Teclast T40 Pro 10.4" Android Tablet. Cheap, but can it game?

porina · September 1, 2023

I've long wanted a cheap Android tablet for gaming as a replacement to my 5 year old Huawei. I already own a Samsung Galaxy Tab S8 but I really wanted another cheaper tablet so I can do more than one thing at once. My criteria for a new tablet were as follows:

1, has to be faster than my 5 year old Huawei - this is tech right? I was hoping the lower end has caught up with the mid range from years ago.

2, decent storage quantity before expansion

3, it just has to be "fast enough". It doesn't have to be fast.

4, Used is an option

I don't even remember how I found the Teclast T40 Pro on Amazon UK. At £160 I wasn't really interested. Oh, 25% off? £120 is kinda interesting. And a £20 off instant voucher on top of that? Go on then. Let's see how this thing does!

I did check the specs before then. I find it incredibly hard to compare Arm CPUs and even harder for their GPUs. At least the chip inside was made on 12nm process, compared to the 16nm of the Huawei, not that it guarantees any sign of performance. The CPU cores were a generation newer. The GPU was a lower tier but newer. Like in the PC space, I was left guessing how this translated into real performance.

Enough background, onto the hardware!

A reminder, I will be primarily looking at this from a gaming perspective so other use cases may not be covered in detail if at all.

Specs

The specific model reports itself as T40 Pro_EEA, with a mention of 2022. A 2023 model may exist according to manufacturer's website, but this wasn't clear at all on the Amazon listing. The main chip is a T616, contain 2x A75 cores at 1.95 GHz, and 6x A55 cores at 1.82 GHz. GPU is Mali-G57. This model came with 8GB of ram and 128GB of storage.

Physical

Out of the box it looks like pretty much any other tablet. You got a rectangular slab with a good but not excessive amount of border around it, making it easy to hold without accidental tapping. There is a front facing camera as well as a small bump for one on the rear. On the top edge is the SIM receptacle which I'm unlikely to ever use. Yes, you get mobile data as standard here, not as an upsell you see on other more well known brands. This may be more in part due to this probably being a reference phone design with a bigger screen slapped on. On the left edge is the power button and volume rocker, as well as the USB-C port. Nothing of note on the right or bottom edges.

It should be noted there is no fingerprint reader. To unlock I have to press the power button then enter PIN. This is a little inconvenient so a longer screen timeout can help out here. I haven't looked for alternative settings yet, for example if pattern is still available.

The stuff you got in the box was pretty minimal. There was the SIM tray ejector tool which was loose, and was actually rubbing on the screen protector. No harm done but could do better there. There's a fast charger and C-C cable to connect to it.

Sound

The tablet does appear to have 4 way speakers common with many others, but unlike other tablets I've owned the ports are on the long edge, not the short edge. When holding it for gaming typically in landscape orientation, your hands don't block them as they would on an end firing implementation. The sound quality is... ok. It is lacking in bass but doesn't sound too tinny from it. You can get some volume out of it.

Display

Resolution is 2000x1200 so close enough to 16:9 for gaming and video consumption with minimal wastage. It is supposed to be an IPS panel and the viewing angles are fine on it. There isn't any significant colour or level shift at any sane angle you'd realistically use it at. Brightness is fine for indoor use. I haven't tried it outdoors and I don't expect it to do great there. Colours feel a little flat compared to other devices I own. There is some adjustment possible in device but it doesn't make a big difference. I think the screen is the limiting factor, not software.

Game performance

Can it game? Yes. Ok, how well?

The main game I got it for was Azur Lane. This isn't that demanding by modern standards, but my old Huawei stutters at times. On the Teclast it was much more smoother, although I left the game in 30fps mode. Not as smooth as the Tab S8, but it was playable. Load times might have been slightly faster too. This was my main criteria for acceptability and it passed.

How about a bigger challenge? Honkai Star Rail patch dropped about the same time I got it, so I thought I'd install that. It seems 3D is a bit of a stretch for this device. Depending on how much you prefer smoothness it needed to be run at low or very low preset. The image quality isn't that difference between them as it was obviously upsampling from a much lower render resolution. Maybe you can get away with it on a phone, but a 10" class screen shows its flaws. You can run at higher graphics settings but the frame rate drops below fun level quickly.

Fine, let's really test it. I installed Genshin Impact on it too. I teleported into Fontaine and just swung the camera around. Again, a low setting is required. It felt like it was loading in data now and then when spinning the camera as there were drops in perf which went away if you stayed in the same area.

While I have not done wide testing by any means, I think the feel I have is that it is sufficient for 2D style games, but you will want something stronger if you intend to use it for 3D games regularly.

Battery life

Playing Azur Lane, occasionally dropping out to try some other things, I estimate a full charge should last over 6 hours, possibly as much as 8. This has not been tested in practice. I would observe the self discharge may be a bit on the high side at around 1.0 to 1.5% per hour with screen off and not nominally doing anything. If you use it like me, which is for daily gaming, it'll be topped up daily anyway and this shouldn't be a problem.

I did observe one quirk which I didn't investigate further. If you use a fast charger, it will go to 100% charge fine. I've done this with two different ones. With a slow charger, it didn't seem to want to go past about 88% charge. I was wondering if it was faulty but it might be just a poor charge circuit that can't make effective use of a slow charger. Since it works fine with both the included fast charger and another I had, this is not a problem for me.

Software

This came with a near vanilla Android 12 on it. The only possibly non-standard apps were Sound Recorder, FM Radio and the tablet OS update checker.

I did let it do an OS update so I'm on the latest OTA version offered. The OS reports the security patch level as September 2022, so this might not be one for anyone who expects regular software updates.

Final thoughts

For my uses, does this work? Yes. I don't expect to get a Samsung Tab S8 for 1/6 the cost, but with realistic expectations it does function at a usable level. It does feel a bit slow in various operations. The CPU does seem weak by today's standards, but it gets there in the end. I wouldn't want to use this a my main device but it should serve its role fine as a supplemental device for targeted uses.