Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsGood value for light work and basics
Reviewed in the United States on January 11, 2017
I'll give you the tl;dr version first:
If you want a basic tablet to browse the internet, watch videos and play games, it's good value. If you need a productivity device, you might want to try a different brand.
I got this to replace a dying second-gen iPad mini. It provides about the same level of performance as the second-gen iPad mini when it was new, although less likely to crash when loading internet pages from a secondary app.
Graphics are nice and smooth, good image resolution, responsive touchscreen. Excellentcameras. Apps and videos load quickly. Sound quality is very clean, even the onboard speaker is crisp. It does occasionally go blind to its WiFi connection, requiring a quick off-and-on-again -- annoying but easy to resolve.
I'm strongly displeased with its word-processing user interface. I do a *lot* of writing -- it's the main reason I need a tablet -- and the way the spell-check/replace function operates is needlessly complicated and frustrating, as is the way the cursor drops in the middle of words rather than finding the nearest end (honestly I could write their QA department a full report on providing smoother function and accessibility for the word-processing UI). There is no way to disable gesture typing -- leading to numerous spelling errors -- and the keyboard (it doesn't matter which style is used, this happens with all of them) is hypersensitive and requires an obtrusive level of precision; I have tried typing with hands and with a fine-point stylus with similar messy results, and had to resolve the issue by purchasing a bluetooth keyboard.
Not a good productivity device on its own; given a good peripheral setup it provides adequate function. I'm hoping future software updates improve things.