Quick Review: Alcatel One Touch Tab 7 HD

Alcatel recently has been stepping up its game by delivering quality Android devices to the market. Their current lineup looks solid especially their One Touch Idol handsets but slightly in the background might be another good find in the form of their One Touch Tab 7HD.

From the name itself, you can safely guess that it’s a 7-inch tablet with an HD display. Looking at the front, it doesn’t look that appealing with its well-rounded corners and thick bezels. It just look like any other cheap China tablets out there.

However, flipping it on its back you will be greeted by a pleasant smooth matte finish with a glossy portion on top to house the camera. This alone immediately added class to this device in my opinion. Nice design that you don’t want to hide with a case.

Looking at the ports and buttons, there’s the tiny Power button on the right side beside the volume rocker. While on top you’ll find the microUSB port and the 3.5mm audio jack. That’s it basically.

You might be wondering, is there a microSD slot? Yes there is. It’s located underneath the glossy plastic covering of the 2-megapixel rear camera at the back. Peel it off to see the microSD slot. Sadly, it would be nice if this phone has a microHDMI port so you can project contents to a larger screen.

Turning it on you will appreciate the beauty of its 1280 x 800 IPS display giving you a somewhat decent 216 ppi pixel density. That’s more than the iPad mini and same as the Google Nexus 7. Although the display is not too bright, the screen looks sharp enough from a comfortable viewing distance and you also get some nice viewing angles with it.

Powering this device is a relatively unknown chip called the Rockchip RK3066 which has a 1.6GHz dual-core Cortex-A9 processor and a Mali 400 MP4 GPU. For comparison, that Mali 400 MP4 GPU is also being used by Samsung’s Exynos 4 SOC which in turn is being used by the Galaxy S II and the first Galaxy Note. This WiFi-only device is also equipped with 1GB RAM and 4GB internal storage.

The One Touch Tab 7HD runs on Android 4.1 Jelly Bean which seemed to be unaltered as you can find other Google apps that are not available in our region such as Play Books, Play Music, Play Magazines, and Play Movies & TV.

There’s a 2-megapixel camera at the back which you probably won’t use much as the quality is not that fabulous and focusing is a bit slow. Still, it’s there when you need it. A VGA front cam lies on the front so it’s possible for you to video chat with this tablet.

There’s a 3300mAh battery giving life to this tablet which is a bit sub-par considering most 7-inch tablets have at least 4000mAh battery intsalled. Using it with WiFi always on, random surfing, a few YouTube videos here and there, and downloading apps,  I was able to get about 4-6 hours from it which is so-so for a WiFi-only tablet.

Verdict

The Alcatel One Touch Tab 7HD is a solid WiFi-only tablet for its price of Php7,490. Design is simple yet classy (I’m talking about the back) and the display is something you would appreciate for the price you paid it for. It’s direct competitor would probably be Starmobile’s Engage 7HD which costs just a little bit higher but with an HDMI and a 4000mAh battery. But if you’re after simplicity in design on an affordable package, the Alcatel One touch Tab 7HD should be considered.