WinBook TW802 Review: A $100 tablet that doesn't suck?

[TheSLSAMG]

 

When someone tells you "I just bought a tablet for $100", what comes to mind? Usually, what comes to mind is a cheap feeling and cheaply built Android tablet running ICS and loaded up with a bunch of bloatware. But what if I told you that it was Windows based? Well, of course, I must be talking about the HP Stream 7, right? $100 for a 7" tablet with an Atom and 1GB RAM? Even then though, the RAM limitation is too crippling for Windows considering it can use 1GB+ at idle and something like Chrome can use well over 768MB in a normal use case scenario. It's definitely not a Stream 7 then.

 

Micro Center has an in-house brand called WinBook. They used to be focused on making laptops but now they make tablets, accessories and iPhone cases. What I have from them is their mid-range tablet in terms of size and cost, the TW802. I'll be assessing it based upon five categories, those categories are Build Quality, Display, Performance and Battery Life/Practicality. So, let's get into this then.

 

First, specs (Important/significant stuff bolded):
Intel Atom Z3735F (1.33GHz, 1.83GHz Burst, 2MB L2 Cache, Quad-Core)

2GB DDR3L-RS 1333MHz RAM (Non-upgradeable)

32GB eMMC SSD (Non-upgradeable)

MicroSD card slot (Not bootable)

Intel HD Graphics

5-point Multi-touch 1280x800 IPS display

4800mAh Li-Po battery

 

Build Quality

It's $100, so no one expects it to be built too well. It has a glass front which is very susceptible to fingerprints due to the lack of an oleophobic coating (though a screen protector comes pre-installed.) The glass itself isn't that strong, I already have a chip in the display area though it's not terribly noticeable. The back of the device and the sides feature a matte plastic with a rubberized feel. It likes fingerprints about as much as a Razer BlackWidow does (BlackWidow owners will get this), but it still manages to feel pretty decent. It's not outstanding, but it gets the job done. All around then, surprisingly not bad at all. I'll give it a 7/10.

 

Display

The device features an 8 inch display. It measures in at 1280x800 and best of all, it's IPS. It's not incredibly sharp, but it's noticeably sharper than my iPad 2 and my Azpen A727. It has good viewing angles, good colors and touch is fine too. It's a Windows device under 10" though, so don't be surprised if you press the wrong thing because your fingers are big and the OS is small, it happens. There isn't much more worth mentioning other than it being 60Hz, so I'll leave it at that. Considering budget, I'll rate the screen 7/10.

 

Performance

It's currently running Windows 10 (and has been since I got it on August 2nd.) With normal day-to-day usage, it feels perfectly responsive. It's snappy and yet offers the full desktop experience, and I think that's what I really love about it. It's not my main rig by any stretch, but it's no slouch. Geekbench 3 results in a 784 Single-Core score and a 2199 Multi-Core score. Against my main rig's 4571 Single-Core and 16631 Multi-Core, it obviously had no chance. However, it does well against other devices. The scores are slightly higher than the Stream 7 due to the larger amount of RAM, however the scores are lower than my HTC One M8 overclocked to 2.7GHz, managing 995 Single-Core and 2939 Multi-Core (Snapdragon 801). Synthetics aside, it's very responsive with very occasional hiccups and some loading times here and there. I'll give it a 7/10.

 

Battery Life/Practicality

The 4800mAh battery is of a good enough capacity to where I can get a day out of it easy. If you were using it for non-intensive tasks like normal web browsing and Netflix, you could definitely make it through a day and a half with conservative usage. I'm a power user though, and I was running an OS X VM on it along with doing some other stuff like running AMIDuOS, American Megatrends' Android emulator (it runs okay, but not that smoothly.) For battery life, it gets a solid 8/10. But now, how practical is it? If you get a folio case from Micro Center and a keyboard, very. It's a cheap and fair replacement for most peoples' laptops so long as you don't mind sitting close. Without the keyboard, Windows feels a bit clunky to use. The in-built keyboard kind of sucks and even in tablet mode, Windows 10 doesn't feel ready to take on small tablets. For that reason, I wouldn't try to use it as an all-rounder, though it was useful when I was taking apart my rig the other day to clean it and change the fans. It's biggest downsides in my opinion though are the small 32GB internal storage and the single USB 2.0 port. It's just not enough for me, so I got an mSATA to USB enclosure for my 128GB Samsung PM830 and everything is okay now (other than the extra cables). And come on WinBook, we're in 2015. USB 2.0 isn't cutting it as the only port on the machine. And the previous model, the TW801 apparently had USB 3.0. For these reasons, I'll give practicality a 5/10. A bit harsh, but it's how I feel. It's not entirely their fault though, as some of this lies on Microsoft.

 

To sum it up, would I buy it again? Sure. I had a 20% off coupon so it made sense for me to get it for just that reason, and for $87 after tax, it's probably one of my best buys. I like it, it's interesting and has decent performance to boot, but it feels overall unfinished in some respects and the designers seemed to overlook a lot of basic stuff. Now let's score it.

 

Build Quality - 7

Display - 8

Performance - 7

Battery Life - 8

Practicality - 5

Overall Score - 7

 

NOTE: If you want to install Windows 10 from scratch and need drivers, here you go. They're for a TW801 but they work with the TW802, cameras don't work in W10 though. 

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B8Kv6BfI747Rd3ZGRHI3YlMyczQ

As for getting into the BIOS, mash F2 on an external keyboard while turning on the device. You must use a 32-bit OS since WinBook's BIOS doesn't work with 64-bit OSes.

 

Coming up soon, Logitech's beautiful MX Master.

[Rohith_Kumar_Sp]

is this arm or X86? sorry if i missed it in the review? i couldnt find any info about it.

[TheSLSAMG]

is this arm or X86? sorry if i missed it in the review? i couldnt find any info about it.

It's an Intel Z3735F Atom, so it's x86-64 (64-bit.) It runs full Windows, however due to a BIOS limitation it can only boot a 32-bit OS.

[flibberdipper]

I will happily be tagged in that MX Master review...

 

Out of curiosity, what version of OS X were you running in the VM?

[TheSLSAMG]

I will happily be tagged in that MX Master review...

 

Out of curiosity, what version of OS X were you running in the VM?

I was running 10.10 Yosemite. I tried El Capitan but it didn't want to comply, so I'll have to leave that for my real Mac.

[flibberdipper]

I was running 10.10 Yosemite. I tried El Capitan but it didn't want to comply, so I'll have to leave that for my real Mac.

Was it one of the iATKOS images or was it just a pure Yosemite image? And since we're on the topic... How badly did it run? I have one of the iATKOS 10.6.8 images in VirtualBox and it runs like ass.

[TheSLSAMG]

Was it one of the iATKOS images or was it just a pure Yosemite image? And since we're on the topic... How badly did it run? I have one of the iATKOS 10.6.8 images in VirtualBox and it runs like ass.

It was a pure retail image, I don't like specially compiled images at all. It was running alright, not without some lag and hiccups but it was usable.

[flibberdipper]

It was a pure retail image, I don't like specially compiled images at all. It was running alright, not without some lag and hiccups but it was usable.

Huh. Well, I guess I have to blow 5 gigs and grab Yosemite to see if I can make it work.

[PillowSmoke]

Nice review slamdank. Can't wait to get my hands on a g502.