1 November 2013

REVIEW: Nurvo 10" Budget Android Tablet

You've got some Nurvo, you.

We recently reviewed the new Wikipad, an Android tablet designed and built for gaming. That's all very well for those interested in raising their kill rate on the latest zombie murdering game, but most of us just need a tablet to send the odd tweet, write the odd email and generally try to look modern on trains.

If light use, portability and price are the three main areas of consideration when buying your next slate then hold your Nurvo and check out their latest budget Android tablet.

Nurvo is a name we weren't overly familiar with prior to testing the tablet, but we soon learnt that they are building quite the name for themselves in the tech industry with TVs, tablets and accessories. Their new range of tablets includes 7", 8" and 10" models, all of which run on good old Android.

The 10" Budget Tablet was of particular interest to us in the run up to Christmas when tablet sales spike and people may be looking for an alternative to the expensive Apple and Samsung products. At just £129 the Nurvo tablet, with it's duel core processor, 1GB memory and 10.1" touchscreen, certainly seems like a bargain. But how did it do when we got our grubby hands on it?
Smooth and black is the order of the day for the Nurvo and the tablet feels refreshing light to hold. Rounded corners and a slightly convex back panel also make it comfortable in both landscape and portrait orientations. Interestingly the tablet has a rather odd aspect ratio of (approx) 16:9. This is great for watching movies in landscape but when turned portrait it feels rather strange and elongated. It seems the Nurvo was designed with the landscape-holders in mind (you know who you are).

Along the edges you get two micro USB ports, a SD card slot, HDMI (yay!), sleep/wake button, headphone jack and power port. The tablet comes with a separate charger plug which is a little disappointing; we would have preferred sole USB charging.

On the top you get the standard volume rocker and what we first thought was the power switch. Turns out this is actually a 'go back' button to be used when navigating the installed Android 4.2. Again, a little bit odd as we found ourselves never using the button when the normal software back button was far more accessible.

The 10.1" LCD screen is... erm... okay, we suppose. It certainly isn't the crispest screen we've seen, and the Android homescreen looked slightly fuzzy at first; but remembering the price this is still pretty good. Our fears were diminished after booting up the You Tube app and watching a few videos. The screen managed these fine and both videos and the app interface (and most other apps for that matter) looked good - far better than the homescreen.

The screen is plenty responsive and very rarely did we find ourselves having to jab at something repeatedly. In fact general navigation was very good and the 1.2 GHz processor handled everything we chucked at it with aplomb. We only noticed slight lag when pushing the Nurvo to it's limits with multiple tabs open in Chrome and apps running simultaneously. But, to reiterate, for £129 it did very well.

On the front you get a 0.2 mega pixel camera, while round the back there is a 2 mega pixel version. We were surprised to find two cameras on a budget tablet and although neither will win you any photography competitions, in good enough light they both perform to an acceptable standard

In terms of battery life we found on average we got around 5 to 6 hours off a full charge and medium use. Standby time however was also quite impressive and after the initial juice up and using it for just 30 minutes or so a day (light evening use like twitter, Facebook and web browsing) the Nurvo was still happily ticking away three days later.

One thing to bear in mind about the Nurvo 10" Budget Android Tablet is the fact that it is ten inches. With most other manufacturers that price will buy you only a seven inch model and often with less memory. So in terms of value, the Nurvo wins out.

If you want a comfortable device for light use around the home, this is it. Although people who have previously owned higher spec tablets might find it a step down, for beginners and people who just need to get things done without the pomp and circumstance, we recommend this.

£129
Visit www.nurvo.co.uk
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