Remember when you had dial up internet? When everything involving technology took forever and nothing was good? If you buy this cheap tablet, you’ll feel like you’ve gone back in time to the good ol’ days of crappy tech. When I first turned it on, it had this cute little picture of a dead robot with an exclamation point coming out if it’s tummy. Like a care bear but in the Upside Down. “No command”, it said. Uhm. “Turn on?” I said.
Reboot. Now there’s a flashy screen with a slogan that doesn’t match its own dang acronym. “Technology Good Life” or something with the letters TJC … ok, not a great sign but let’s see what happens.
Each setup screen lags for several minutes but I get through it fine (I’m just using it for some home automation apps and music, so I didn’t ask it to sync up with any accounts; thought that would make it faster but that dead-ass robot from the beginning was still hangin around I guess.)
Fast forward about 20 minutes and it has powered up and seems fine.
So I heft this door stopper up (seriously are they trying to imply quality by making it weigh a few pounds???) and tap the Play Store icon. And then I tap it again. And again. Nothing. Starting to feel like a fumbling preteen, but I just keep whackin that little button to no avail.
Ok, reboot. Ye Olde Reboote always does the trick, right?
Right?
God? Are you there?
It’s me. The dummy who thought buying this cheap paperweight and pretending it could load an app was a good idea. Help?
Ok so it reboots and the play store opens and I look for my silly light bulb app, now seriously reconsidering my oh so clever idea to have a tablet that guests can use to play music and dim the lights, rather than needing my phone to be present in order to have some ambience.
First.World.Problems. I know. This is silly.
But now I’m in it, so I keep going.
The app has installed (15 minutes later. And before you ask, I have 2GB fiber optic internet, so it’s not my wifi at fault here.)
Everything in the app technically works, but the lag time on each command is retro, to put it nicely. The screen kind of flutters, like it’s so nervous about doing a good job. Then it shows a little flash of what I’ve asked it to load, but just for a second. Back to the last screen. Another flash. Uhm. Ok, so I press the button again… more flutters and flashes, and then it loads.
So I guess this thing “works”… but it’s kind of like that coworker who “just literally can’t” with coming in to work, and joins every meeting from bed, wearing a tuxedo T-shirt, some generic office background filter applied but you keep seeing glitchy bits of their pillow and their cat’s paw because it’s laying on said pillow.
This tablet is like that coworker.
So it’s fine. I’m going to give it exactly two tasks and it will do both with solid mediocrity.
I hope you enjoyed my story.
Don’t buy this tablet. You’re better than this. You deserve things that work. Technology should make things easier, not more annoying.
Android is trash.
Thank you for coming to my Ted talk.
There are no reviews yet.