Ainol Novo 9 Spark review: experience using a “Chinese” tablet
One day, it became clear to me that I needed to finally get my own tablet, and not rely on the devices constantly arriving at the tests. To begin with, it was decided that the screen diagonal of the device would be about 10 inches. This idea was pushed by a 10.1-inch tablet that was in my use for about a month. Somehow "suddenly" it turned out that since the device appeared in the house, the wife had completely ceased to include a netbook. The tablet was enough for her correspondence, online video viewing and web surfing as such. Yes, and I also liked watching the same series more on a light mobile device with a large screen.
Earlier, I was an ardent supporter of 7-inch “tablets”, sincerely not understanding the users of large-format tablets. This was mainly due to the personal need for a small tablet in the context of regular travel trips [to work]. Over time, the need to travel to work disappeared, and 10-inch family-wide decree were considered the most appropriate option for purchase.
')
Then they had to stand at the crossroads of three roads. The first path led to the camp of famous brands, something like the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1, Huawei MediaPad 10 FHD or ASUS Eee Pad Transformer Prime. I managed to work with the last two models, but ... Once again I was convinced that I have no desire to pay 13-15 thousand rubles for a tablet (that is, at least $ 400). These are excellent devices, I do not deny it. However, for me the price plate of the tablet rests on $ 300 (9,400 rubles), the higher price does not pay back the possibilities and pleasure from using the device.
On the second path, I was awaited by the B-brands of Ritmix, Explay, Prestigio and others that flooded the market. I have a neutral attitude towards individual representatives of this stratum, because from direct communication with the representatives of the brands (and the test of the devices), I see that in the past six months a significant step has been taken towards improving the quality of the devices. I was killed by the neighborhood with the third path at the fork. If the second echelon uses China as a technical base, then it is best in this country to look for a “chosen one.” And you will be able to meet the price limit, and you can get wonderful characteristics.
On hands…
... I had Ainol Novo 9 Firewire, aka Spark. Why? I was the first to move the idea-fix - for a long time I wanted to get a tablet, on the screen of which you can view PDF files without zooming at all. Regardless of the diagonal, the device with a screen resolution of up to 1280x800 pixels did not provide such an opportunity. Retina? Retina! A new trend with the installation of the screen "like the iPad 3" on Android-tablets. I’ll say right away that I didn’t intend to make an order from China at least because of a dislike for waiting for mailings for a long time. By coincidence, local resellers chose Ainol Novo 9 Spark.
Examined pre-topics on w3bsit3-dns.com, it seems there were no serious problems identified. It was already at the end of April that the topic “Braque - Ainol Novo 9 Firewire & Spark” was opened and a vote was held on the topic “Major Malfunctions”, which was inevitable for almost any “Chinese people”. OMG. But a review on Mobile-review.com insisted that there was no cause for concern. And I took the chance.
The box and the package did not surprise anything special. Is that amused the inscription on the packaging that the tablet is intended only for sale in China. Just in case, I note that the names Firewire and Spark indicate the purpose of the tablet for Asian or European / other markets. The difference, according to online, is the presence / absence of specific Chinese programs. By and large, I would write this restrictive mark on Spark (I think you understand what I mean).
The complete charger was "dead", as I was warned in advance. In Novo 9 Spark there is a cool feature - you can charge the tablet only through the appropriate DC-connector. MicroUSB is not in the business, through it does not charge either from the computer or from the composite structure of the cable and the charging unit with a USB connector.
Appearance
First of all, in the Novo 9 Spark I was surprised by the weight. This is the first 10-inch tablet in my practice, after which tired hands. The paradox is also as follows: at the time of purchase, I had a 10.1-inch tablet weighing 680 grams. From his weight and with me, and from his wife had the best impressions. In Novo 9 Spark, 642.3 grams is indicated, but after five minutes of operation you begin to “specifically” pay attention to the heaviness in your palms.
The second item is materials. The back cover is made of aluminum, which theoretically improves the image component, and also improves the shock properties of the model. In fact - weight gain and poor resistance to minor scratches. And most importantly - the coating to the touch is trite unpleasant. It is something indefinite velvet-matte, weakly clinging to the palm. Here I will speak about the screen coverage. An ordinary plastic has been installed, which has proved itself to be a small brand, but a propensity for the rapid accumulation of all the same minor scratches.
