AGPtek TP10AYA 7-Inch Tablet Review

Tablets are all the rage now.  When the all-powerful iPad came out, every manufacturer with access to the open source Android OS had a go at creating their own tablet to get in on the cash cow.  And it’s still going on.  The upside to this is that with so many tablets out there competing with each other, the prices have been driven way down on many of them.  The downside is that you usually get what you pay for.

AGPtek is one of many tablet producers trying to milk the portable computing market these days.  As I was shopping for gifts for the holidays on my favorite sites, I came across AGPtek’s tablet line.  Apparently AGPtek has been around since 2001, and is a big name in the manufacturing of laptop batteries and connectors for the aftermarket user.  Once again, you get what you pay for.  Cheap batteries tend to suck out loud, but that’s another article altogether.

I decided that with all the reviews I was seeing on Buy.com for this particular tablet, it might be a good idea to check it out.  As cheap as they are, they would make excellent gifts.  So I purchased the TP10AYA 7” Slate model that was getting the best reviews.  It arrived fairly quickly, and I happily plugged it in to charge for a few hours while I read over the booklet that was included.  Here’s some info I scrounged up on this tablet:

PRODUCT FEATURES:

Android intelligent OS:
Built in Android 4.0,better reliability and compatibility,support tens of thousands of software upgraded.

High-end ARM Cortex-A8, excellent processing platform
Adopt high performance ARM Cortex A8-high-end processor,CPU reach up to 1.2GHz;512M DDR3 internal memory,The sensitive reaction speed, bring you very cool new experience.

The capacitive full touch screen
Using the industry’s leading import capacitive screen,support multi-touch, sensitive respond, manipulation convenient

Build-in GPU(2D/3D graphic processor unit),supports 3D games perfectly.

HDMI output

1080P HD decode
1080P HD high definition video display,support AVI,WMV,MP4,MKV,RM, RMVB, FLV, MOV,3GP up to 1080P, WebM VP8 etc, full format decode, no need transition.

One front 0.3 Mega pixel camera and MIC, let you VIDEO call,internet video call more convenient.

Mass application software support
Can built -in millions of application software,support download freely..

OTG
Support USB2.0 high speed interface,can connect with USB and other external driver.

Gravity Sensor
It has built-in Gravity Sensor technology; according to the screen rotation direction, transform screen automatically.

Music
Natural and sweet acoustic combine with perfect sound effect, overall support mainstream music format display, MP3/WMA/APE/FLAC/AAC/OGG/ WAV music format support

Huge capacity storage
Built in Flash capacity storage:4G,TF extends to 32GB,U disk extends to 32GB

FLASH 11.1
Support FLASH 11.1,WebM VP8 decode, more choices for online games, more convenient live video on web.

Built in WIFI
Built in WIFI,support EVDO/TD-SCDMA/WCDMA 3G USB Dongle,wireless network, omnibearing seamless network connect. You can enjoy high speed surfing whenever and wherever. It brings you different surfing experience and network choices.

TECHNICAL SPECS:

LCD:
LCD: 7 inch 800×480 TFT
Multi-touch: 5 point capacitive touch screen

CPU:
model: RK2906–ARM Cortex A8 1.2 GHz
OS: Android 4.0

GPU:
model: Vivante G800

Flash:
DDR: DDR3-512MB
Built in: 4GB
T-Flash: 32GB(Extend)

Internet:
WiFi: 802.11b/g/n
Speed: 150Mbps
Flash: Flash 11.1
communication: SKYPE/MSN/QQ
browse: support
download: support

3G:
3G Mode: USB Dongle(WCDMA,EVDO,TD-SCDMA)
speed: 6Mbps
AP: NO

Video:
format: AVI,MPG,MKV,RM,RMVB,MP4,MOV,VOB,DAT,FLV,TS,3GP,WEBM(VP8)etc. solution: 1920*1080P,1920*1080I,1280*720P,720*480P,720*480I
SRT: SRT
HDMI: Mini HDMI Ver 1.3
SOUND: HDMI1.3/Stereo

Audio:
format: MP3,WMA,WAV,OGG,OGA,APE,FLAC,AAC,M4A,3GPP etc.
SOUND: HDMI1.3/Stereo

Photo:
format: PG,JPEG,BMP,GIF,PNG,JFIF etc.

