Since the days of the first tablets with Microsoft operating system, a lot of water has passed under the bridge and with Windows 8.1 and 8.1 RT, Microsoft has strongly wanted to re-enter this market. Unexpectedly, thanks above all to the Intel Bay Trail SoCs, a market niche of cheap devices has been created, including devices such as ultrabooks and tablets, with a decidedly competitive price and flexibility comparable to that of notebook and desktop PCs. This niche of devices includes the Mediacom iPro w810 3G, a very cheap 8-inch tablet with x86 CPU and Windows 8.1 operating system; let's see together how it behaves!
Video Review
Packaging and design
Starting from the package, we find in front of a dark box showing on the front photo and name of the tablet and on the back a detailed list with the technical specifications. Inside there is a wall charger, a usb / microusb cable, an OTG adapter, a quick user manual, clip for inserting the micro sim and, of course, the tablet protected by transparent film. A pretty standard package, which gives us all the bare minimum to use our new tablet.
Measuring 21,4 by 12,5 centimeters, with a thickness of 8 millimeters, the tablet has rather contained measures. Build quality is decent; the entire body is made of plastic, with the exception of the edge which is reinforced with a thin aluminum foil. Thanks to the use of these materials the weight is contained and is about 310,5 grams, managing at the same time to give a good feeling of solidity, even if there is a slight creak under pressure in a specific point of the rear cover and the edges are a little angular to the touch. Like all devices of this type, we find on the side the volume rocker and the power button, the microSD and micro Sim slots and, on the upper edge, the 3,5 mm headphone jack and the micro USB connector. There are obviously also some stereo speakers, unfortunately positioned on the lower edge and very close together, which offer a quality and a volume that is all in all sufficient.
Hardware
Internally we find a SoC Intel bay Trail z3735G, with a quad core CPU at a maximum frequency of 1,86 Ghz, accompanied 1 GB of DDR3 ram and from a flash memory of 16 GB. Unfortunately the 16 GB flash memory are very few, making it necessary to add a micro SD card and therefore forcing an additional expense. Also complete in additional equipment, which include a WiFi N module and bluetooth 4.0, accelerometer, GPS, the GSM and WCDMA module and two cameras, one 2 MegaPixel front, of sufficient quality for video conferences, and another 5 MegaPixel rear, which however, it offers shots worthy of a 2008 smartphone, if not worse.
Good display; it is an IPS panel and has a diagonal of 8 inches, with a resolution of 1280 × 800 pixels. It is bright and brightly colored but, like many cheap panels, in the case of a completely black screen or dark images, you may notice slight variations in the backlight, ie the phenomenon of "display bleeding" occurs.
Software
The tablet operating system is Windows 8.1 with Bing which, despite the small amount of RAM, it is surprisingly responsive and fast in home and office use. What is certain is that the gigabyte of RAM alone certainly limits the amount of executable software, as well as multitasking ... Google Chrome users are warned. The general performance of the device also allows for some light-hearted gaming sessions.
While on notebooks and desktops the Metro interface with all its tiles and swipes has made us turn up our noses, on a tablet it finds its ideal terrain and is rather pleasant to use, at least after having learned all the gestures. The Windows Store doesn't offer the same amount of applications optimized for touchscreen devices as competing OSes, forcing us to resort to normal desktop applications, fortunately usable without too many problems even with touchscreen input.
Autonomy
The battery is 4200 mah and guarantees an average autonomy in the category, which is approximately three hours in the case of uninterrupted video playback. Obviously in the case of a more moderate use, such as consultation of documents and web browsing, this can also go up to about 6-8 hours.
Conclusions
Those who limit themselves to web browsing, multimedia and on the go consultation and editing of documents, could find in this tablet an excellent ally, thanks above all to the compactness and general reactivity of the entire system, obviously within the limits of the CPU and the amount of RAM memory. With a price of € 159 it is very difficult to ask for more and, even looking towards Android tablets, there are no devices with this price / performance ratio.
