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Blackview Tab 18 12" Android Tablet Review | The Best Tablet Under $300?
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Mar 21, 2024
Reviewer Dustin Abbott gives a thorough, real world review of the Blackview Tab 18 12" Android 13 tablet with Harman Karman sound, 256GB memory, and 12GB (+12GB virtual) RAM. Read the text review to find out more: | Purchase the Blackview Tab 18 here: Check out the DA Merch here: https://bit.ly/TWIMerch | Become a Patron: https://www.patreon.com/dustinabbott | On the Web: http://dustinabbott.net/ | Sign up for my Newsletter: http://bit.ly/1RHvUNp | Instagram: http://bit.ly/DLAinsta | Facebook: http://on.fb.me/1nuUUeH | Flickr: http://bit.ly/1UcnC0B | 500px: http://bit.ly/1Sy2Ngu Follow Craig @ https://www.instagram.com/craigstoffersen/ Want to support this channel? Use these affiliate links to shop at: B&H Photo: http://bhpho.to/1TA0Xge Adorama: https://howl.me/cjU0LKdp3LN Camera Canada: http://bit.ly/DLACameraCan Sony Canada: https://www.thesonyshop.ca/?ref=abbott Amazon: https://amzn.to/3HrY64d Amazon Canada: https://amzn.to/3qG1p18 Ebay: http://bit.ly/DustineBay Make a donation via Paypal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/dustinTWI ============================= Table of Contents: ============================= 0:00 - Intro and Concept 2:00 - Screen Performance 6:19 - Audio Performance
View Video Transcript
0:00
Hi, I'm Dustin Abbott
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I regularly use tablets as a part of my own personal workflow
0:15
I have an iPad Pro 11-inch model that I use pretty much every day for a variety of things
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throughout the day and when I travel I tend to take it along and with a keyboard often
0:26
rather than packing along a laptop. Because there's a lot that I'm accustomed to doing on it
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As a byproduct I remain interested in testing tablets because there's always new tablets
0:36
coming to market and I'm also interested in seeing, although I'm more familiar with the
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iPad side of things, how that the competition is doing. And so I had an opportunity, I do get pitched on tablets regularly, but when I saw the spec
0:50
list for the tablet I'm reviewing today there were some things there that really intrigued me
0:56
As I looked at it I saw some things that interested me about the screen itself and then some things
1:01
that also looked tempting to me about the audio on it. So as a byproduct I said yes to the BlackVue Tab 18 that is just coming to market which
1:10
is a 12-inch Android 13 tablet. And after spending some time with it and traveling with it, something that I like to do if I'm
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going on a trip rather than taking along my iPad, I take along just the tablet I'm reviewing
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and hopefully some accessories and so I can see how it fills in in my everyday routine
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And after spending some time with it in just that kind of situation, I feel like this might
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be your best bang for your buck if you're looking for an Android tablet and have a budget
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of $300 or less. That's for a couple of primary reasons. Number one, you're getting more screen area than competing tablets, 12 inches versus 11
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inches, and also you are getting way better sound than what I have seen from competing
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tablets before. So while I traveled, as mentioned, I used the keyboard case extensively during that time
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I used the active stylus slash pen. I used that a little bit and I will note, however, that unlike some of my complaints
2:09
about other of these Android tablets, this one actually magnetically attaches. So that is a bonus there
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And here are my thoughts after having used it for a little while
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First of all, let's talk about the size, the build, and the handling here
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So in terms of the size, this is 277 millimeters, right under 11 inches across
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It is 173 millimeters or right under 7 inches wide and it is 7.9 millimeters thick
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So yeah, it's definitely thicker than what my iPad Pro is. However, it is about the same thickness as say the Doogee T30 Pro tablet I reviewed last year
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Now, the Doogee is a little bit heavier than the Doogee at 632 grams, but when I crunch
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the numbers because of the extra screen area, it's about the same size to weight ratio as
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the Doogee T30 Pro. The chassis here is aluminum on the outside
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Now I'm reviewing it in the safe gray color. You can also get it in a green and blue tones as well
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I will note as far as the fit and the finish that the tolerances are very nice
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There's a nice beveled feel to it and a slightly flocked texture that makes it decent to hang
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on to though, as is true with just about all these tablets, I don't love the idea of just
3:25
holding them alone. I feel much safer when they are inside of a case
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Now on that note, inside the box itself, here's what comes in the box
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Inside the box, it comes with the tablet obviously, and the tablet does come with a glass screen
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protector already installed, which is fantastic. That way you don't have to worry about bubbles or getting it wrong, but also really nice
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that in the box, there's a bonus screen protector that's included as well, which I really, really appreciate
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It comes with unusually these days, a set of wired headphones and because there is no
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3.5 millimeter jack here, it is a USB-C end designed to plug into the USB-C port, but
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it does come with headphones. It does come with an AC adapter along with a USB-C cord for charging