Office:
File: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Text
PDF: support
E-mail: support

Camera:
Sensor: CMOS
solution: 0.3 Mega

G-sensor:
support: Support(Three axle)

Record:
format: 3GP

Other:
game: 3D
upgrade: support
language: Chinese, English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Dutch, Portuguese, etc.
Input Voltage: DC 5V
incoming current: 2A
battery: 3000m A 3.7V
size: 192*122*12.5(mm)
weight(device): 360g

Socket:
OTG: 1 PCS HDMI: 1 PCS (Mini HDMI) TF: 1 PCS Earphone: 1 PCS DC: 1 PCS

Now, the website for AGPtek has an address that is listed as Brooklyn, NY.  But anyone with a half a brain could read the site and their instruction booklet and see that it comes from China.  The writing is poorly translated, and even though it is easy to read, it is simply annoying to read “tablet that plays movie and game for your fun life”.  And when I sent the PR people an email letting them know I was going to review this and asking if they had any extra hardware/software information that might be of use to me, they responded with “we are not understanding”.  At that point I had not received the tablet yet, and hung my head.  I could see the $80 I had spent swirling the bowl.

Fast forward a couple days later, and the tablet is on my desk charging.  Usually, I like to do a play-by-play on the unboxing, but there’s really nothing to brag about in this one.  The tablet was sitting in a foam cradle, and underneath that was the USB cable, the USB adapter for connecting peripherals to the tablet, the power adapter, and the poorly written instruction booklet.  Nothing more, nothing less.  I was expecting a really flimsy tablet, but it’s actually very solid.  I wouldn’t drop it on the ground, but it doesn’t feel like it’s going to break in my big gorilla hands, either.  It has a nice weight, too.  Certainly not something that will shift around on you while playing games.

I found that unlike a few other devices I have lying around, this one had no indicator light to tell you it’s charging.  The screen does show a battery filling up with green for a few seconds, but other than that, there’s no way to tell if it’s done.  Or if it’s even working at all.  You have to press the power button to see if it’s charging or not.  Sure, this is just a minor annoyance, but you would be surprised how little it takes to encourage someone to not buy something.

The book said to leave it on charge for 4 – 6 hours.  So I did just that.  I went and voted, bought gifts, and grabbed some Chinese food.  This was purely coincidental.  I just love Chinese food.  When I got back home the battery was fully charged and I began to play around with it.  It comes on with a splash screen with AGPtek’s website and logo.  Then it proceeds to load Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich.  The total boot time from completely off to ready to go was thirty-eight seconds.  Not impressive, but I’ve seen slower boots.

Before we delve into the internal parts of the system, I suppose we should talk about the exterior.  The front of the tablet is glossy black.  The 7” screen is surrounded by a frame that is about ¾” at the top and bottom and 1” on the sides.  This is with the tablet turn so that you are looking at it in landscape mode, which is best on this tablet.  The camera is at the top in landscape mode for video chatting via Skype or whatever your preference is.

This tablet has three buttons on the front; the Home button, a Return button, and a Menu button.  These are not “touch” areas, although the OS includes them on-screen.  These are real buttons, and can require some force to push sometimes.  It’s nothing that would take away from enjoying it, but I think the general public has gotten used to not having to deal with buttons other than power or audio control.  Speaking of, the power and audio buttons are right up top when in LSM (landscape mode).

Audio wise, the sound is good, but nothing great.  The speaker is located on the back of the tablet, and when holding it in LSM, your left hand is right over it.  So headphones are probably a good idea.  This thing comes with a small variety of ports that I was genuinely impressed with.  It has mini-HDMI out, which worked beautifully with HD video.  There’s also a mini-USB port that not only allows you to connect to a PC for data transfer, but allows peripherals such as a keyboard (which I bought for this test), and has an adapter that allows USB flash drives to plug in for data.  I played movies right off my 16GB Kingston drive.  And while quite useless, since it’s a touchscreen, I tested a mouse.  As soon as I plugged it in, a cursor showed up onscreen and it worked perfectly.  There’s also a T-Flash card slot (microSD, for the uniformed), the power cable slot, and a headphone jack.

