IconBIT NetTAB MATRIX: review and test of an affordable IPS screen tablet

More and more companies are rapidly entering the tablet market. In the price range up to 10 thousand rubles. there were so many different tablet models that it became very difficult for manufacturers to stand out against this background - companies began to try to minimize production costs while maintaining normal usability. So there were tablets with a price of only $ 100, but with a mediocre iron. IconBIT company decided to go the other way - it did not try to find the cheapest parts possible, but left a 7-inch IPS-quality IPS matrix in the tablet and good hardware capable of playing Full HD video. This is how the NetTAB Matrix tablet appeared, the price of which is from 6590 rubles.

And what in practice? Detailed review of the device - under the cut.

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Specs

• Screen : 7 ”capacitive multi-touch screen (1024x600 pix) IPS with full Angle
• CPU : Cortex A8 1.2GHz
• GPU : Mali-400, 2160P Graphic Core
• OS : Android 4.0; more than 100.000 software available online
• RAM : DDR3 1024MB
• Storage : Built-in 8GB, TF card support (up to 32GB)
• Internet Access : Wi-Fi 802.11b / g / n
• Video : H.264, MKV, AVI, RM, WMV, MPEG4, VOB, RMVB, DAT, FLV, 3GP, MOV, Support YouTube, HTML5 and Flash10
• Audio : MP1, MP2, MP3, WMA, WAV, AC3, AAC, OGG, APE, FLAC, 3GPP
• Photo : JPG, BMP, GIF, PNG, JPEG
• E-book : TXT, LRC, PDF, HTML, HTM, EPUB, PDB, FB2
• Camera : 2.0MP (front camera)
• Features : Multilanguage, OTG, Record function, G-sensor, Speaker and USB / Wireless keyboard support
• Power : Multicharging (USB / DC in)
• Battery Capacity : 3700mAh Li-polymer battery
• Size : 188x123x10 mm
• Weight : 308g

Equipment

Tablet, USB-miniUSB adapter, USB (mother) -microUSB (male) adapter (OTG with additional power), charger and Axelvox headphones. More information about the OTG function and the quality of the headphones will be written below.

There is no cover in the kit, but it doesn’t matter - you can find a lot of covers on sale that fit this particular tablet. Also, iconBIT will soon have to put on sale wireless joysticks compatible with Matrix.

Appearance

When you first take the tablet in hand, it creates a very good initial impression. This is facilitated by high-quality assembly, robust housing and, of course, IPS matrix. The dimensions of the device 188x123x10mm allow you to confidently hold the tablet with one hand, and the weight of 300 grams gives a feeling of “serious” and high-quality, but at the same time lightweight device - most 7-inch tablets are heavier than Matrix grams so 100.



A wave of visual clones of the iPad clearly passed this device. So, on the front side of the device there are no buttons - just a screen and a 2.0MP camera. And the screen proportions are not the same as those of an apple tablet and are more suitable for watching large-format films, which is not surprising in principle - the iconBIT company has established itself as a manufacturer of high-quality media players and, releasing a new tablet, will clearly take care of the multimedia capabilities of this device.



The back cover is glossy and made of durable plastic. Minimalism in design is obvious - there are no drawings, eye-catching logos or drawings with robots. The only thing on the cover is a speaker, protected by a metal grid, and small gray lettering.



The edges of the device also do not abound with decorative elements. All connectors and slots are located on the left side. Here we have a charger connector, micro-USB, HDMI connectors, a microphone, a Micro SD card slot and a 3.5 mm headphone output.



All hardware buttons are located on the upper edge of the device on the left side: the On / Off button, "rocker" to adjust the volume and the "back" button. The buttons are thin, do not spoil the minimalism in the design, they are conveniently pressed. In the dark it is difficult to make a mistake and press the “wrong button” - the middle and side buttons have slightly different shapes and differ in length, and therefore tactile sensations are different.

The body is durable, poorly bending pressure. The upper part of the body, on which the screen is located, is tightly seated in the back cover. There are no large gaps between the halves of the structure.

In general, the design of the device is designed in a strict style, and the build quality does not upset at all. Appearance is not a weak point of this tablet, but on the contrary - it creates a very good initial impression. Such a device should appeal to many people, especially lovers of minimalism.