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Now included is also a smart case in the box and so it's smart in the sense it will auto
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turn on and off. The case itself is fine. It's nothing spectacular, but everything pops in there nicely
4:28
I do have one complaint. There's one groove here, so there's only one viewing angle, so you can either do it laptop
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style, you can fold it over and fit it into that groove from the back and you can lean
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it like this. My one problem with it is that I find that it is really easy to collapse like that
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That groove could be deeper and the keyboard case, which is optional obviously, it uses
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a magnetic attachment to plug into its slot there and you can see how stable it is by comparison
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And so I do like the smart cover to some degree, but I don't love it when I'm trying to prop
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it up, but it is nice and slim and does give some protection to the tablet itself
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Now also part of the physical design is that we have two security measures here
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We do have a face detect option and then also there is a fingerprint scanner that is on
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the power button and actually both of those things work just fine
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No complaints on that front. Other external things is your volume controls and then on the other side we do, or excuse
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me, it's on the same side, we actually have the slot where you have a dual SIM slot there
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This now, unfortunately it's not 5G, it is 4G compatible, but you also have the option
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of using one of those SIM card slots as a micro SD to expand your storage
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More on that in just a moment. Now when it comes to the screen, that's one of the big selling features here
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This is a 12 inch IPS 2.4K display, so that's a resolution of 2000 by 1200 pixels
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You can see that the actual screen area relative to the bezel is a nice ratio
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It's 86.6% screen to body ratio. That's better than most of these
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The best I've seen previously is 85% and so getting up to nearly 87% is a definite improvement there
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That means that relative to the screen size, the tablet stays just a little bit smaller
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The screen itself, as mentioned, it's IPS and it can get nice and bright up to 350 nits
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of brightness and what I did note is that I basically never had to take it up past 50%
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It is bright enough for any kind of lighting conditions, so you can use it outside
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The bigger problem with all of these tablet screens outside is these screens are so reflective
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that if you're in a bright situation, yeah, you can crank up the brightness on that, but
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there's always going to be reflections in view and so that does limit that effectiveness
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just a little bit. One thing that I do find a pro and a con here
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One of the main pros is one of the things I do with the tablet every day is that I read
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news and I read my Bible on it every morning in a Bible app
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And so I'm very accustomed to holding at a certain angle and reading things on the screen
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And one of the things I found with other tablets, Android tablets, relative to my iPad is that
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the viewing angle is not great. And so even in a setting like that, part of the screen is really darkened by comparison
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to the main area that's at a better viewing angle. That's not true here
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So that's a huge improvement. In fact, I felt like this was more similar to my iPad Pro screen in terms of having a
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great viewing angle. That's also really, really important if you're wanting to share the screen with someone else
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Or you're viewing some media content. And so you don't have to worry about being straight in front of it to get a decent kind
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of viewing angle as far as the brightness. So that's the pro. The con here is that I've yet to see an Android tablet that's anywhere near as good as iPad
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when it comes to adaptive brightness. And I find that the adaptive, if I turn on the adaptive brightness, the screen is almost
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always too dim. And so I've actually been more pleased with just setting a screen brightness level
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And I find that the screen is good enough that I can basically just not mess with it
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unless I'm in a really extreme circumstance and I need to tweak it up or down
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Most of the time, though, I can just set a brightness level about 40% and I can leave
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it there and be perfectly happy with it. It does have the Tubesued blue light certification, so a little bit easier on the eye
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And another cool feature it has is the ability to switch into a reading mode where everything
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is black and white. It makes it a fairly impressive e-reader, though, because of those reflection issues
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I still prefer my actual dedicated e-reader because the matte finish on that screen just
