iRulu Android tablet -- is it worth the price?

[xterra]

A friend has recommended the following to me as a good value for the price. He bought the 4.3" version and has been very happy with it.

http://tinyurl.com/pcwqm7w

Any opinions, or more important, any experience with this brand would be most appreciated.

xterra

 

[Babbylonian]

I really don't need experience with the brand to give it 3 yawns. While I can't imagine finding a better [new] tablet at that size for the price, the display has terrible resolution, the processor was budget when it was new (almost 18 months ago), and 512MB RAM isn't good either. I have no doubt that it can run the less demanding Android applications but it'll look like monkey butt while doing it.

If your friend's 4.3" has similar resolution, I can see why he might like it but just looking at the specifications presented, at 9" this looks like a real dog and I'd save up for something with a little more oomph. I'm a Nexus guy and thus consider the Nexus 7 my top tablet pick, but Amazon is still selling their Kindle Fire HD 7" for $139 new and that would offer a much more pleasant experience.

 

[Cuddles]

I'd say definitely not worth it. I've never heard of the brand before, but generally you get what you pay for. As Babbylonian says, it's basically cheap and crappy all the way through, with seriously outdated and underpowered hardware. If all you want to do is browse the internet it will probably manage OK, but may well feel rather slow and clunky. If you want to do more than that, you'll struggle.

Not too long ago, that might have been a price worth paying for spending less than $100 on a tablet, but things have changes a lot at the budget end of things. You can get a Nexus 7 for not much over £100, a Kindle Fire for £100-200 depending on the version, and a Tesco Hudl for £120. Any one of those would be orders of magnitude better than the iRulu one.

 

[Tsukasa Buddha]

What do you guys mean? The screen is "800 x 480 HD"!

The UI skin looks very odd as well. They combines the navbar and status bar on the bottom of the screen?

If you need something inexpensive, I'd get a last year model and/or refurb of a decent device. This doesn't look like it can even browse the web smoothly (from YouTube vids).

 

[Babbylonian]

What do you guys mean? The screen is "800 x 480 HD"!

Hehe. I give them props for putting the screen resolution in the ad in the first place, even if the way they do it could be seen as slightly deceptive*.

*I say "slightly" because 720+ lines of resolution can be called HD even if most people think HD means more than that.

 

[paulhutch]

That is fully deceptive advertising, an 800x480 LCD is 480p making it ED (enhanced definition) which is difficult to visually distinguish from 480i SD. Would need at least an x720 display to be actual HD.

 

[Babbylonian]

That is fully deceptive advertising, an 800x480 LCD is 480p making it ED (enhanced definition) which is difficult to visually distinguish from 480i SD. Would need at least an x720 display to be actual HD.

Again, I've seen varying definitions over the years. Regardless, I would only consider it fully deceptive if they didn't include the resolution numbers at all.

Consider this: They could call it "800p" and not be caught in a lie. It would be deceptive because someone might assume the resolution was greater than what is usually called "720p" but it wouldn't be fully deceptive. I remember Plasma TV retailers using this practice, calling 1024x768 displays "768p."

 

[paulhutch]

No you can't swap vertical for horizontal and claim to meet the standard, x480 or higher is 480, x720 or higher is 720 and x1080 or higher is 1080. Even if they claimed the display was rotated 90° it would still be false because the SD/ED/HD standards specify that width must be greater than height with ratios of 4:3 SD/ED or 16:9 ED/HD.

In fact it is deceptive enough that the US Federal Trade Commission could sanction them for deceptive advertising if enough people, fell for the deception, realized the deception, asked for a refund, were refused a refund and then complained to the FTC. (Yes it takes a lot before the FTC will act).

While calling 1024x768 768p is deceptive it is actually true, the problem is that there is no 768p broadcast standard. So while it is deceptive it would not lead to a sanction from the FTC because it's true, useless but true. The same applies to 720i, it's an actual realizable display specification it's just that there is no matching broadcast standard. So a manufacture could claim a display was 480p/720i but they would have to call it ED because HD starts with 720p.

 

[Babbylonian]

No you can't swap vertical for horizontal and claim to meet the standard...

Not to rain on your parade, but since tablets are intended to be viewed in both orientations, you can indeed swap between the two. I'd be hard pressed to classify tablet axes as absolutely horizontal or vertical given that fact.

 

[Cuddles]

Not to rain on your parade, but since tablets are intended to be viewed in both orientations, you can indeed swap between the two. I'd be hard pressed to classify tablet axes as absolutely horizontal or vertical given that fact.

Irrelevant. As paulhutch says, this is simply a matter of defined broadcast standards. If the longer axis of a tablet is 720 pixels long, then by definition it is not 720p. Turning it around will not change that.