Screen

And here we come to an important element of the tablet. After all, its Matrix screen stands out against the background of many other tablets in its price category.

The name of the matrix type speaks for itself. Yes, and possible fears associated with an affordable price of the device, in vain - the screen is really high-quality, with good viewing angles. Below is a lineup of screen photos taken in the dark from different angles:



Viewing angles are really good. And this is a big plus for the tablet, which can be used both for portrait orientation of the screen and for landscape.

The screen resolution is 1024x600 pix, and the diagonal is 7 ”. Density: 160 DPI - an excellent indicator for a tablet with a screen of this size. After all, it would be logical to assume that an affordable tablet with an IPS matrix would certainly have a more modest screen resolution, for example, 800x480 and, accordingly, a lower DPI value.

The display is very bright - with indoor lighting and the maximum brightness of the screen ¬ ¬ there is some discomfort. The minimum level of brightness is optimal for using the device in the dark. In the light of the screen fades, but not much - the information remains readable, and therefore the device remains suitable for use on the street.

Photo taken in the park:



The test was conducted using a number of programs (Touch Test, Multitouch Test and using the built-in application in the tablet settings). The tablet supports up to 5 clicks at a time.

Operating System

The tablet is running Android OS 4.0.3. No complaints: the device has never hung up, there were no problems with the menu, etc.



I was pleased that the “launcher”, the settings and the list of applications work like a clock - moving between screens smoothly and without brakes. Bottom toolbar also works well. In general, the feeling remains very good - everything works stably, there is no feeling of “dampness”.

Applications

Standard

Some applications are sewn into the firmware. There is a standard Browser, Gallery (includes viewing videos and photos), Voice Recorder, Download Manager, Calendar, Calculator, Camera, Music, the ability to search by voice, etc. Readers (Adobe Reader, Moon + Reader), games (Angry Birds), utilities (Dev Tools, ES Explorer) are also preinstalled, there are Google applications (Gmail, YouTube) and social applications (Advanced Facebook, Twitter)

Play Market is there and it works properly, only in the “factory version” it is called as before - just “Market”, but after the first launch of the application the name changes to “Play Market”

Further a little more about some regular applications:

Browser . The standard browser is interesting for some features, such as the toolbar from Google.



Using this panel, you can have quick access to standard functions - go forward / back, switch between tabs or open a new one, etc. And this panel allows you to hide extra buttons and increase the amount of space reserved for viewing pages. But, unfortunately, the browser does not differ smoothness and speed. Replaced by the opera - works much faster and there is a smooth scrolling.



Gallery . This application includes both a photo viewer and a video player. And from this application, you can quickly go to the application "camera". It is possible to sort content by albums (actually sorting by folders + a separate album with photos / videos made using the built-in camera), places, dates, people and tags. In some ways, such a joint way of grouping photos and videos together is better than separately, as is the case in Android OS 2.3.7 - after all, often video and photography is done during the same event, and later it will be convenient view both photos and videos together. In general, the application works quite fluently, it is convenient to view pictures and photos. As for the video - more about this will be written below in the appropriate section.



Music Behind a fairly simple interface is hidden almost omnivorous audio player - the player reproduced all formats except Apple: AAC, AMR, Monkey's Audio, FLAC, MP3, Vorbis, WAV, WMA. The player allows you to group tracks by artist, album, title, and also supports playlists. More information about the quality of the audio section will be written in the corresponding section.



Voice Recorder . The standard sound recording application does not have any sane recording quality and can mislead a person, forcing him to believe that the device has a terrible microphone. In fact, the device has a completely normal microphone, suitable for recording conversations / Skype. Just need to put another application.
Camera. The tablet is equipped exclusively with the front camera 2.0 MP, but the “camera” application is still present and allows you to take photos, panoramic shots and record video. You can also play with the exposure and white balance settings. But still, it is quite difficult to use the front camera for photographing - its main purpose is video communication.

Below are examples of photos taken with the integrated camera:





On this, perhaps, I will stop.

Third Party

Skype The application works correctly: it gets along with both the microphone and the front camera. The interlocutor normal hears and sees. One word - lepota. But there is one important note: if you install the latest version of Skype from the market, you will receive a non-working video call - the interlocutor will see pink stripes and green flickering on the video ... As it turned out, this is a common problem among budget users and in some cases is treated, and in some cases not. The problem with the video on Matrix was solved after I came across a post . Put the version of Skype, referred to in the message (2.5.0.160) and the video link began to work correctly.

