Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “I Bought FIVE Weird Tablets from AliExpress… Ask me anything”.
I bought all these tablets from AliExpress just to answer the question: why do they look like this? This one is clearly a tent. These two look more like door, stoppers or maybe ramps for Tech Decks, and these ones don’t sort of look like tablets, assuming you want them to pull double duty as a freaking Frisbee. Now, obviously, companies aren’t just pumping out tablets in random, silly shapes anymore, mostly. So, what’s the deal with these, are they packed full of the same malware we found in our Android TV boxes? Do they have any redeeming features that’ll make you want to abandon your iPad for walkie-talkie functionality built in oh, the ability to download a dedicated computer which wait what Legacy serial ports? I don’t know about that one personally, but I do know I’m a Serial seguer who’s. Gon na tell you about our sponsor, build Redux with simple to navigate customization options and competitive pricing compared to building a PC yourself, build Redux will help.
You dominate your favorite games with the perfect PC, for you check them out at the link below this black door. Stop here is easily the thickest Android tablet that I have ever seen and that’s just the beginning of its surprises. Aside from the mic speakers and 10.1 inch touchscreen, its features are actually very reminiscent of those awful Android TV boxes, including the complete lack of a battery which is unexpected for something called a tablets. There’S an option for Poe at least which allows it to be powered with a network cable rather than with a separate plug, but we didn’t spring for that. The i o is even similar to the TV boxes power two usba ports, a headphone jack that contains a button deep down inside it for re-flashing the firmware. Okay, USBC uh micro, SD, gigabit Ethernet and the white port is actually listed as serial, and indeed it doesn’t seem to work with USB peripherals like mice or flash drives. Though it does output power, did they really go to the length of including serial only to replace the connector with USB, so that you need an adapter for the native serial connection? No, the answer is far less silly. This port supports USB to uart adapters, which allows you to plug in conventional serial devices, be they barcode scanners or anything else. You can imagine under the hood it’s running Android 10, because you aren’t really getting the AliExpress Android experience unless you’re using a version of Android. That’S never getting another security update other than that. The under the hood specs make the overall experience pretty responsive and there’s no signs of the dreaded core Java virus.
For now, anyway, it comes pre-rooted which doesn’t worry us at all inside the device. Wait is that a battery to keep the clock accurate and a button to reset it there. I guess it does have a battery.
After all, I mean realistically for something that’s sitting at a desk where people fill out their license. Plate number for parking validation. It’S going to get the job done, just fine. I really need a proper battery or a way to mount it.
Just like you, don’t need volume, controls or the default bottom navigation to show up and give you a way back out of the window. You’Re, in I mean if you go into settings, you probably want to remain in settings until the device is powered down right right I mean at least it was cheap and wait how much 370 Canadian Rupees that’s like 275 real monies for that price. I could have had a Galaxy Tab, S6 light with a bigger and better screen a battery and support for up to Android 13..
Okay, forget Android for a second. What? If we got a Windows tablet for around 300 us, we got this triangular prism of a PC with a Celeron j4125 eight gigs of DDR3 and Windows 10 Pro it’s not exactly a Powerhouse compared to other windows devices, but it’s certainly serviceable for text entry. It boots from an integrated 64 gig memory.
Chip and ours came with a bonus. 128 gig SATA m.2. The screen is 10.1 inches, just like the Android, but this time the resolution is 1920×1200, not bad. It’S a bit thicker, but it’s got buttons on the side for power and volume controls, HDMI out and otherwise, a very similar, complete, IO layout, at least on the outside. It’S not until we crack it open that we find its wasted potential. There’S an extra b key m.2 slot for the optional 4G card, an unused USBC Port, not sure it would have been nice to have missing headers for a fan and shockingly an Intel i225v two and a half gig ethernet controller.
Don’T get too excited, though this I-225 is one of the earliest models of that chip, and there are known issues that occur at speeds exceeding gigabit, but you know what the biggest wasted potential here is: the lack of a way to properly Mount the bloody thing again, If these tablets are being used to control digital signage, like behind the counter restaurant menus, it makes sense that you’d want to mount them on a table or a wall. I mean at least the Android one had the thoughtfulness to include a Kensington lock, which we also found on the Android tent. This one is kind of cool. It’S got dual mirrored displays running at 1280×800. It’S only got two gigs of RAM 16 gigs of storage and it runs Android 8.1, meaning that even for 250 dollars, I’m pretty disappointed with the internals again no battery, which totally has space for on the motherboard. But if it’s intended for text input and to be permanently installed, I guess it’s better to have no battery than a fire hazard swollen battery.
