Good tablet, let down by its price
HCL is better known for its laptops and
desktops, but the recent slew of Android tablet launches from all and sundry
has encouraged them to bring few of their own. Y2, a 7m Android tablet is not
their first attempt.
We weren’t expecting much so we were
pleasantly surprised by its slenderness, the sturdy matte finish of its plastic
rear and the light weight. The overall build quality is sturdy and ergonomic.
Y2,
a 7m Android tablet is not their first attempt.
The front has a 7m screen and three touch
buttons - home, back and menu. The volume rocker and lock/power button are on
the right bezel while slots like Micro SD, 3.5mm headphone, mini USB charging,
mini HDMI, SIM slot and a reset button are grouped on the bottom. Surprisingly
the left bezel and top are left unoccupied.
The Y2 has a 2 megapixel camera on the back
and a 0.3 megapixel camera on the front for video calls. The placement of back
camera is a bit awkward and you need to hold the device with both hands to
click an image.
Surprisingly
the left bezel and top are left unoccupied.
The tablet comes loaded with Android 4.0.3
Icecream Sandwich with 1GB of DDR3 RAM memory, Mali 400 GPU, 8 GB of internal
memory and a ARM Cortex A9 processor. Thankfully HCL hasn’t customised the
stock interface too much. There are some useful bundled apps like ME Apps,
HDMlSwitch, a live helpline- HCLTouch and ThinkFree Office. Apart from apps
available from the Google play store, HCL has its own store with 10000+ apps.
Apart
from apps available from the Google play store, HCL has its own store with
10000+ apps.
The 7m WSVGA IPS screen has a resolution of
1 024x600 which is roughly equivalent to the average netbook screen. It’s
reasonably bright, with ample contrast. Video output is decent and plays 720p
standard videos adequately. The 4000mAh battery easily lasts a day on a single
charge.
The
4000mAh battery easily lasts a day on a single charge.
