Velocity Micro Cruz T301 7" Android 2.0 Tablet Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2011-05-08
·
2,351 words · ~11 min read
0:00
it's been a long time since we've done an unboxing in the cameraman's office as
0:05
you can see it's kind of gone to ruin in
0:09
the time that I haven't been here to uh to help him clear space from time to
0:15
time got old game controllers not that the cameraman has any idea how to play a
0:19
game being a Mac guy and all that okay
0:23
cameraman we're doing some cleanup he's got his precious money all over the
0:28
place so i' wonder you has any money he spends so much on making sure that he
0:32
has a Mac instead of getting a PC which is a better
0:35
value okay so today we have something totally unrelated to Mac or PC this is
0:41
actually an Android tablet this is the cruise tablet from velocity micro and it
0:46
looks pretty cool so first things first
0:50
we got a sticker on the front Kindle for Android so you can read more than
0:53
725,000 Kindle books with free applications with the free applications
0:57
on the cruise tablet if you are a non Us customer book availability may vary so
1:01
that might be relevant to me given I am here in the great white north of Canada
1:06
all right let's see what they have to say for themselves on the box so you can
1:10
view your cruise tablet at the right angle with the cruise stand so there's a
1:14
stand Dimensions you got the compatible products there's a little stand okay I
1:18
don't know that it comes with that I guess we'll find out here on the back
1:22
little thing all the applications you need in the palm of your hand and here's
1:25
our specs so it has a 7 in uh slim TFT
1:29
so that b basically just means LCD screen 800x 600 capacitive touch it is a
1:34
4:3 aspect ratio so that's interesting this is not widescreen it runs off
1:38
Android 2.0 has a browser okay 256 Megs
1:41
of RAM 4 gigs of built-in storage with a 4 gig external SD card but you can
1:46
expand that it comes with Wi-Fi it has a g sensor battery is up to 6 hours of
1:51
watching video we've got Dimensions here but we're going to pull it out and show you guys later it has support for SDHC
1:56
so you can support up to I believe it's 32 gigs on SDHC video playback is here
2:02
reader files stand oh the stand is included there you go here's all a few
2:06
different things that you can do surf the web use the online bookstore you can
2:10
access your social media really it's app driven much like uh any Android device
2:14
you can watch videos view documents it has a dictionary I don't know why they
2:17
would necessarily call it the dictionary but whatever manage your files and it
2:21
has a g sensor so it will automatically rotate from portrait to
2:26
landscape more features here which we've
2:29
pretty much cover most of those also includes an alarm clock apparently a
2:33
calculator I mean it better include a calculator you know this kind of a price
2:37
point and this Advanced device okay so
2:41
packaging wise here we go we have a white box which has more of a white box on the
2:46
inside there's the tablet itself I'm not going to show you that just yet here is
2:51
a nice little uh okay there's our included 4 gig SanDisk SDHC
2:57
card here is a little sleeve which
3:01
includes some information about the warranty so there's our SD card here's
3:05
the limited warranty okay something about one year okay so it has a 1ear
3:10
warranty next we've got a quick start guide why don't we have a look at that
3:14
after we turn it on and then we have a little uh little sort of foamy sleeve
3:19
for it so that's pretty nice actually all right here's the little Cruise stand
3:23
so you can use it at the correct angle all right and then we have a charger so
3:28
that's it fairly simple accessory package let's have a look at the cruise
3:32
tablet
3:36
itself it's got a little bit of a heft to it but it's more of a um it's more of
3:42
a feels solid weight than a feels heavy
3:45
weight kind of like the iPhone 4 like the iPhone 4 is heavy but it's just
3:49
heavy cuz it's like feels solidly built so I'm going to go ahead and try and
3:54
find the power button which is here so
3:57
let's uh let's wait for it to power on while we show you guys all the buttons so we've got reset check it out USB
4:03
that's something your iPhone doesn't have okay there's our SD slot so that's
4:06
your expandable storage up to 32 gigs on this side we've got volume controls up
4:12
and down we've got a little bit of cruise branding going on there moving
4:16
along to the bottom we've got a headphone jack uh some kind of indicator
4:20
LED we have speakers which are built right into the bottom here as well as
4:24
our power in and then on the other side nothing so it's got a fairly clean
4:29
overall look to the outside of it on the back you just see a little velocity
4:33
micro logo Cruise tablet you got your serial number as well as some FCC you
4:38
know it complies with part whatever of whatever um here we've got Android
4:42
booting up now and why don't we wait for it to boot
4:46
up and then we'll be back and yeah it's not quite booted up
4:54
yet oh it's booted up cameraman's gesturing to me so I guess we better do
4:58
that oh look there we go so the screen is right away nice and vibrant I'm going
5:03
to see if I can find some uh I think here is settings yeah so let's play
5:08
around with some of the stuff so we've got Wireless and networks works pretty
5:13
much like any other Android device so we've got our navigation up here move it
5:18
down a little bit there we go uh so let's see I want screen is a big one for
5:22
me so let's see what the display is going to look like if we uh Tinker
5:26
around with a little bit so brightness it's at its maximum brightness right now
5:29
it goes all the way down to here so I'd say sort of a happy medium is probably
5:33
right there around 35 to uh 40% that's
5:36
where I usually end up when I'm using any of these kinds of devices this one