But what is up with these devices missing volume, buttons or USBC for power like what is this one actually, for you guys got any ideas. Real estate presentations here uh have a look at what I’m doing on my side: kitchen building, oh okay, okay yeah! In both of those cases, you could probably just sit side by side and look at one proper size screen, though, come on. Let’S brainstorm here. Ah, it’s a power gauntlet hold on we’re. Gon na have to do my left arm.
It’S a lot smaller, definitely badminton. Frankly, we’re probably overthinking this all three of these so far seem to be POS equipment, not to say that they’re bad, that’s to say, point of sale equipment, though I’m not saying they’re good either after we ordered these tablets. We noticed the local Denny’s locations all seem to be adopting similar tablets at their tables, except those ones include charging ports, wireless charging for your devices, and they have batteries in them seems a lot better. So I’d only bother checking out the link to these ones. If you want a sign tablet, that’s worse than what the local pancake dispensary has so far, then we haven’t seen anything that’s terribly useful, or at least not a great value, just kind of wacky. This all black weatherproof Windows tablet is definitely both useful and battery powered.
We know that, because it came to us with nearly 13 000 battery Cycles counted since November 2020.. That means doing the math. It went through roughly a battery cycle every two hours from then until the day we ordered it, and that wasn’t the only sign of use. Someone had been using it to watch the latest historical drama on ige, China’s equivalent of Netflix, and even if it was new, this thing is not terribly powerful. Just four gigs of DDR3 RAM, a 64 gig generic SSD and an Intel atom.
Z8350. That’S a processor that requires only slightly more power than the zero watt one on lttstore.com, i o includes NFC mini HDMI, a SIM card slot that supports LTE and we’ve got buttons for control. Finally, we’ve also got some Pogo pins that attach to this car car mount, and that gives it two more USB 2 ports, gigabit Ethernet and a barrel Jack for charging in the serial Port. When we open it up, though, we find that the 8 500 milliamp hour battery is in fact only 7 800 milliamp hours and there’s markings everywhere for em-i82h and em-i86h.
These are two potential real model numbers for this device, which is apparently made by mbor as a barcode scanner. That makes sense, given the inclusion of Serial for nearly 700. It really feels like we could have bought something that isn’t secondhand, but with an IP67 rating it should be able to withstand being dunked in water for several minutes now we haven’t tested that yet because we didn’t want to break it before we started filming.
But now we can, I mean, how long do we want to leave it in there? For can I use it? This is a capacitive touch screen, so it doesn’t function at all underwater, not even a little. I don’t know what else to say it survived. I mean, obviously this isn’t the most scientific test, but what, if it passed, were you going to buy a used tablet for this price? No good job buddy? It’S padded bumblebee of a tablet also claims to be IP67 rated, which we are eager to put to the test, but its special trick is that it supposedly has the ability to communicate with walkie-talkies cool, if true emphasis on. If true, it appears to be identical to the runbo P2, which would be great, except that the version of Android 8.1, that it’s running seems to be borrowed from eulophone, adding one more layer of rebranding and remixing. The outside contains most of its uniqueness on the front with two unlabeled buttons, presumably for push to talk walkie-talkie functionality, but we never got that working arrow buttons for navigation, physical representations of the standard, Android back home and circle buttons and an OK button.
These are all really useful in an environment where you’re wearing gloves, at least they would be if they all worked back and home function, but the arrow keys are all wrong. The circle brings up media controls and the top two buttons for push to talk don’t seem to do anything at all. As with any tablet, the edges contain ports and buttons. So it’s got USBC.
Can you shut up usb-c for charging? It’S recessed, though, so most cables won’t fit. Another USBC for data that had the same issue detachable antenna, a headphone, jack IR, maybe a power button, a dial to select your walkie-talkie channels and on the back, is a cover that gives you access to two micro SD slots and two SIM card slots. That’S pretty cool.
The software is really what’s important here, though it’s all bog standard, Android 8.1, except for the push to talk app. This is where you should be able to set up your walkie-talkie connections or possibly receive shortwave radio. It’S hard for us to know for sure, though, because even though we have walkie-talkies, even though we found the program to access their channels and even though we matched up everything perfectly between the two, we don’t even know what this app is called and there doesn’t seem To be much information available about walkie-talkie apps that properly use VHF and UHF radio signals, can it at least swim though water always wins, these didn’t immediately die uh. Does it float? No. What I want to do, though, is find out if this touchscreen works, because it seemed like it might have been a pressure sensitive one and it’s not, but could I navigate using the buttons oh whoa, okay hold on a second okay, just clicks in the middle of The screen, it doesn’t do anything useful, so I think the script said it doesn’t do anything which is fine, but it does sort of do something as crap as it is. At least it survived the water test. So what can we take away from this exercise? Then? If you buy tablets for a specific purpose on AliExpress, you might end up with something usable or you might just get left high and dry separated from your money.
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