I bought all these tablets from AliExpress just to answer the question
why do they look like this this one is
clearly a tent these two look more like door stoppers or maybe ramps for Tech
Decks and these ones don't sort of look like tablets assuming you want them to
pull double duty as a freaking Frisbee now obviously companies aren't just
pumping out tablets in random silly shapes anymore
mostly so what's the deal with these are they
packed full of the same malware we found in our Android TV boxes do they have any
redeeming features that'll make you want to abandon your iPad for
walkie-talkie functionality built in oh the ability to download a dedicated
computer which wait what Legacy serial
ports I don't know about that one personally but I do know I'm a Serial seguer who's
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perfect PC for you check them out at the link below this black door stop here is
easily the thickest Android tablet that I have ever seen and that's just the
beginning of its surprises aside from the mic speakers and 10.1 inch
touchscreen its features are actually very reminiscent of those awful Android
TV boxes including the complete lack of
a battery which is unexpected for something called a tablets there's an
option for PoE at least which allows it to be powered with a network cable
rather than with a separate plug but we didn't spring for that the i o is even
similar to the TV boxes power two usba ports a headphone jack that contains a
button deep down inside it for re-flashing the firmware okay USBC uh
micro SD gigabit Ethernet and the white port is actually listed as serial and
indeed it doesn't seem to work with USB peripherals like mice or flash drives
though it does output power did they really go to the length of including
serial only to replace the connector with USB so that you need an adapter for
the native serial connection no the answer is far less silly this port
supports USB to uart adapters which allows you to plug in conventional
serial devices be they barcode scanners or anything else you can imagine under
the hood it's running Android 10 because you aren't really getting the AliExpress
Android experience unless you're using a version of Android that's never getting
another security update other than that the under the hood specs make the
overall experience pretty responsive and there's no signs of the dreaded core
Java virus for now anyway it comes
pre-rooted which doesn't worry us at all
inside the device wait is that a battery to keep the clock accurate and a button
to reset it there I guess it does have a battery after all I mean realistically
for something that's sitting at a desk where people fill out their license
plate number for parking validation it's going to get the job done just fine I
really need a proper battery or a way to mount it just like you don't need volume
controls or the default bottom navigation to show up and give you a way
back out of the window you're in I mean if you go into settings you probably want to remain in settings until the
device is powered down right right I mean at least it was cheap and wait how
much 370 Canadian Rupees that's like 275 real
monies for that price I could have had a Galaxy Tab S6 light with a bigger and
better screen a battery and support for up to Android 13. okay forget Android
for a second what if we got a Windows
tablet for around 300 us we got this
triangular prism of a PC with a Celeron j4125 eight gigs of DDR3 and Windows 10
Pro it's not exactly a Powerhouse compared to other Windows devices but
it's certainly serviceable for text entry it boots from an integrated 64 gig
memory chip and ours came with a bonus 128 gig SATA m.2 the screen is 10.1
inches just like the Android but this time the resolution is 1920x1200 not bad
it's a bit thicker but it's got buttons on the side for power and volume
controls HDMI out and otherwise a very
similar complete IO layout at least on the outside it's not until we crack it
open that we find its wasted potential there's an extra b key m.2 slot for the
optional 4G card an unused USBC Port not
sure it would have been nice to have missing headers for a fan and shockingly
an Intel i225v two and a half gig
Ethernet controller don't get too excited though this I-225 is one of the
earliest models of that chip and there are known issues that occur at speeds
exceeding gigabit but you know what the biggest wasted potential here is the
lack of a way to properly Mount the bloody thing again if these tablets are
being used to control digital signage like behind the counter restaurant menus
it makes sense that you'd want to mount them on a table or a wall I mean at
least the Android one had the thoughtfulness to include a Kensington lock which we also found on the Android
tent this one is kind of cool it's got
dual mirrored displays running at 1280x800
it's only got two gigs of RAM 16 gigs of storage and it runs Android 8.1 meaning
that even for 250 dollars I'm pretty disappointed with the internals again no
battery which totally has space for on the motherboard but if it's intended for
text input and to be permanently installed I guess it's better to have no
battery than a fire hazard swollen battery but what is up with these
devices missing volume buttons or USBC
for power like what is this one actually for you guys got any ideas
real estate presentations here uh have a
look at what I'm doing on my side kitchen building oh okay okay yeah in
both of those cases you could probably just sit side by side and look at one
proper size screen though come on let's brainstorm here
ah it's a power gauntlet
hold on we're gonna have to do my left ARM it's a lot smaller definitely