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makes it easier to read outside. Now the screen does also, and the tablet, has Widevine L1 support, which means you're
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going to be able to watch from the various streaming services at the highest resolution
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possible for the tablet. I believe that's 1080p. And so as a byproduct, you're not getting things dumbed down because it doesn't have
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that certification. So that actual ratio, it works really well for a couple of things
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One of those things, obviously, is when you're in this horizontal mode, it works really well
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as a media device because this nice, you know, widescreen look means you can fill a lot of
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video content on the screen. The other way it works well is if you put things side by side
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You can put an app side by side and so you can do a little bit of maybe productivity work
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And I find that it works nicely for that because there's enough width that you have a reasonable amount of screen space for each app
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Another thing that the actual OS does here, which I like, is that it actually makes the
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active window brighter than the other. And so say if I'm, you know, working in one on a Word document and I'm using another window
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for reference, if I'm typing, it's going to be brighter in that window
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This helps you to know very quickly which one you're working on. It also does have a PC mode, which you can switch into
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And basically in PC mode, the biggest thing is that you can actually resize the windows
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to whatever size that you want. And so you can put more things on the screen
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But you know, remember at the end of the day, this is still a relatively small screen for
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that kind of work. And there's only so much you can put on a screen at once
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Now as noted, one thing that really set this apart was the audio performance
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When I saw that the audio was provided by Harman, I was very impressed by that for a
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budget tablet. And I was not disappointed in the performance. Most of these tablets, they sound really, really tinny compared to the much better audio
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in my iPad Pro. In this case, I put them side by side for video and music and I was very hard pressed
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to tell any difference. I would say if I was pushed to the max, I might very slightly prefer the iPad Pro still
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but it is by such a tiny margin. And so that is true of both the sound stage, which is much wider and less affected than
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what I would say is true of other tablets, Android tablets that I've reviewed
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But also the amount of volume you can get without any kind of distortion
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You also comes with not only the Harman speakers, but it also comes with Harman Audio FX 2.0
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some processing for that. And I found that if you will match the processing to what you're actually doing, there is a
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smart mode and it works fairly well, but I found a better performance
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If I was listening to music, put it into a music mode, watching a movie, put it into
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movie mode, playing a game, put it into gaming mode, and the really helps the sound to sparkle
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in those situations. And so the fact that side by side, it was very much comparable to my iPad Pro 11 was
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a very, very impressive win for this tablet that cost less than a third of what the iPad does
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Now, as far as connectivity, you've got all of the standard WiFi connections at this point
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the five different WiFi network options. You've got dual band performance. You have the ability to have four different GPS systems that it can access to make sure
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that you have good GPS triangulation when you're out using it in that setting
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And again, it's limited at 4G LTE, so you can run two different SIMs in it, or you can
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run a SIM card plus an SD card for more storage, but you do have the option to run it on two
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different networks if that's your thing. So that's nice, but you're not going to have anything that is 5G compatible here
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Bluetooth works great. No problems with that. As noted previously, there is no headphone jack, so you're either going to need to use
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Bluetooth headphones or a wired headphone that has a USB-C adapter at the far end of it
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Now, as far as the processing, processing is more standard here than what I'm accustomed to
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It seems like all of these tablets use the same architecture. It is a Helio G99 octa-core processor, and so that is two 2.2 gigahertz Cortex-A76 processors
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along with six 2 gigahertz A55 processors. It's built on a 6 nanometer kind of design, and so that does help it to be fairly efficient
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but again, it's not setting it apart. What does set this apart a little bit from some of the other tablets that I've reviewed
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Android tablets, is that there is both more RAM on board, like real RAM, 12 gigabyte is
