Notion Ink Adam - double impressions

Prehistory

So, it happened. On February 11, I paid for a sensational tablet in narrow circles - top-end equipment, WiFi + 3G + PixelQi, waited for the first shipment, then the appearance of tracking, so the hardware did not wait for the holidays, and now, when I was already warming the belly in Majorca, Russian Post finally She deigned to drag my package to the place of delivery, and she notified me about the tracking. Total - to purchase, from the moment of payment to receipt, it took only four months - a ridiculous, right-word, figure for a representative of that generation who still remembers the three-day night queues for Skorokhod boots, sugar coupons and the game “Well, wait a minute! ”which I have been begging for for two and a half years. It was funny to watch foreigners rage about the delay (most of the second pre-order, apparently, was from the States). It was a bit depressing, however, the presence of people who did not receive the tablet from the first pre-order, although some have already started to deliver the second turn ... I hope everyone will finally get the desired toy. Well, the responsiveness of the management of NotionInkLabs was also very depressing - the official blog posted one message per month, their general meaning was about the following: “We are fine, it will be even better, we also came up with these buns, which we will stick into our wonderful tablet, glory to Krishna, glory to Rama, goodbye! ”. Although, again, against the background of our residential office and a three-year epic with the current pipe in the stairwell, the Indians look pale. Good for us, Russian, we are hardened, so here I am!

(further cat, under the cut - letters and five megabytes of photos)

Holding breath

So, on the 10th, I received information that a 10-inch friend expects me in my homeland. Yesterday, on the 16th of May, in the morning I looked at the post office, safely forgetting the receipt notice at home and having received the sweet woman’s gaze from the “Reception and delivery of mail items” window full of kindness and tenderness. I now know why there is such a small window - something like the rhino on the auto-safari looked at me from behind the fence. The parcel was solidly packed with wrapping paper, lavishly plastered with foreign brands and equipped with a “Gift” label. By the way, although the tracking cost for some reason was 360 rubles, this number was written on the package with a pen, clearly Russian, and 17326 rubles. - The real amount paid for the tablet. Wonderful and mysterious ways and destinies of parcels ...

The packaging is intact, opened just in case right at the post office - inside, one in the other, there are two boxes, already known from numerous reviews of the device on the Internet. One is a standard cardboard box, the second is a black box of irregular shape, indicating in white letters that it is fraught with itself. Okay, figs with him, at work already pokukozhu - I decided, and dragged into his own scientific research institute.
')

Appearance on light

At work, consistently removed from the black box:

• Transparent packaging with a protective film, a cloth to clean the chakras and figovina for sticking film
• Device itself
• The stunning thickness of the manual - like the Kama Sutra, so much they write, but here they were too lazy. Well, I'm actually a supporter of the “help to read - not lordly occupation” ideology.
• The power supply to the non-Nashen power outlet had to get a plug from the bins and resort to brute force and electrical tape.

They say that some of the bundled adapter was attached to an Orthodox outlet, and one boy with good karma even got a tablet with a glued protective film - but I don’t belong to the first group of Adam's owners, nor, even more so, to the second one - so I had to sculpt the film by myself. Worn, by the way, surprisingly easy - there are a couple of bubbles, but not above the screen. The photo is clearly visible on the right side. Photo left-right-bottom, nothing new, I apologize that a bit is smeared - I did not catch the focus.

From left to right:

• Speaker
• Volume rocker
• USB
• mini-usb

From left to right:

• Status LED (lit yellow when the tablet is on)
• Charging LED (lit blue when charging)
• Headphone jack
• Hardware Androids button "back"
• USB
• HDMI
• Power switch
• Another speaker

On the front panel from left to right you can find:

• Microphone hole
• Reset hole (given the non-removable battery - wisely, there is always a way to reset the device)
• Micro sd slot
• SIM slot

Behind - nothing interesting, except for the message Created in India

Test Drive

Well, turn on. Hmm ... the screen is pale. Obviously paler than the “hero” quality screen. Besides, the 10-inch matrix is ​​obviously asking for a higher resolution than the current 1024 * 600. I compared it in the store with the Acer iconia tab - there is obviously more fun, the colors are juicier, the point is smaller, the contrast is sharper. To the left of the screen vertically in a row lined up touch buttons without illumination. In order, from top to bottom:

• Search. With a long press switches the screen mode, about it later
• Home
• Menu
• Back

I must say, the decision is controversial - the buttons are located so that they are often pressed accidentally, if you hold the tablet with two hands. Besides, due to the lack of illumination it is hard to work with them at night. In my opinion, the most reasonable thing would be to make them relief or not at all sensory. The screen responds well, multitouch is present. The sound is pretty good for such small speakers - expecting the worst.
The weight of the device is 872 grams, it lies quite comfortably in the hand, both in landscape and portrait oration. In portrait oration, it is the same with both the left and the right hand - although it is more convenient for active use, however, the left grip is more convenient - in this case it is convenient to hold the right hand over the upper corner, where there will be a back button under your fingers. The upper part of the case, with a thickening - is covered with rubberized plastic, which greatly increases the convenience of holding.

Tablet face

The diary is the student's face, the kitchen is the face of the hostess, the screen is the face of the tablet. But what is really there, the tablet itself, in fact, is essentially a screen with a computer attached to it. Let's see what we have here with the screen ...
Md Pale, I already said above. Let's put it next, for the test, my HTC Hero. Both devices have their auto brightness corrected for the duration of the tests, the screen brightness is set to maximum.

Even in comparison with the ancient Hero, the screen is noticeably paler, the colors are not juicy, some kind of burned out. Let's try to use the PixelQI mode - at the same time, the screen backlight turns off, and the pixels are illuminated only by reflected light.