No less vivid impressions after the weight and "luminia" left the build quality. Probably, until now I have been lucky with test tablets. Otherwise, I can not explain how Novo 9 Spark turned out to be creaking-crispy. For this unflattering parameter, the tablet definitely earned the first place in my personal rating.
A little about the standard - from the buttons present the power button, volume and return to the starting desktop. I liked the last item especially.
Connectors lurked on the bottom. These are charging, memory card slot, microUSB, miniHDMI and 3.5 mm headphone jack. On the same side, quiet speakers are installed at the edges. What tablet orientation do you usually watch movies in? That's right, in the landscape. Therefore, with a “normal” hold, you will invariably cover one speaker with your palm. Very interesting design solution. Now I respect the manufacturers who place the speakers on the rear cover.
Camera
Item "for show". The front 0.3 Mp a priori do not give anything worthwhile, but I still had hopes on the rear 5 Mp. Of course, it’s completely in vain - the blurry image, low detail and other related quality flaws are present in full. Plus, there was an uninvited effect of image distortion.
Screen
We got the main trump card Novo 9 Spark, 9.7-inch IPS-display with a resolution of 2048x1536 pixels. The viewing angles are usually wide for this type of matrix. But for me it's still small, because when reading “at an angle” text material with a white background, a noticeable gray “patina” appears. This is inconvenient, say, when the tablet is on the table. The clarity of the picture is impressive, no joke. Here and PDF without scaling, and web pages in large "pieces". However, in the case of pages in the browser, high resolution sometimes turns out to be not at all in the “plus” - because of the small letters, you still have to use the zoom. The main disadvantage that outweighed the advantage of resolution for me is low brightness. The fact that the tablet can be considered conventionally normal with the average position of the slider, Novo 9 Spark gives out only with the maximum position of the brightness settings.
And in applications, and in the system often had to twice, and even three times to make a touch for the implementation of the action. Think about it, write it off on the low sensitivity of the display coverage or delays in the work of Android.
Performance and speed
Available Novo 9 Spark 4 core chipset Allwinner A31 with a frequency of 1 GHz, a graphics accelerator PowerVR SGX544 MP2 and 2 GB of RAM plus 16 GB for storing information. When viewing the range of Retina-tablets, I immediately excluded the dual-core versions with 1 GB of RAM - there were too many complaints about the speed of work. I was preparing for the fact that the Novo 9 Spark may have problems with speed, but the reality surpassed my wildest expectations. I repeat, various second-tier brand tablets were in my hands, so I considered myself ready for the “brakes”. However, the slowness of the Novo 9 Spark is a real stress test. Even the call and navigation through the system settings menu occurs without haste.
On the very first day, the tablet suddenly began to show me in "Rapid" the moment of transition from the desktop to the list of programs. The question was solved only after resetting the system settings. In the future, Google Play distinguished itself, which stopped running. The solutions proposed in the forums did not help, welcome to another “zeroing”. At w3bsit3-dns.com, tablet acceleration methods are indicated using system settings. But I still didn’t get any global speed increase. So idealistic users are waiting for a fascinating pastime with custom firmwares and a vote about which new thing has been fixed, which errors have been fixed, and which ones have been introduced. I note that browsing PDF magazines did not like too slow rendering of pages when paging. Web surfing with a lot of tabs is also not the end of Novo 9 Spark.
Referring to the benchmarks, we first investigate the results of the Quadrant. 4 core Cortex-A7 can not on equal to with Cortex-A9, also "pumped up" the speed of memory and I / O.
We see nothing really new in AnTuTu Benchmark.
On Google Play, it turned out that the service diligently hides any version of Smartbench from me. Therefore, Vellamo was tried instead.
Games
Another source of hitherto unexplored impressions for me was the game. GUN BROS 2, a minute after the first launch, hung so that I regretted the absence of the reset button in Novo 9 Spark. To whom, but this element would not hurt this tablet. Later BOMBSHELLS: HELL'S BELLES, Real Racing 3, Dead Trigger, FRONTLINE COMMANDO: NORMANDY and SHADOWGUN: DeadZone were installed. Immediately about the bad - loading levels in games takes a long time, departures and hangs that occurred in GUN BROS 2 also occasionally reminded of themselves. But regarding the level of FPS and speed in the resource-intensive 3D space, the tablet worked "with a bang."