5:39
seems to have a full charge on it right
5:43
now uh we can show animations cool so
5:47
does that yeah there we go so now the uh now the screens are going to be
5:51
animating uh you know what give me a second to get connected to the Wi-Fi and
5:54
then we'll go a little further into this so here we go we got the Android
6:00
app store installed it actually didn't come with that pre-installed on the
6:03
tablet which is a very strange thing to me but here it is so I just downloaded
6:07
Angry Birds uh connecting to the Wi-Fi only took me a couple minutes which is
6:11
pretty cool um just had to enter the password for the Wi-Fi here at the
6:15
office using the App Store is pretty much like using the App Store on my
6:19
friend's phone uh back when I was deciding whether to get um here let me
6:24
see where's like uh here why don't me see if there's like a Facebook app or
6:27
something uh back when I was deciding whether to get uh the Galaxy S Vibrant
6:32
or the iPhone 4 um although the cameraman did bring my
6:37
attention to the fact that Android 2.0 what this guy's running is not really
6:42
that similar to the uh to the Android
6:45
that is running on the phones that are out there right now it's slightly more
6:49
up toate so this is what there is for Facebook why don't we just have a look
6:53
and see if our Angry Birds is done not just yet so let's uh you know okay I
7:00
I have to criticize a couple things it's not as fast as I would ideally like um
7:06
it's not quite as U the screen's not
7:09
quite as bright as I would ideally like but it's got a lot going for it and that
7:14
is that the price is really low so this thing is less than 250 bucks at retail
7:18
it does have the agreement in place with Amazon where you can use it as a Kindle
7:22
ebook reader so that makes it it puts it down in that ebook price point where it
7:27
becomes very a very good value proposition um and you don't really need
7:31
the speed for those kinds of applications so here you can just sign
7:36
in with your Amazon um credentials okay
7:40
so why don't we go ahead and uh check out Angry Birds here see how well that
7:44
runs on this little tablet of course that's what I would
7:49
care about right do I want to install this application yep okay we'll come
7:53
back once it's installed okay we weren't able to
7:56
install Angry Birds what I've discovered is that that app store is not actually
8:01
like the Android Market that I'm familiar with so it doesn't have some of
8:06
the same good stuff in it uh we did find a YouTube app though in the in the
8:11
cruise App Store and there's also a Facebook one in there so let's see how
8:15
well the YouTube one works I'm just running one of my own YouTube videos
8:18
this is a 720p video yes it is highend
8:22
and I mean very highend
8:25
gra okay let's see if there's a way to run this in higher quality I'll be back
8:29
in a minute so we were watching it in horrible
8:32
quality uh why don't we watch in normal quality that might help a little bit ah
8:37
yes it is highend and I mean very
8:41
highend Graphics unboxing
8:45
time this is the rad HD
8:48
6990 it features I don't really see anywhere to adjust the volume
8:53
ony okay details comments oh oh I can
8:57
rate my video check this out 4 gigs of gddr5
9:02
memory yes okay G well I think that
9:06
they're probably focusing on the correct marketing points on the box when they
9:12
emphasize it as like a Kindle reader because with the overall build of it
9:16
feeling very solid very nice and the uh
9:19
the screen being quite adequate I think that it would make for like a great
9:24
eBook reader and since there you can access the internet on it and we'll show
9:29
you the browsing speed in just a moment here here let's try this one more time
9:32
watch a normal quality let's see if it gets any
9:41
better that it's probably buffering right
9:50
now okay let's show you guys the browser
9:54
so we're going to go to nci.com
9:57
okay press home okay we got a
10:02
browser NCI
10:06
x.com let's go
10:09
there oops okay let's try that again NCI
10:15
ix.com go let's try that go button that
10:19
might work better so here's where we downloaded the
10:23
YouTube v1.3 cuz you can see it's not a you it's not like an Android YouTube app
10:27
it's like specifically for the cruise reader so I think they probably still
10:30
got some work to do as far as the app development goes and um and once once
10:35
those mature a little bit once the installed base of these uh devices gets
10:39
a little bit wider then I think we'll see some definite improvements in the
10:43
overall um in the overall responsiveness
10:46
of the
10:50
apps here we go so we're loading up the NCIX site uh oh you can double tap to
10:56
zoom in and zoom out so that's kind of neat
11:00
I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to check out the forums you can see we've
11:03
got St Patrick's deals going on on nci.com right
11:16
now so we've moved significantly closer to our access point and we're actually
11:21
having a little bit more success with the uh browsing
11:25
speed okay so let's go to uh you know
11:28
the main forum uh
11:44
home so basically I think the conclusion at this point is that as an e-reader or
11:49
for checking email um actually this is
11:53
pretty unbeatable for the price but I wouldn't expect to be doing any heavy
11:58
lifting let's see if we can get it to browse a
12:02
little bit faster now because I I did have some success with faster browsing
12:06
so here we go now we can navigate so I'm quite close to my access point from here
12:10
and uh that's giving me some more success although it's still not fast by
12:16
any stretch of the imagination for mobile browsing but I mean it's more
12:20
than adequate for like uh email or whatever the case may be so thank you
12:24
for checking out this video on the velocity micro Cruise tablet don't
12:29
forget to subscribe to lus techtips for more unboxings reviews and other
12:32
computer videos