Watch out iPad! Here is Australia’s first home grown tablet PC from TegaTech. It features a 10.2 inch touch screen, Intel Atom N450 processor, 2GB of RAM, 160GB SATA Harddrive with Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate pre-installed (optional). It also includes an optional 3G card.
With the assistance of a stylus, you can type or even handwrite words, numbers, web addresses straight onto the screen with ease. However, using fingers didn’t work (required force) and made the screen very dirty.
Check out the review after the break.
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Score:
5.5 / 10
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The Good:
Run whatever you want, fast, responsive
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The Bad:
Heavy, gets hot, stylus needed, exhaust in inconvenient location
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Bottom Line:
Great to use but needs improving.
The TEGA Tablet has been out for quite awhile now (end of 2009) and I haven’t seen many around. When Tom told me about this device, I had to get my hands on it as I hadn’t seen any around.
Hardware
The tablet features a Atom N450 Processor which runs at 1.66ghz with 2 threads, it had 2GB of DDR2 ram, a 160GB SATA2 harddrive and an inbuilt graphics card. Paired with Windows 7, the tablet ran quick and was extremely responsive. However, a memory boost would allow for the tablet to do more and start up quicker. It also has a built in 2 megapixel webcam, built in microphone and speakers, a built in 3G card (optional), 3 usb ports, ethernet port, speaker out, microphone in, VGA and a multi card reader.
The physical feel of the tablet is cheap. Upon handling the tablet, it creaked and well sounded terrible. The plastic has a sort of rubbery feel which is nice to rest your hands on. The tablet is extremely heavy and is inconvenient to use long periods at a time. I had to take rests from holding it or place it on the table to use it, so it’s not a practical traveling tablet. On the right side of the tablet, the fan exhaust is right in the way of your hand. Meaning your hand gets hot while using the tablet, especially when watching flash videos.
The touch screen requires a stylus, or you can use your finger nails if they are long. The touch screen was just a tad off calibrated so you had to aim a little higher for buttons, even after calibration. This made it hard using the on screen keyboard. The touch screen is also not multi touch meaning you could only touch one part of the screen at any one time, which was annoying.
Software
The tablet apparently comes with no preinstalled operating system (as the website says). However, the review unit came with Windows 7 Ultimate which was a huge plus. Windows 7 ran fantastically on the tablet and it’s touch screen features where fantastic. Some features included the handwriting to text utility which mean’t you could handwrite a web address or word and it would convert it to text. It was spot on 95% of the time.
Conclusion
I was a little disappointed at the tablet. The cheapness of it was a huge let down among the weight and inconvenient exhaust location. The TEGA Tablet V2 is supposed to be coming out later this year, which TECHGEEK will get their hands on and hopefully it is a much better tablet. All in all, this tablet would be alright to use if resting on a table or your lap.
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