It was not long ago that the minimum you’d pay for a decent 10in tablet was around £350. Well, things are really changing, and the Gemini JoyTAB 9.7 is a relatively cheap 10in tablet at around £149.99. However, you can get this one cheaper on the second hand market from retailers.
As bargain basement Android goes, it makes a pretty good first impression. Lift the lid on the brightly coloured box, and you’ll find a well-made and reasonably attractive device. It isn’t bulky and heavy like other some other cheap tablets. It weighs in at 672g – around the same as an iPad 3 – and is a slim 10mm thick.
The buttons are the first sign that this is a budget tablet. They feel cheap and clunky, and occasionally need an extra press to get them to work. In addition they are very small and not easily identifiable.
It does a lot of entertaining for very little cash, and is also more than capable enough to be very useful to people wanting to leave it on the coffee table and keep up to date on their emails, Facebook, Tweets, etc. without booting their PC up.
Users can enjoy access to downloadable applications from multiple Android app markets as it supports Google play and the Amazon app store.
It boasts Mini HDMI to hook up to a TV or PC to enjoy content stunning High Definition on a big screen host. Super fast WiFi takes care of wireless connectivity to the internet network, and on-board Bluetooth enables wireless partnering with other Bluetooth enabled devices such as hands-free and it has a keyboard which you can link to if you’d rather work on that than the touch screen to type.
The keyboard not only protects the JoyTAB Duo 9.7 Pro when not in use, it also holds the tablet in a comfortable position for typing and enables a hands free entertainment experience!
This tablet also includes: both a front and rear mounted 2.0MP camera and plenty of storage options for media content.
Unfortunately the battery isn’t very impressive, as we only managed three hours from fully charged to dead. Recharging from dead took around twice as long. Obviously with more moderate, realistic day-to-day use, you’ll be looking at 5-6 hours between recharges, but you’d be lucky to get a full day of productivity and the extended recharge time could be a problem.
The JoyTAB Duo 9.7 is a well made tablet; it is solidly constructed and feels very much like any other similar sized premium tablet. We’d say it feels more expensive than it is. The positioning of the volume buttons so close to the power button makes margin for error higher for those of us who are less dextrous.
We can overlook many of this tablet’s limitations as it is at the budget end of the market. For the money it represents a bargain, and is a great entry level full screen tablet.
by Patricia Vine