badminton frankly we're probably overthinking this all three of these so
far seem to be POS equipment not to say
that they're bad that's to say point of sale equipment though I'm not saying
they're good either after we ordered these tablets we noticed the local
Denny's locations all seem to be adopting similar tablets at their tables
except those ones include charging ports wireless charging for your devices and
they have batteries in them seems a lot better so I'd only bother checking out
the link to these ones if you want a sign tablet that's worse than what the
local pancake dispensary has so far then we haven't seen anything that's terribly
useful or at least not a great value just kind of wacky this all black
weatherproof Windows tablet is definitely both useful and battery
powered we know that because it came to us with nearly 13
000 battery Cycles counted since November 2020. that means doing the math
it went through roughly a battery cycle every two hours from then until the day
we ordered it and that wasn't the only sign of use someone had been using it to
watch the latest historical drama on ige
China's equivalent of Netflix and even
if it was new this thing is not terribly powerful just four gigs of DDR3 RAM a 64
gig generic SSD and an Intel atom z8350
that's a processor that requires only slightly more power than the zero watt
one on lttstore.com i o includes NFC
mini HDMI a SIM card slot that supports
LTE and we've got buttons for control finally we've also got some Pogo pins
that attach to this car car mount and
that gives it two more USB 2 ports gigabit Ethernet and a barrel Jack for
charging in the serial Port when we open it up
though we find that the 8 500 milliamp hour battery is in fact only 7 800
milliamp hours and there's markings everywhere for
em-i82h and em-i86h these are two potential real
model numbers for this device which is apparently made by mbor as a barcode
scanner that makes sense given the inclusion of Serial for nearly 700 it
really feels like we could have bought something that isn't secondhand but with
an IP67 rating it should be able to withstand being dunked in water for
several minutes now we haven't tested that yet because we didn't want to break
it before we started filming but now we can
I mean how long do we want to leave it in there for can I use it this is a
capacitive touch screen so it doesn't function at all underwater
not even a little I don't know what else to say it survived I mean obviously this
isn't the most scientific test but what if it passed were you going to buy a
used tablet for this price no good job
buddy it's padded bumblebee of a tablet also
claims to be IP67 rated which we are eager to put to the test but its special
trick is that it supposedly has the ability to communicate with walkie-talkies
cool if true emphasis on if true it
appears to be identical to the runbo P2 which would be great except that the
version of Android 8.1 that it's running seems to be borrowed from eulophone
adding one more layer of rebranding and remixing the outside contains most of
its uniqueness on the front with two unlabeled buttons presumably for push to
talk walkie-talkie functionality but we never got that working arrow buttons for
navigation physical representations of the standard Android back home and
circle buttons and an OK button these are all really
useful in an environment where you're wearing gloves at least they would be if
they all worked back and home function but the arrow keys are all wrong the
circle brings up media controls and the top two buttons for push to talk don't
seem to do anything at all as with any tablet the edges contain
ports and buttons so it's got USBC
can you shut up usb-c for charging it's recessed though so most cables won't fit
another USBC for data that had the same issue detachable antenna a
headphone jack IR maybe a power button a
dial to select your walkie-talkie channels and on the back is a cover that
gives you access to two micro SD slots and two SIM card slots that's pretty
cool the software is really what's important here though it's all bog
standard Android 8.1 except for the push to talk app this is where you should be
able to set up your walkie-talkie connections or possibly receive shortwave radio it's hard for us to know
for sure though because even though we have walkie-talkies even though we found
the program to access their channels and even though we matched up everything
perfectly between the two we don't even know what this app is called and there
doesn't seem to be much information available about walkie-talkie apps that
properly use VHF and UHF radio signals
can it at least swim though
water always wins these
didn't immediately die uh does it float
no what I want to do though is find out
if this touchscreen works because it seemed like it might have been a pressure sensitive one and it's not but
could I navigate using the buttons oh
whoa okay hold on a second
okay just clicks in the middle of the screen
it doesn't do anything useful so I think the script said it doesn't do anything
which is fine but it does sort of do something as crap as it is at
least it survived the water test so what can we take away from this exercise then
if you buy tablets for a specific purpose on AliExpress you might end up
with something usable or you might just get left high and dry separated from
your money you know what won't leave you high and dry
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like this video why not check out the tough time we had trying to find a
tablet for one of my colleagues dads
surprisingly hard to find an Android tablet that doesn't suck
so they put all the energy that it took to make all of these into just one