To extraordinary it looks like a black and white TV, in my country house I stood like this in a room. In reflected light with normal lighting - not comfortable to watch.
Well, and what will be in a strong light, when, in theory, the screen of the Hero must save. I’ll say right away that the weather in St. Petersburg at the time of photographing was really St. Petersburg, that is, it was settling, so I couldn’t use the main enemy of all tft-screens - direct sunlight. Let's try to use my lights for taking pictures - two 500 watts and one for 250. Two shots - on one screen of Adam with backlight, on the second - no.


The results are obvious. In bright light, the contrast of the Adamka screen increases, but the colors almost disappear. I think in the bright sun there will be no difference between the modes at all (except for the energy savings in the backlight).
I wonder how it will be with the readability of plain text in normal and bright light? Check it out ...
The backlight is on, the light is weak:

The backlight is off, the lighting is weak:

Yes, without a strong light, the PixelQI mode is not interesting ... Let there be light!

The photo is only one - because I didn’t find any difference in strong lighting. A strong external source covers the built-in light, like a bull sheep, and the entire display is only reflected in the light reflected from the substrate.
So, the conclusions: the hybrid screen lies in the middle between the standard LCD and e-ink. It is paler than modern, not even top, LCD, and has a not so light background as modern e-ink. On the other hand, in bright light, it retains readability, although it loses almost all colors, and at the same time it does not have a delay in redrawing the screen, like e-ink.
Unfortunately, this screen seems to have another drawback - the bad display of gradients. The above example clearly shows the step transitions at the top of the picture.

And what else?

However, even though the tablet consists mainly of the screen, there are still other parameters. And for him, Adam seems to come off. Tegra2, brain gig, 6 gigabytes of memory on board, micro-sd card, two usb hosts, mini-usb for connecting to a PC, full HDMI output, charging through a regular bp - this is what the Hindu tablet is different from, say, GTab colleagues.
On the work of USB ports and equipment: sd for 16 gigs was seen without problems. Two flash drives from 4 gigabytes each - mounted without any questions. I did not see one kingston at 8 gig. Also, I didn’t mount the screw to 250 gigs (although it was untwisted, it’s curious to look at the logs if it saw the screw at all), refused to work with the card reader, but it’s not surprising, I’ll start it even under Windows.
GPS is working confidently - caught me in the room. I regretted that I didn’t receive the device for the vacation yard - it’s very convenient to work with maps on the tablet, Open Street Maps can be cashed in and easily navigate around the world.
Video - until twisted, hands did not reach, so there’s nothing to tell about. It seems to be writing about the problems of many players - they can not work normally with hardware decoding of the stream, and on the soft they slow down. Wait and see.
Also, I can’t say anything for the battery - the fact is that the free SIM with my wife’s corporate “megaphone” internet connection blunted, and it looks like the tablet killed the entire battery in six to eight hours in an attempt to establish a connection to the network. So the statistics on battery life have not yet.
Yes, I almost forgot - in the upper right corner of the tablet there is a camera attached, as much as 3.2 megapixels (if you believe the inscriptions). And not just a camera, but a swivel one - in this simple way, the Indians dismissed the need to install two cameras - for video calls and for photographing. Although - to be honest, the quality of the camera installed here is such that photographing it somehow will not raise a hand - in fact, this is a typical webcam.

For communication, it should be great. Well, one more application came up, for perverts - you can, by pointing the camera forward, and holding the tablet horizontally in front of you, stare at people who are not aware that you are watching them.

Soft Hindu software

The habrovan attentive will notice that the launcher in all my photos is non-native. The reason is simple - the firmware from Notion Ink seemed so awful that I took it down in the evening. Here you have a crooked browser without Flash, and the lack of a Market, and a frankly strange launcher with scrolling tabs ... Fortunately, the choice of firmware for Adam is already quite large: there is a EdenX based on firmware (I installed it), with Market, root and other buns. There is a BeastRom - many praise it. It stands on Adam and the famous Cyanogenmod - a bit dopilenny, really. Even Honeycomb was pushed here by individual enthusiasts, so there is a choice.

Total

So, I, as the owner of Adam, can say about him:
Minuses:

1. Failed location of the touch buttons
2. Frankly weak camera
3. A small screen resolution - for 10 inches, it was worth it to put 1280 * 800
4. Raw software "out of the box"

Pros:

1. Tegra2 is a very smart chip. Launched Dungeon Defense - rated, the game at the level of consoles
2. 2 USB. It is really convenient to read or merge any information from a flash drive to a tablet. It is interesting, and see the keyboard?
3. mini-usb. I look at my GalaxyTab with a colleague - for synchronization, if you please, use only the branded wire ...
4. Normal power supply. Look above, about the GalaxyTab and the wire ...

I deliberately did not include the screen in the pros or cons - because I have not yet decided what it is. On the one hand, when I see it next to the GalaxyTab or iPad - I am ashamed. On the other hand, when I remember how on a sunny day I tried to see something on the screen of a laptop, I wonder. Ambiguous, all the same.

Well, this is how I got a review - by the way, my first review of the device on Habré. If something is not written - write, correct. If you have questions about the device - ask, I will answer. In principle, I would like to wait for a sunny day and see how Adamka behaves on the street. I think it will turn out at the same time to remove a number of GalaxyTab and some e-book. Also open is the question of the battery and the work of 3G - for the first there are few statistics, the second is simply not tested.

[up1] found a photo with engadget - it’s pretty clear what a tablet looks like in bright light compared to competitors