD card. After a while I have found a way to move my files to Internal storage, but the applications is not really great. Basically it lists every file that it can find, which makes my Gallery become a total mess. I have also tried to load some videos, eventually found it totally useless. As the speed is way too slow, the videos are played in a terrible framerate, while you can still hear the audio playing. Okay, so the applications come with the device are terrible, but how about the applications in the Market. Unfortunately it doesn’t have access to Android Market. It has an App Market application, but soon I found that there are not many applications over there, even the most popular ones. I wonder why they don’t use app such as SlideMe instead of that unknown stupid App Market?

You can access the Menu, Back and Home button on its taskbar. There are also a nice Capture Screen function on the task bar and a Rotate Screen function. Once you rotate the screen, your icons and widgets will be messed up badly, and the wallpaper is stretched and looks ridiculous. In addition to that, as you don’t have a dedicated Menu button, when using applications in fullscreen mode, there is no way for you to access Menu, which means you won’t be able to change Settings or other stuff.

There are just a few of the bugs I have found. When using the device, you will find ton of things like that. To tell the truth I don’t think normal people would be able to deal with these problem (As I can see many parents bought this for their young children)

On the good side, the screen quality is quite okay. The audio quality is suprisingly good, in terms of both internal and external. I like the Magic Album application, which turns the device into a good clock frame on your table. A strange thing is that the tablet comes with the full version of Document To Go, which normally costs £10. I’m not so sure it’s legit or not, but since it comes from Elonex, there is a (minor) possibility… (Oh, May be you will ask me how this app can be any good. The answer is that there is a keyboard for the tablets like this, so the application can make some use.)

So, let’s summarize:

Pros:

• Cheap tablet for a well-known brand name like Elonex
• Good audio quality
• Pretty good look (of course)

To sum up, DO NOT BUY THIS ONE UNLESS YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING. Really! I thought this one comes from a brand name, but soon I realized that it’s no different to the ePad or aPad. In fact, it’s literally an ePad with an Elonex logo on the back. There is no other difference, really. They are all developed by the same Chinese manufacturer. Therefore if you want a cheap tablet, go for the ePad or aPad. I would suggest you getting the Eken M009S, it has much better specs and cost about the same.

Still, this one could be useful for me to do some drawing…. Hopefully the battery’s not going to die when I’m drawing…

It looks quite identical to the iPad

Even the back is quite the similar. Except for the part Elonex – Design in UK – Made in China

The side of the tablet

 

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