Alba 7: My Review

Over the last few weeks, I have been debating about picking up a cheap Android device as I have come to miss being able to have access to Discord and Skype much like how I did with the XDA Exec with instant messaging and while my Surface Pro does a good job as a laptop that Windows 10 kinda sucks as a tablet.

While I am still hoping to be able to find a phone with a built-in keyboard I do plan to use this device for web browsing and chatting online for a while but I will one day use it as a secondary device to monitor my servers.

Specification

This tablet is something you should not expect to be that powerful and due to having bought many tablets from eBay only for them to turn out with fake information, I am going to skip the information on the box and just go into the information from the benchmark I like to run on these devices. (Click here to view).

As you can see it’s your standard cheap Android specs.

Internet Usage

With most low-end cheap Android tablets, you will find that they struggle with browsing most websites but with the Alba 7, I had little issues with browsing the World Wide Web such as browsing Reddit, writing content on WordPress and watching stuff on YouTube.

One thing that did suffer from this tablet is with the tablet lagging a bit once you have a few tabs open which I will assume is due to the limited RAM this device has.

With that said and done it was a good experience browsing the web using it and I find it something I have started to pick up rather than my phone to check a few updated websites and to check Discord and Skype.

Music

I suppose it is a given that this tablet would be able to play music without any issue and you would be correct. I have been able to listen to podcasts (although still prefer my phone for this), stream music to my Bluetooth speakers and listen to stuff using YouTube.

While the audio worked fine sadly the speakers are not that great. They lack quality although they can go pretty loud. I am unsure if there is a microphone on this as when I tested this on Discord no one was able to hear me and I am unable to check otherwise.

If you have a solid pair of earphones you will get good quality from them otherwise you will not be relying on the speakers.

Gaming

Surprisingly I do not have many Android games but there is one thing I enjoy and that is Retro Gaming. So this does not turn into a lost article I was able to play Mega Drive (or Genesis if you prefer) games and lower without a single issue but it started to have issues on PlayStation. For the Playstation test, I tried Breath of Fire III which did work at an okay frame rate and other role-playing games were about the same. For faster pace games I noticed quite a few FPS drops and I am not sure if this is something that can be fixed via software.

For Android games, however, I was able to play C&C Rivals and had quite a few battles where I did not experience any lag or noticed anything that wasn’t working well.

I have included a benchmark so you can get an idea based on 3D Mark.

Films

Watching films on this tablet went as well as you would expect when using a service such as Netflix. I was able to watch things without a problem but I found 1080p streaming to push this tablet a bit to its limit with noticeable lag here and there.

YouTube worked without a hitch until I went to higher resolutions but with the screen resolution being as it is you are likely not going to wait to use anything above 720p anyhow. With that said quite a few 100p videos did work without a problem but I would not plan on it.

Camera

For both cameras on this tablet (the one at the front, and the one at the back) are both 2.2 MP and support a resolution of 1080p. I am not a photographer and I honestly have no real idea how to take a good photo so what I decided to do was take a picture of some old clothes on a gaming chair with typical lights on. Sadly the front camera would not be picked up in the camera application.

For this review, I am not uploading a video recording but it was pretty terrible. This is not a tablet you are going to be using to record video or to take any photos.

Battery

The battery itself is hard to test but I can listen to Spotify while using a BlueTooth speaker at 100% and after about six to eight hours it will be about 86%. I can leave the device on without having to turn it off (excluding the screen) and be able to browse webpages casually over a few days without needing to change it up.

The battery, however, does die fast watching videos and it is something that happened as well with the limited gaming I tried on this device.

Overall

This tablet is good if you are looking for a device for general web browsing, music, and video. I would not get this for gaming. With the lack of any form of mobile data inputs, it will not be that much good out and about which is where I find tablets tend to be mostly used personally.