We have written about some tablets here on Techzim. Overpriced low spec’d and low quality ones like the $500 Nhava Maestro tablet, and some high spec’d ones like the WeTab and the Galaxy Tab that we found a bit too steep for this market. When we wrote about the WeTab some weeks ago, a generous reader, Barry Launder, wrote to say tablets like it are just too expensive for this market, and that he could prove it. True to his word, he brought us a US $200 (calculated retail price in Zim) Velocity Micro Cruz Reader tablet to sample and see for ourselves.
Here’s our brief oponion on the tablet:
The Cruz Reader hardware looks and feels very solid. After switching it on, boot-up time is also great. The first thing you notice when it’s on is the resistive screen. It’s not multi-touch and doesn’t feel at all as responsive as most modern day gadgets we use. You really need to get used to touching it the right way to get some response. The onscreen keyboard is quite unusable too. There’s a work around though: if you use a stylus (which you hopefully have around the house somewhere) touching it is a lot easier. In fact we recommend anyone buying this or any similar tablet to seriously consider buying a stylus as well.
In terms of hardware features, you get Wi-Fi, a USB, SD card slot, speakers, headphone jack. The device size is 7” (17.7 centimeters) and has a 800×600 screen. RAM is 256MB and it has built-in storage of 256MB plus a 4GB micro SD card. It’s an Android 2.0 device.
Touch insensitivity aside, it’s quite intuitive getting around, installing additional programs. Connecting to the internet through Wi-Fi is also straightforward. It performs well as a music player too and video player for mp4 files. We couldn’t get it to play avi files for some reason. Reading pdf files was also painfully slow, even the very small files. Reading basic text files is quite fast though.
Battery life is not bad; Velocity Micro says it should last 6 hours of video. We didn’t watch video but played MP3s and some other simple tasks. It’s probably something like that.
Barry asked us to give it away to readers so that’s exactly what we’re going to do. Watch for an article following this one for details of the giveaway. Thanks again Barry.
Resistive touch – ouch
what version of andriod does it come with?
2.0
can you upgrade the OS? to Honeycomb v3.0
Is there a local retailer who sales these tablets ? so i can get one, assuming the price is in that $200 region.
This particular one we got was just for testing. Not sure if there are any available for retail locally. You can send a tweet to Barry Launder to get more information on availability.
Barry, if you’re reading this, please help with a response.
how much is the one you holding Kabweza
Sorry for the late response. Like the article says, it’s a US $200 tablet.
how long does it take to get a response from this site?
thank u Kabweza, where r u located
We do not sell tech gadgets. We just write about them.
damn, u guys are slow. will look elsewhere