A description of other applications is beyond the scope of this review and is not directly related to this tablet. And there are no problems with them - all applications compatible with Android OS 4.0.3 go to Matrix. Including applications that require root rights.

Games

Due to the Mali-400 3D core on board, the tablet can be called gaming. There are almost no problems with 2D games - most games are pretty quick.



With 3D games, the situation is a bit more complicated, but still very good. Some 3D games do not require any additional gestures and initially run smoothly and without brakes. And other games may by default download too "heavy" cache, or even refuse to start at all due to the fact that the tablet is not in the list of supported devices. But with a high probability, problems can be solved with the help of “special” versions of games, or by replacing the cache. And to improve playability, it is sometimes worth playing around with a “teapot” (Chainfire3D).



So, having fiddled with “caches”, we managed to achieve an acceptable number of fps in GTA III, Dungeon Defenders 3, ShadowGun and in other top games.

Video

Video viewing is one of the most requested features on the tablet. Moreover, it’s a sin not to watch at least one movie on an IPS matrix with good color rendering. And manufacturers claim support for a large number of video formats (H.264, MKV, AVI, WMV, MPEG4, VOB, RMVB, DAT, FLV, 3GP, MOV, Support YouTube, HTML5 and Flash10). A special test will help us know what a regular video player is capable of.

So, let's go:






The results are very good and speak for themselves. The video player is almost omnivorous - problems have arisen only with the SWF container and the Microsoft MPEG-4 v2 codecs, MPEG Video Version 1 and DivX4 - and these codecs are the least popular ones presented in the test. But there is support for codecs DivX3, DivX5, Xvid, FMP4, MJPG, AVC1, MPEG1, MPEG2, VC-1 and V_MPEG4 / ISO / ASP, as well as containers AVI, FLV, F4V, MOV, MP4, MPG, TS, WMV, MKV . And therefore, shaking the next movie, you can not bother about its format and be sure that the tablet can play it.

Support for 1080P standard is useful for those who want to connect the tablet to the monitor / TV and watch movies. In general, 2160P support is claimed - but if such a support is needed, then perhaps in the future - because while the implementation of Ultra High Definition (3840x2160) can only be found in prototypes.

The large list of supported formats does not end with the capabilities of the video player. So, behind its scanty interface, quite a few possibilities are hidden, mainly related to subtitles, as well as 3D video.



You can select a file with subtitles, as well as select their encoding (UTF-8, GBK, Big5, KOI8-R, windows-1250, ISO-8859-1, Shift_JIS, UTF-16BE, UTF-16LE), select the subtitle color, size and display delay. In addition, you can select the audio track and change the aspect ratio - Full screen video ratio, Origin size, 4/3, 16/9.

And there is also a whole bunch of 3D settings: 2D show half of the left / half of the top / custom, 3D left and right, 3D for the bottom and 3D interlace, 3D line interlace, 3D (Up / Down) / (Left / Right ) anglagh (red blue / red green / red cyan / full color / half color / the best / yellow blue). Unfortunately, I don’t have 3D glasses, and it would be interesting to test this feature.

Music

Included with the tablet are headphones Axelvox droplets. Of course, one shouldn’t expect any special sound from such headphones, but it’s impossible to call them terrible: the headphones are better than the Chinese OEM droplets, but they don’t reach the quality of the headphones that come with the Cowon audio players.



As it turned out, the tablet boasts not only a powerful video decoder, but also a good audio output. The volume margin is large: headphone-plugs are enough for half of the maximum volume level. The tablet, without any problems, swung all the overhead headphones that I had and showed myself well with monitor options. For example: the audio output of the tablet turned out to be much more powerful than that of the Cowon J3. The character of the sound is assertive, somewhat reminiscent of Cowon D2 +. In general, this is a very good result for a device that is not positioned as an audio player, and, especially, for an affordable tablet with an IPS matrix, for which high-quality sound reproduction is not the primary task.