Video
I can’t say anything special, since there were no problems with DVDrip from my personal collection, but I don’t belong to fans of Full HD movies. But not at all against the 1080p clips, so with them an attempt was made to identify the errors of the tablet. Everything is “exactly”, there is nothing to complain about.
System
Android 4.1.1 met me a set of Chinese applications, which is not surprising given the inscription on the geography of sales of my version of the tablet. It was not possible to delete programs using the standard method, I had to contact w3bsit3-dns.com experts. Unnecessary applications were removed by Google Play, the root was not needed. I described my impressions of the system operation above, there are no innovative moments in Novo 9 Spark, except for some non-standard battles.
Battery
On average, I had enough charging for two days, during which I was watching streaming video, playing and reading magazines - about three hours of total load per day. Mentally I put the tablet a “plus”, since with its hardware requests it was possible to easily “screw up” the battery by 10,000 mAh.
Final chord
If you are going to buy Novo 9 Spark and plan to use the tablet to go online via Wi-Fi points in your locality (and beyond), pay special attention to this subsection. The tablet does not know how to independently connect to Wi-Fi access points. That is, I had to manually set up filtering by MAC addresses in the modem at home, only then the connection took place. I will not argue, but in my opinion, “trabl” threatens with the impossibility of connecting to other access points without “pre-configuration”. The given problem is well known, it is one of the standard troubles of the model.
Conclusion
I Novo 9 Spark cost almost 9,700 rubles ($ 310), now the device will of course be sold. From my position, the model has worked itself out alongside articles “based on”, so by and large, from a financial point of view, I have not lost anything. Despite the overall purely negative tone of the article, I will not make a conclusion about the hopelessness of the model.
Ainol Novo 9 Spark is an almost perfect tablet for those who are willing and ready to mess with its technical side. Search for firmware, “finish” the system, enjoy the increase in stability and performance - all this model gives in full. Drawing parallels, some people like to buy cars and enjoy the ride, while others “get high” in garages with tools and a naughty car.
If you still want to enjoy the tablet, for the same order of 10 thousand rubles ($ 320) you can find quite a lot of 10-inch solutions of second-tier brands. After exploring the Novo 9 Spark, I radically changed the attitude to such models, which show a really contrasting inhibition against the background of Ainol.
Certainly in the comments will be given other Chinese Retina-tablets, which are devoid of "sores" Ainol Novo 9 Spark. Well, I’m not against it at all, let's share personal experiences and successes or failures in the search for "my" tablet. /
Earlier, I was an ardent supporter of 7-inch “tablets”, sincerely not understanding the users of large-format tablets. This was mainly due to the personal need for a small tablet in the context of regular travel trips [to work]. Over time, the need to travel to work disappeared, and 10-inch family-wide decree were considered the most appropriate option for purchase.
')
Then they had to stand at the crossroads of three roads. The first path led to the camp of famous brands, something like the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1, Huawei MediaPad 10 FHD or ASUS Eee Pad Transformer Prime. I managed to work with the last two models, but ... Once again I was convinced that I have no desire to pay 13-15 thousand rubles for a tablet (that is, at least $ 400). These are excellent devices, I do not deny it. However, for me the price plate of the tablet rests on $ 300 (9,400 rubles), the higher price does not pay back the possibilities and pleasure from using the device.
On the second path, I was awaited by the B-brands of Ritmix, Explay, Prestigio and others that flooded the market. I have a neutral attitude towards individual representatives of this stratum, because from direct communication with the representatives of the brands (and the test of the devices), I see that in the past six months a significant step has been taken towards improving the quality of the devices. I was killed by the neighborhood with the third path at the fork. If the second echelon uses China as a technical base, then it is best in this country to look for a “chosen one.” And you will be able to meet the price limit, and you can get wonderful characteristics.
On hands…
... I had Ainol Novo 9 Firewire, aka Spark. Why? I was the first to move the idea-fix - for a long time I wanted to get a tablet, on the screen of which you can view PDF files without zooming at all. Regardless of the diagonal, the device with a screen resolution of up to 1280x800 pixels did not provide such an opportunity. Retina? Retina! A new trend with the installation of the screen "like the iPad 3" on Android-tablets. I’ll say right away that I didn’t intend to make an order from China at least because of a dislike for waiting for mailings for a long time. By coincidence, local resellers chose Ainol Novo 9 Spark.
