• 8-inch Gorilla glass touchscreen featuring Windows 8.1

• UI is a bit clunky and 16GB of RAM isn’t enough

• 2MP front and rear-facing cameras

The Mecer A801 is a tablet with full Windows capability. This isn’t Windows dumbed down, this is Windows from Metro desktop to  programs like Outlook and iTunes. For that, it should be commended, but with only 1GB of RAM, it’s a 2nd screen at best.

At 8-inches, the A801 is perfectly sized to fit in your jacket pocket or your purse. The ports and buttons are easily accessible, and the inclusion of an HDMI port (granted it’s a micro port) is a nice touch. With that being said, it has a single touch button on the front which functions as the start button, and it’s as responsive as a deaf Alzheimer’s patient. At first we thought it was there to show off the Windows logo, but we accidentally brushed a finger on it after a few days and suddenly the start screen booted. It’s possible that it’s just a bug on this particular device, but it’s something to bear in mind.

There’s a reason that companies adapt their software for mobile, mainly because trying to use a computer without a proper mouse and keyboard can be disastrous at times and this isn’t convenient at all when working on a tablet in a coffee shop. While the A801 does put a PC in your hands, opening up miniscule settings like Wi-Fi or volume in the bottom right corner can be frustrating without the help of a mouse arrow. No matter who you are, your fingers are going to be a bit too big.

The A801’s biggest problem though is it’s relatively miniscule 1GB of RAM. Granted this is an entry-level tablet not directly competing with the Samsung Notes of the world, but such little RAM severely limits the programs you can run, and even how many smaller ones you can have open at a time. Where tablets running Android and iOS minimise background applications when you’re not using them, the A801 keeps them running in real time, which takes up a hefty part of the little RAM it has.

The A801 has 16GB of memory for everything and this limits it a bit. While Samsung and Apple get away with this due to apps being small and limiting the files you can keep on your devices, the A801 tries to have it all, but only ends up with 16GB of “it all”. There is a micro SD card slot, but buying the highest available SD card (128GB) will set you back around R1500. That’s more than half the price of the tablet itself, and it’s not a lot of memory for a computer to begin with.

Most of the drawbacks can be ignored when the device is taken for just a tablet. It has front and rear cameras, and the quad-core processor can be impressively fast at times, provided you don’t have that many programs open. It even ships with a micro-USB to USB adapter, so using flash drives or keyboards isn’t a problem.

We may have been hard on the A801, but if you can control what programs you have open, make your peace with the clunky UI and actually believe that it only costs R2 000, it’s actually a great choice for a tablet.

Get It: R2 000
From: http://www.takealot.com/mecer-xpress-8-tablet-3g-wifi/PLID34151989