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MediaPad 7 Lite: High on looks

A beautifully crafted device for basic emailing, messaging and music listening.

If tablets are considered mobile devices, they should be easy to take with you, right? The MediaPad 7 Lite is Huawei?s answer to consumers? demand for a good-looking, portable tablet.

Running the Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich version, this device is targeted at the youth and young urban professionals looking for a decent entertainment and communications companion. It carries an affordable price tag of Rs 13,700.

At the outset, let me caution that the MediaPad 7 Lite ships with only Android 4.0.3 Ice Cream Sandwich. A lot of newer devices are already running on Android 4.1 Jelly Bean. Moving forward, the tablet?s 7-inch full view angle IPS LCD display gives users a 1024 x 600 pixel resolution and 170 pixels per inch. This makes for a decent reading experience as far as my experience was concerned. The colour reproduction is decent for what it is?basically what you would expect from IPS. And being a 7-incher, this tablet is highly portable and can even fit in small bags and jacket pockets.

The MediaPad 7 Lite comes in an aluminium unibody shell. With dimensions of 193 mm x 120 mm x 11 mm, it isn?t very thin either, but the device?s build quality impressed me a lot. From front to back and everything in between, this device is well built and reeks of quality. It feels strong when one holds it although a little heavy at 370g. You will find the Huawei and Google logos on the rear and the 3.2 megapixel rear facing camera along the top edge. Beside the camera is the device?s single speaker?a tiny little thing that doesn?t put out much sound.

On the top side of the device you will find the power button and volume rocker, as well as the microSD card slot and SIM card slot, both of which are covered by plastic doors that blend in perfectly with the tablet?s aluminum body. Under the hood is a single-core Cortex A8 1.2 GHz processor, 8 GB of internal storage, a 0.3-megapixel front-facing camera, and a 3.2-megapixel rear camera.

Ports-wise, you get micro-USB 2.0 and HDMI-out so you can plug the tablet into your TV should you desire. On-board storage is 8 GB but this can be boosted via the microSD card slot, so you should have plenty of space to store apps, games and media content.

The MediaPad 7 Lite comes with some standard connectivity functions, such as 3G, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 3.0. If you need to manually move files between your computer and your MediaPad 7 Lite, there?s a micro-USB port.

I tested the capabilities of MediaPad 7 with regard to speed, power, Web-browsing, high definition display and audio. Its single-core processor becomes pretty obvious when scrolling through the Home screen. There?s a bit of lag there. High definition games stutter and buffering is choppy. But basic browsing was pretty good on this slate. I browsed YouTube, various newspaper properties as well as some high-graphics websites and the tablet did not disappoint. The camera too performed acceptably.

Overall, the MediaPad 7 Lite is a mixed bag. The device has a solid build but don?t expect to do a lot of work-intensive stuff on it. It will do fine though for emailing, messaging, and music listening.

SPECS

Display: 7-inch LCD capacitive touchscreen

Operating system: Android v4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich)

Processor: 1.2 GHz Cortex-A8 processor

Camera: 3.2 MP primary camera; 0.3 MP secondary camera

RAM: 1 GB

Storage: 4 GB; expandable storage capacity of 32 GB

Connectivity: 2G, 3G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 3.0

Estimated street price: Rs 13,700

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First published on: 10-01-2013 at 05:31 IST
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