Examined pre-topics on w3bsit3-dns.com, it seems there were no serious problems identified. It was already at the end of April that the topic “Braque - Ainol Novo 9 Firewire & Spark” was opened and a vote was held on the topic “Major Malfunctions”, which was inevitable for almost any “Chinese people”. OMG. But a review on Mobile-review.com insisted that there was no cause for concern. And I took the chance.
The box and the package did not surprise anything special. Is that amused the inscription on the packaging that the tablet is intended only for sale in China. Just in case, I note that the names Firewire and Spark indicate the purpose of the tablet for Asian or European / other markets. The difference, according to online, is the presence / absence of specific Chinese programs. By and large, I would write this restrictive mark on Spark (I think you understand what I mean).
The complete charger was "dead", as I was warned in advance. In Novo 9 Spark there is a cool feature - you can charge the tablet only through the appropriate DC-connector. MicroUSB is not in the business, through it does not charge either from the computer or from the composite structure of the cable and the charging unit with a USB connector.
Appearance
First of all, in the Novo 9 Spark I was surprised by the weight. This is the first 10-inch tablet in my practice, after which tired hands. The paradox is also as follows: at the time of purchase, I had a 10.1-inch tablet weighing 680 grams. From his weight and with me, and from his wife had the best impressions. In Novo 9 Spark, 642.3 grams is indicated, but after five minutes of operation you begin to “specifically” pay attention to the heaviness in your palms.
The second item is materials. The back cover is made of aluminum, which theoretically improves the image component, and also improves the shock properties of the model. In fact - weight gain and poor resistance to minor scratches. And most importantly - the coating to the touch is trite unpleasant. It is something indefinite velvet-matte, weakly clinging to the palm. Here I will speak about the screen coverage. An ordinary plastic has been installed, which has proved itself to be a small brand, but a propensity for the rapid accumulation of all the same minor scratches.
No less vivid impressions after the weight and "luminia" left the build quality. Probably, until now I have been lucky with test tablets. Otherwise, I can not explain how Novo 9 Spark turned out to be creaking-crispy. For this unflattering parameter, the tablet definitely earned the first place in my personal rating.
A little about the standard - from the buttons present the power button, volume and return to the starting desktop. I liked the last item especially.
Connectors lurked on the bottom. These are charging, memory card slot, microUSB, miniHDMI and 3.5 mm headphone jack. On the same side, quiet speakers are installed at the edges. What tablet orientation do you usually watch movies in? That's right, in the landscape. Therefore, with a “normal” hold, you will invariably cover one speaker with your palm. Very interesting design solution. Now I respect the manufacturers who place the speakers on the rear cover.
Camera
Item "for show". The front 0.3 Mp a priori do not give anything worthwhile, but I still had hopes on the rear 5 Mp. Of course, it’s completely in vain - the blurry image, low detail and other related quality flaws are present in full. Plus, there was an uninvited effect of image distortion.
Screen
We got the main trump card Novo 9 Spark, 9.7-inch IPS-display with a resolution of 2048x1536 pixels. The viewing angles are usually wide for this type of matrix. But for me it's still small, because when reading “at an angle” text material with a white background, a noticeable gray “patina” appears. This is inconvenient, say, when the tablet is on the table. The clarity of the picture is impressive, no joke. Here and PDF without scaling, and web pages in large "pieces". However, in the case of pages in the browser, high resolution sometimes turns out to be not at all in the “plus” - because of the small letters, you still have to use the zoom. The main disadvantage that outweighed the advantage of resolution for me is low brightness. The fact that the tablet can be considered conventionally normal with the average position of the slider, Novo 9 Spark gives out only with the maximum position of the brightness settings.
And in applications, and in the system often had to twice, and even three times to make a touch for the implementation of the action. Think about it, write it off on the low sensitivity of the display coverage or delays in the work of Android.
Performance and speed
Available Novo 9 Spark 4 core chipset Allwinner A31 with a frequency of 1 GHz, a graphics accelerator PowerVR SGX544 MP2 and 2 GB of RAM plus 16 GB for storing information. When viewing the range of Retina-tablets, I immediately excluded the dual-core versions with 1 GB of RAM - there were too many complaints about the speed of work. I was preparing for the fact that the Novo 9 Spark may have problems with speed, but the reality surpassed my wildest expectations. I repeat, various second-tier brand tablets were in my hands, so I considered myself ready for the “brakes”. However, the slowness of the Novo 9 Spark is a real stress test. Even the call and navigation through the system settings menu occurs without haste.
