Hannspree Hannspad SN1AT71B - 10.1" Tablet

Alow-cost but flawed 10in tablet

Hannspree is a Taiwanese company, best known for its budget monitors, the company also has a range of Android tablets of which the Hannspad SN1AT71B is the latest. Ms 10in tablet costs just $240 but looks surprisingly classy despite its low price. While it’s made mostly out of plain black plastic, the rear is brushed metal so it looks pretty sleek. The Hannspad weighs 650g, which is about standard for a budget 10in tablet.

It feels reasonably sturdy and has some useful ports, including a micro HDMI and a micro SD card slot, there’s also a micro USB port for charging the battery, connecting the tablet to your PC and connecting USB sticks, though you’ll need a USB On the Go adapter (£3 from www.snipca.com/10494).

Hannspree Hannspad SN1AT71B

In our tests, battery life was surprisingly good for a budget tablet, lasting nine hours 21 minutes when playing videos continuously. More expensive tablets tend to last longer, but this is still impressive and it beats the Amazon Kindle Fire HD 8.9 by 30 minutes. The 10in screen has a relatively low resolution of just 1280x800 pixels, so text doesn’t look anywhere as sharp as it does on pricier tablets with higher-resolution screens. It’s very bright, however, and color accuracy is also reasonably good.

In our tests, battery life was surprisingly good for a budget tablet, lasting nine hours 21 minutes when playing videos continuously

So far so good, but the Hannspads flaws lie in its responsiveness and performance, there was often a distinct lag between tapping or swiping an on-screen control and the response. This delay quickly became frustrating. Even though the Hannspad is equipped with 1GB of memory and a 1.2GHz quad-core processor, performance wasn’t up to much. Simple tasks, such as scrolling through complex web pages and running multiple programs simultaneously, slowed the tablet to a crawl. Chrome often struggled to catch up with our commands, while switching between open apps took several seconds, when it should be instantaneous.

It’s tempting to overlook the Hannspad s sluggish responsiveness and performance because of its low price, but that would be a mistake because these flaws make it a poor-value tablet and frustrating to use. If you want a budget big-screen tablet then it’s worth paying $80 more for the Amazon Kindle Fire HD 8.9. Although it only has access to the Amazon Appstore and not the Google Play store, its superior responsiveness and performance, as well as its better- quality screen, make it a far better buy.

It’s tempting to overlook the Hannspad s sluggish responsiveness and performance because of its low price, but that would be a mistake because these flaws make it a poor-value tablet and frustrating to use