Given that the price was unbelievable, I bought one.

Reasons for Buying

There were two reasons I bought it:

1) The whole idea of a tablet is cool. I watch my kids using their iPods as portable total connectivity devices and would like the same – though bigger and not so squinty eyed for my aging eyes. Besides, there are many times when it simply doesn’t make sense or is inconvenient to have to use the computer or laptop (why can’t I read PDF files anywhere / everywhere? Check on the weather? See what movies are playing?).

2) Most importantly, it has the same specs as the MK802 (basically a computer on a USB stick). The MK802 has not turned out to be as good as I hoped and it is a bit inconvenient to use since the only HDMI display I have is the TV in the basement. I was hoping that the Lazer 7″ would be a useful double for the MK802 (with the added bonus of having a display).

The Specs

• Allwinner A10 CPU running at 1GHz
• 1 GB RAM
• 4 GB Flash memory
• 7″ display
• 800 x 480 resolution
• capacitive touch screen
• WiFi
• HDMI output
• 1.3 megapixel camera (front facing, located in corner)
• Android 4.0.3 preinstalled

I was concerned about the display resolution because I thought it a little on the low side. (The 10″ version has exactly the same specs, except the display has a resolution of 1024×600 – but I couldn’t justify shelling out an extra €70 for a 3″ larger display and slightly increased resolution.

Display Performance

The display is fine for graphical applications (like playing Angry Birds), but, as I feared, has limitations when it comes to reading text.

Reading a PDF document in portrait mode is just not possible.

Reading a PDF document landscape mode is possible and if this was the only limitation of the device, then I would be fine with it.

Touch Screen Performance

The display was completely responsive to my touches and gestures. The only thing I noted was that it was perhaps a little too responsive – hovering my finger just above the display (i.e. almost touching it) would sometimes cause it to respond as though I had double tapped it (clearly, I shouldn’t be hovering my finger so close to the display).

There was no sense of sluggishness or unresponsiveness in the touch screen.

Application Performance

Applications (with the exception of anything needing the Internet) run fine. There is no sense that they are starved of CPU power (this is even true of the MK802 on which I play Angry Birds at 1920x1080i @ 60hz with no sense of the processor struggling under the load).

WiFi / Internet Performance

This is the Achilles heel of the Lazer 7″ Tablet (and the MK802 and, even the UG802) – for some reason, the networking performance is abysmal.

It took over 10 minutes to start playing the following 2 minute, 12 second video. This sluggish behaviour is identical on the MK802 and the UG802 (although, the UG802 does seem to perform noticeably better).

I don’t know what the problem is:

• Is Android’s WiFi / Network performance lousy?
• Is the problem the way the WiFi has been implemented?
• Does the problem lie in AllWinner’s version of Android?
• Is it poor Flash memory write speeds?
• Is the entire video being buffered before being played?
• etc, etc, etc

Whatever the problem is, it makes the Lazer 7″ Tablet useless as an always connected to the Internet device.

Even forgoing the problem with Youtube, just browsing around for information is a pain.

On the iPod, the video starts playing about 15 seconds; if I search for things, the response is much faster.

Conclusion

Unless you want to use the tablet just for playing pre-installed games or maybe watching pre-loaded videos, I can’t recommend it for two reasons:

1. the display resolution effectively rules out using text on it (unless you are in landscape mode)
2. the WiFi / Network performance is outrageously bad – to the point that it is effectively unusable as a networked device (this also applies to the MK802 and UG802)

The post Review of the Lazer 7" (MID7109) Tablet appeared first on Complete, Concrete, Concise.

This flurry of activity was kicked off by the Raspberry Pi (a $35 bare bones, exposed circuit board, hobbyist computer featuring a 700MHz ARM CPU, 256MB of RAM).

I think the next serious contender was the RikoMagic MK802 (a 1GHz ARM CPU, with 1GB of RAM, and 4GB of Flash) fully encased in a oversized USB stick form factor.

The Raspberry Pi is coming out with a second generation version. The MK802 has spawned two minor revisions (the first being a small board redesign and coming in more colours, the second being a slightly revised form factor that has 3 USB ports and an HDMI plug instead of socket, as well, it doesn’t need a separate power adapter – it can be powered directly off a USB port).

Other similar computers include:

• CubieBoard – this is an AllWinner A10 (as in the MK802) Raspberry Pi style open circuit board.
• ODROID-X – quad core, 1.4GHz, open circuit board based on the Exynnos 4412 CPU
• APC 8750 – another open circuit board (neo-ITX form factor) based on the VIA WonderMedia ARM 11 CPU
• EPIA-P910 – quad core, 64-bit x86 compatible processor, open circuit board

The latest entry to this group is the UG802:

The UG802 is based on the Rockchip RK3066 ARM CPU. It features:

• dual core, 1.2GHz ARM-A9 CPU
• 32kB data + 32kB instruction cache
• 512kB L2 cache
• quad core Mali 400 GPU @ 250MHz (while running at half the speed of the AllWinner A10 Mali 400 GPU, in theory, you could divide your display among the 4 and experience double the performance of the AllWinner A10)
• 1 GB RAM
• 4 GB Flash
• HDMI plug
• 1 USB connector
• 1 micro-SD connector
• Android 4 installed

You can order it here. (There are also more pictures there.) NOTE: I have ordered one, but I have not yet received it.

Because the CPU is different from the original MK802 (Rockchip RK3066 vs AllWinner A10), I don’t expect to be able to just drop an existing MK802 ISO image onto the UG802 – special distros will be required if you want to hack on anything other than the Android platform. NOTE: at this time, there are no alternate OSes for the hardware – Android is the only one.

Resources

You can find the RK3066 datasheet here.

You can find a forum for the device here.

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