Tablet Hands-On Roundup
by Vivek Gowri on January 27, 2011 10:25 AM EST
This one came out of nowhere for me, so I was pretty interested. I had no idea that Panasonic had anything to do with the Android tablet game until I got a text from my best friend telling me to check out their new tablets. When I made my way to the Panasonic booth, I found that they had three new tablets, in 4”, 7”, and 10” sizes. All three are running a stock version of Android 2.2 and have Panasonic’s Viera Connect online video on demand service built in.
Panasonic seems to envision these tablets as television companions that connect to the latest Viera plasma HDTVs, with the press release touting ability to act as a “visual remote control” to operate the TV, or using the tablet as a sub-screen to view sports from different angles. It’s an interesting concept, but the Viera services only work with Viera TVs, so the user base is very limited.
The hardware is no great shakes either - the prototype units that Panasonic showed off on the show floor didn’t wow us on the design side, and the build quality was positively off-putting. We can put the shoddy build down to being early build preproduction units, but the design, with a lot of chrome plastic, a large bezel, and an expanse of silver plastic on the back, left a lot to be desired.
Panasonic wasn’t disclosing the specs of any of the three Vieras, but I had a chance to run Browsermark and SunSpider on them. The results I got from the 7” and 10” were consistent with tablets running 1GHz Cortex A9 processors, so it’s likely that they are running either Tegra 2 or OMAP 4 underhood. We’ve heard rumours that Panasonic chose to go with TI, but Panasonic refused to confirm or deny that. The 4” model had results more in line with A8-based processors, so I’d guess that it’s running OMAP 3, but again, Panasonic wasn’t willing to disclose any of the specs.
Overall though, Panasonic’s Viera line as a whole seems pretty mediocre unless you evaluate them as remotes for the Viera plasma TV line. As blandly designed tablets running Android 2.2 in the era of Honeycomb, they fail to stand out compared to similar tablets from other manufacturers, and I think Panasonic has a fair amount of work to do before the Vieras become compelling products in the tablet space.
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finbarqs - Thursday, January 27, 2011 - link
the ONLY tablet that runs Hulu NORMALLY without a hulu plus subscription is the Blackberry Playbook!This is shocking as well as encouraging!
iuqiddis - Thursday, January 27, 2011 - link
Is there any chance of you guys reviewing the Asus EP121? It's a windows tablet and all, but it'd be great to put it through the paces as an alternative to a laptop.VivekGowri - Thursday, January 27, 2011 - link
Yeah, Asus is sending a review unit to Brian, since he's the guy who really uses inking a lot. It's actually a really interesting alternative to the 11" MacBook Air, provided you can live without a physical keyboard.iuqiddis - Thursday, January 27, 2011 - link
Awesome. Looking forward to that review.TheUsual - Thursday, January 27, 2011 - link
I'd like to see the Pixel Qi screen on a windows tablet, if they can just find a way to get decent battery life.TheUsual - Thursday, January 27, 2011 - link
Tablets, no Rablets :)rs2 - Friday, January 28, 2011 - link
I've yet to see a single point that would make me want to buy a tablet. Basically you're getting an underpowered netbook with no keyboard, a non-standard hardware architecture that makes it unable to run most common application, and a non-standard OS that in some cases locks you into using a proprietary "app store" for all your software needs. You know, because all that software that can be freely downloaded off the Internet is not good enough for these devices, or something.My money is better spent elsewhere.
Oscarcharliezulu - Friday, January 28, 2011 - link
Do all these tablets require you to buy all the software you need? Can I create my own apps, perhaps say like a database based app without needing to publish to an app store? Can I presume that with a win7 based tablet I can load any x86/win based Dev tool ? I've not seen any review address this requirement.vision33r - Friday, January 28, 2011 - link
Simple jailbreaking will allow you to install apps to ipad and Android requires rooting to install apps not from Market.Win7 tablet will run just like regular Windows.
Missy @ Golin - Friday, January 28, 2011 - link
Hi Vivek, In the PlayBook segment, you mentioned strong hints from multiple parties saying that there’s a TI OMAP 4 SoC underhood. It is indeed TI's OMAP4440 processor. More details are available at TI's Mobile Momentum blog: http://e2e.ti.com/blogs_/b/mobile_momentum/archive...