Tablet Hands-On Roundup

Enspert was one of the most promising of the numerous new tablet makers we caught up with at CES. Enspert is the new name of Inbrics, a Korean company that made Android-based smartphones, and they were showing off a range of smart looking new Android tablets.

Let’s start with the S200 home phone tablet. It’s a combination of a 7” tablet and a VoIP phone, and is designed to be a media convergence hub. The tablet itself has an aluminum front face, with a white plastic backing. The build quality is solid, and the design is definitely attractive. The 7” screen has a disappointingly low 800 x 480 WVGA resolution, but is otherwise bright and has acceptable viewing angles. Interestingly, the Enspert tablets are all running Samsung’s Hummingbird SoC (1GHz Cortex A8 and PowerVR SGX 540, for those that don’t remember) with 512MB of RAM, so they’re on par with the Galaxy Tab as far as computing power goes. The rest of the spec sheet is fairly standard - 4GB ROM, SD card slot, front facing camera, mini-HDMI, mini-USB, WiFi, and Bluetooth, but the one fairly major blemish on the spec sheet is Android 2.1. Eclair was over a year ago, guys, get with the program. Enspert promises an update to Froyo shortly, but I’ll believe it when I see it.

The E201 is Enspert’s first entry to the Android tablet space, and it has the same basic configuration as the S200’s tablet. That means Hummingbird, 7” WVGA, mini-HDMI, WiFi, Bluetooth, and Android 2.1. It also has an aluminum chassis (aluminum panels instead of a unibody construction like the iPad), and is set to hit Best Buy shelves for around $200 later this quarter. For the price, it feels pretty good, but the lack of Froyo is a big deal. As with the S200, an upgrade to 2.2 is promised soon.

The newest and most promising Enspert tablet is the E301. Designed as the successor to the E201, it’s set to hit market later this year as a higher end alternative to the E201. The specs are pretty similar, with three major upgrades: a 1024x600 WSVGA 7” display, Android 2.2, and updated industrial design. It’s still an aluminum sandwich, but it’s a cleaner design that’s less reminiscent of the iPad. With the small lip on the right side and the capacitive buttons, the design is actually a bit like the OpenPeak tablet that we saw at IDF. The entire chassis is aluminum and glass, so it feels like a very high quality product. Definitely one of the more well-designed new tablets we’ve played with recently. Enspert has partnered with one of the three largest US carriers to sell the E301 for a subsidized price on the good side of $300, and if they can deliver on their promise to have Gingerbread by the time the device releases, it’ll be a very interesting addition to the 7” tablet market.