On the very first day, the tablet suddenly began to show me in "Rapid" the moment of transition from the desktop to the list of programs. The question was solved only after resetting the system settings. In the future, Google Play distinguished itself, which stopped running. The solutions proposed in the forums did not help, welcome to another “zeroing”. At w3bsit3-dns.com, tablet acceleration methods are indicated using system settings. But I still didn’t get any global speed increase. So idealistic users are waiting for a fascinating pastime with custom firmwares and a vote about which new thing has been fixed, which errors have been fixed, and which ones have been introduced. I note that browsing PDF magazines did not like too slow rendering of pages when paging. Web surfing with a lot of tabs is also not the end of Novo 9 Spark.
Referring to the benchmarks, we first investigate the results of the Quadrant. 4 core Cortex-A7 can not on equal to with Cortex-A9, also "pumped up" the speed of memory and I / O.
We see nothing really new in AnTuTu Benchmark.
On Google Play, it turned out that the service diligently hides any version of Smartbench from me. Therefore, Vellamo was tried instead.
Games
Another source of hitherto unexplored impressions for me was the game. GUN BROS 2, a minute after the first launch, hung so that I regretted the absence of the reset button in Novo 9 Spark. To whom, but this element would not hurt this tablet. Later BOMBSHELLS: HELL'S BELLES, Real Racing 3, Dead Trigger, FRONTLINE COMMANDO: NORMANDY and SHADOWGUN: DeadZone were installed. Immediately about the bad - loading levels in games takes a long time, departures and hangs that occurred in GUN BROS 2 also occasionally reminded of themselves. But regarding the level of FPS and speed in the resource-intensive 3D space, the tablet worked "with a bang."
Video
I can’t say anything special, since there were no problems with DVDrip from my personal collection, but I don’t belong to fans of Full HD movies. But not at all against the 1080p clips, so with them an attempt was made to identify the errors of the tablet. Everything is “exactly”, there is nothing to complain about.
System
Android 4.1.1 met me a set of Chinese applications, which is not surprising given the inscription on the geography of sales of my version of the tablet. It was not possible to delete programs using the standard method, I had to contact w3bsit3-dns.com experts. Unnecessary applications were removed by Google Play, the root was not needed. I described my impressions of the system operation above, there are no innovative moments in Novo 9 Spark, except for some non-standard battles.
Battery
On average, I had enough charging for two days, during which I was watching streaming video, playing and reading magazines - about three hours of total load per day. Mentally I put the tablet a “plus”, since with its hardware requests it was possible to easily “screw up” the battery by 10,000 mAh.
Final chord
If you are going to buy Novo 9 Spark and plan to use the tablet to go online via Wi-Fi points in your locality (and beyond), pay special attention to this subsection. The tablet does not know how to independently connect to Wi-Fi access points. That is, I had to manually set up filtering by MAC addresses in the modem at home, only then the connection took place. I will not argue, but in my opinion, “trabl” threatens with the impossibility of connecting to other access points without “pre-configuration”. The given problem is well known, it is one of the standard troubles of the model.
Conclusion
I Novo 9 Spark cost almost 9,700 rubles ($ 310), now the device will of course be sold. From my position, the model has worked itself out alongside articles “based on”, so by and large, from a financial point of view, I have not lost anything. Despite the overall purely negative tone of the article, I will not make a conclusion about the hopelessness of the model.
Ainol Novo 9 Spark is an almost perfect tablet for those who are willing and ready to mess with its technical side. Search for firmware, “finish” the system, enjoy the increase in stability and performance - all this model gives in full. Drawing parallels, some people like to buy cars and enjoy the ride, while others “get high” in garages with tools and a naughty car.
If you still want to enjoy the tablet, for the same order of 10 thousand rubles ($ 320) you can find quite a lot of 10-inch solutions of second-tier brands. After exploring the Novo 9 Spark, I radically changed the attitude to such models, which show a really contrasting inhibition against the background of Ainol.
Certainly in the comments will be given other Chinese Retina-tablets, which are devoid of "sores" Ainol Novo 9 Spark. Well, I’m not against it at all, let's share personal experiences and successes or failures in the search for "my" tablet. /
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/180481/
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