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available here, but then also you have the ability to do the virtual expanded RAM at
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an additional 12 gigabytes, so up to, you know, air quotes, up to 24 gig of RAM
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So obviously that's just a little bit more power under the hood
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The tablet I'm testing comes with 256 gigabyte of storage, so lots of storage there, and
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of course, unlike Apple, it is easily expandable, and you can expand up to an additional terabyte
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via the micro SD card. So all of that is great, and as far as the speed, I basically found that everything runs
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pretty similar to my iPad. Only difference is this does take a little bit longer to boot up from when it's completely
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powered down. It takes a little bit longer to load into the OS, but once it's there, apps open nice
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and snappy. I was able, I'm not a big gamer on a tablet, but I was able to play a little bit of games
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no problem there. More important to me, my productivity software all worked just fine
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Without any kind of slowdown, tablet was easy to set up. All good on that front
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Now it also has an 8800 mAh battery, so a good size battery in it, and a spec that's
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definitely better than a lot of the tablets I've reviewed. It has a 33 watt fast charging capability, and so that means you can get that big battery
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recharged a whole lot faster. You can go 0 to 50% in about an hour
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Obviously if you're going to top all the way up, it'll slow down a little bit at the end as they do for battery management, but you can recharge it enough to where you're
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not going to have any kind of battery issues. I was able to do a variety of things throughout the day, and I actually felt like doing some
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of the exact same things that I'm accustomed to doing on my iPad. I had a little bit higher percentage of battery left over at the end of the day with the Tab
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18 than what I do with my iPad. So finally, let's talk very briefly about these accessories
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I really do like the keyboard case here. As I've already pointed out, it sits very nicely
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The actual action of the keys is good. It is not backlit, and the other thing about it is that it is Bluetooth rather than direct contact
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I have the Magic Keyboard for my iPad, and it uses the actual electronic contacts, and
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so it shares the battery of the actual tablet. In this case, you have a separate battery
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It can be charged by USB-C, and it's Bluetooth connected. I would prefer it to be the other way, like it is with, say, the Doogee T30 Pro, but at
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the same time, everything actually is nice here as far as the typing action, and so I
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have zero complaints about that. As noted, it's not backlit, but everything else seems to work just fine, and I didn't
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notice much, if any, Bluetooth lag, which is one thing that I was concerned about being
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pure Bluetooth. One, if there's any kind of advantage to it being Bluetooth as opposed to a direct connection
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is that for some reason, I find that there are a few apps, unfortunately one of them
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is actually the YouTube Studio app, that will work fine in vertical mode on iOS, but for
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some reason, it only will work in vertical orientation, and I've not found a way to get
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around that on a lot of Android, and so as a byproduct, I can at least set it upright
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like this, and I can actually continue to work in a vertical mode
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I don't mind that function. So some good and some bad there, but what's great here is this keyboard case only set
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you back $39.99 US. That is a huge value. This active stylus, it doesn't seem quite as good as the iPad Pencil, but it does the
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job and it will run you about $45. So the sum total of all of these accessories, the tablet, the keyboard case, and the stylus
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is about $365 US. For my magic keyboard, for my iPad alone, $280
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So when you're talking about a value, the value here is fantastic
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So in conclusion, this is obviously an incredible value for a tablet that both looks and sounds
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better than a lot of the competitors out there on the market. You're getting a little bit more screen real estate, you're getting better sound, and basically
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all the other specs are roughly similar to what you're getting out there, but obviously
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I think a stronger value because of those two things alone. And so if you're looking for a budget Android tablet, I would say that this is the winner
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in the marketplace right now. If you want more information, you can look in the description down below
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I do have a written review where I dive into a few more things there. There's also some buying links if you'd like to check it out
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As always, thanks for watching. Have a great day and let the light in. Transcribed by https://otter.ai
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