Now, unlike a lot of cheap Android tablets, this one actually has an untouched version of the Google Android OS on it.  That means that you have access to the Google Play store.  I signed into my account and downloaded a couple games to test it with.  Now, unlike many of the Android products I’ve dealt with, this one actually does let you take screenshots.  The apps I downloaded for testing include the following:

• MX Player – For playback of HD video
•  Asphalt 7 – For 3D game testing
• Angry Birds – Cause it’s awesome
• Firefox – For testing browsing speed

I wanted to install Need For Speed, but every version I tried crashed on this tablet.  I’m still unsure whether it’s incompatible, a hardware issue, or a software issue.  I guess time will tell in the end.  I installed Netflix as well for video streaming, but the Sign In button wouldn’t allow me to press it.  Try as I might, I couldn’t find a way around this.  I even installed older versions of the app, to no avail.  I searched the comments on Amazon and Buy, but found nothing related to this.  Most of the comments were lauding Netflix on this particular tablet.  So while I’ll be missing out on the streaming, I can at least test everything else.

 

First, I wanted to test the video playback.  I’m a movie watcher.  I have all my movies backed up on a digital media streamer and would rather sacrifice one of my family members than to give up anything from my collection.  I have dozens of zombie movies, hundreds of horror movies, and well over a thousand films, television shows, and documentaries.  So I searched my collection for something that would show off the 1080p that this tablet claims to be able to play flawlessly.  I found a movie that I had but had yet to watch and popped it onto the USB flash drive to watch it.  The video playback was smooth, as advertised.  The tablet seemed to have no trouble playing HD video at all.  I noticed no pixilation in the video, no chopping, and no ghosting.  It was nearly as good as watching a movie on my HD LCD monitor.

Angry Birds Space played as well as I could have hoped for.  The capacitive touch screen gave me some issues with the birds releasing before I had actually released them at times.  But the gameplay was fluid and it there was not any choppiness.  My iTouch 4G did a better job on this game, but I don’t want to start making that comparison here.  Comparing any cheap tablet to an iProduct will set them up for failure and diminish any good points that might be there.  So on to the next test.  Internet speed.

I installed Firefox browser on the tablet for one reason.  I hate Chrome.  Yes, put me in the crypt and mortar the bricks around me, but I just don’t like Chrome.  So I played around with Firefox.  It was nothing compared to using it on a PC or Linux, but it did the job.  Load times were nowhere near what I’m used to, but they were fairly fast compared to my Android phone.  I was able to find to load OCmodshop without problem and browse the site at a fairly nice speed.  I also downloaded a 1.4GB file in just under 15 minutes while connected to my Wifi.  I’m pretty happy with those results, as I know I can upload and download from Dropbox with no issue.

Now for the one thing that people really care about.  It comes just under movie playback for me, but most people prefer to be able to game anywhere and everywhere.  I bought and installed Asphalt 7 to test out how it handles graphics.  I’ve been nothing but wary about Android games ever since I bought my Optimus V phone.  I’ve played some of the “tap” games, but when I installed a 3D racing game, I was extremely disappointed.  It got choppy, it froze, the sound went out of sync, and sometimes it would just close on me.  The Optimus V is a nice phone, but a crappy gaming system.  So when I experienced Asphalt 7 on the AGPtek tablet, I was impressed with the results.

I noticed a dropped frame or two from time to time, but nothing that would detract from play.  The gravity sensor is very responsive, the touch screen controls for braking and NOS were also really responsive, and the graphics were handled nicely by the built-in GPU.  I was honestly expecting something much less from such a cheap tablet, but it did quite nicely.

I also ran the AnTuTu benchmark and AnTuTu 3DBench.  In 3DBench it managed an average of 31 frames per second, which is rather respectable for a tablet this cheap.  Our Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 GT-P3113 only managed 7 FPS in this test, and it cost 3 times more.  With the regular AnTuTu benchmark, the AGPtek tablet managed a score of 3107, whereas our Samsung got 3918.

So to wrap things up, this is not an iPad killer.  It’s not going to replace the Nexus or Kindle Fire, but if you want something cheap for most of your media needs, it can handle it.  And it looks damned good doing it.  I would say that based on performance alone, I have to give it 4 out of 5.  If I were basing it on what I expected, it’s heads and tails above my previous conceptions of cheap Android devices.  It’s a damned nice tablet.