Matrix has one built-in speaker, which is located on the back of the tablet. Maximum speaker volume is enough for easy viewing of movies in the room. Surprisingly, the speaker produces a normal sound without a lot of artifacts, distortion or noise. This midrange is slightly above the average of the built-in speakers in portable devices.

Performance tests

In AnTuTu Benchmark v2.7.3, the tablet scored a good result of 2892 points. By the number of points TAB Matrix is ​​between the Samsung Galaxy S and Google Nexus S.



In Quadrant Advanced, the device scored 1626 points - between the Samsung Galaxy Nexus and the Samsung Nexus S.



To evaluate the performance of graphics, the application NenaMark2 (v2.2) was used. The tablet showed exactly the same result as the Samsung Galaxy S - 24 fps.

In general, this is a very good result for such a tablet. By performance Matrix is ​​not inferior to more expensive devices based on Android OS.

OTG

Included with the device is a special OTG cable that allows you to connect various devices to the tablet.



The claimed function works flawlessly. I tried to connect flash drives of various sizes, an external hard drive on 1TB, USB-card reader, mp3 player - everything works fine. Devices are recognized quickly - literally a couple of seconds after connecting the device, the tablet allows you to view its contents.



The device recognizes a USB keyboard. So, you can consider a convenient accessory version - a case with a built-in keyboard.

And yet, the tablet is friendly with the mouse. In the system settings, you can adjust the sensitivity. When you connect the mouse on the device screen, a nice cursor appears:



Theoretically, the tablet can be made friends with almost any USB gamepad, and not just with a proprietary one, such as with Xbox 360 controllers. However, my Logitech ChillStream joystick could not be connected to the Matrix. When you connect it to the tablet, the built-in fans are turned on, but the tablet does not respond to the gamepad buttons. I tried to put the program USB / BT Joystick Center 6 - but she did not see my joystick. I also tried to install the driver according to this instruction - it did not work out.

It is possible that soon on w3bsit3-dns.com a detailed instruction will appear on how to connect any gamepads to the Matrix, and then it will turn out to connect my joystick.

Working hours

Two tests were performed.

During the first test, the maximum brightness of the screen, the maximum volume level (on the built-in speaker) was set, and the video was launched to repeat with the following parameters: 1280x544, AVC (High@L4.1, CABAS - Yes, 9 frames), 7043 Kbps, DTS - 755 Kbps.

After 4 hours and 37 minutes, the tablet signaled a low charge (there was still 14% left):



And in total (up to full discharge), the tablet worked for 5 hours and 31 minutes in video playback mode.

The second test was carried out under more benign conditions: the brightness of the screen was set to a minimum, and then, the book was launched on the tablet in fb2, and the automatic page turning function was turned on.

The tablet worked in this mode for 7 hours and 26 minutes . Good result.
In general, the tablet showed decent results. One charge is enough for one day of active use. And if you use the tablet mainly on the road, then the charge will last for 2-3 days depending on the intensity of use.

Anything different

In addition to the above, I want to say that before this tablet I had no opportunity to try reading books from the IPS screen on the road. And on the Matrix, I have already read one book. It is believed that the IPS screen is much nicer to read than with TN - and now I fully agree with this. And the IPS screen does not fade on the street as much as TN.

Like many other Matrix tablets is heated during operation. I did not notice any crime in this - the case on the left side heats up, but not much - about the same as the case of my smartphone (Motorola Defy).

Advantages and disadvantages

✓ High-quality IPS matrix
✓ Android 4.0.3
✓ Processor 1.2GHz
✓ 1 GB RAM
✓ GPU like Samsung Galaxy SII
✓ Good DPI
✓ Laconic design
✓ Omnivorous video player, support Full HD 1080P
✓ Good audio track
✓ OTG (you can connect external drives, mouse, keyboard and other devices)
✓ Acceptable battery life
✓ Affordable price
✗ No case included
✗ No built-in GPS / 3G

Conclusion

At IconBIT it turned out to make a high-quality and affordable device. The tablet is not only pleasant to hold, but also pleasant to use. Runs quickly, does not slow down and does not hang. IPS screen gives the device a good status and pleases the eye. Filling the tablet allows you to achieve good performance at the level of more expensive devices. And almost omnivorous video and audio player, support for Full HD 1080P, HDMI 1.4 output (with 3D support) and powerful audio output allow using the device as a full-fledged portable media player.