It was just last week I was trying out the Huawei MatePad, a beautiful looking and powerful tablet, but the software really let it down. Now I’ve got the Dragon Touch Max 10, which is native Android, so one up for Dragon Touch already but what about everything else? Let’s find out.
Spec & First Impressions
- 10.1″ IPS Display @ 1920×1200
- 8core ARM Unisoc CPU @ 1.6GHz
- PowerVR Rogue GE8322 GPU
- 2 or 3GB RAM
- 32GB storage, expandable with microSD upto 128GB
- USB-C + Headphone jack
- 5000mAh battery circa 6hr battery
- Dual band WiFi 2.4 & 5GHz
- Android 9.0 Pie
In the box you get the tablet, a plug adapter and USB-C cable. The tablet looks and feels like any other generic Android tablet, with a glossy front panel and smooth satin finish to the back. Weighing in at roughly 550grams and measures at 240W x 165H x 10D mm. It has bezels all the way around, 9mm either side, with a slightly larger one top & bottom at 14mm. To the front of the tablet is a front-facing camera for video calls, while there is a 8MP camera and flash to the rear. Around the perimeter there is a power button, volume controls, reset pin, 3.5mm headphone port and USB-C port. To the top rear, is a small plastic cover, which underneath gains access to the microSD port. There are two speakers to the bottom of the tablet.
It’s not the sleekest tablet I’ve tried, it wont win any design awards but it’s pratical and comfortable to hold in either portrait or landscape mode.
Performance
This is running Android 9, with a few tweaks but nothing too substantial or worth mentioning. So if you’re used to Android, you’ll easily be able to navigate yourself around this table. With Android devices, you can run some benchmarks, so we did just that, to compare them against similar spec tablets. Here are the results:
On Geekbench 5.2, we achieved a score of 150 on single-core, 768 on multi-core, which is comparable to something like the Samsung Galaxy Tab Pro 8.4 @ single-core, which is really old tech now. For reference, the new OnePlus8 achieves a single-core score of 904! We also tried the Max 10 with the Sling Shot benchmark by 3D Mark and it achieved an overall score of 530. Watching it benchmark was quite painful, the FPS was in single figures and it didn’t handle it very well at all. For reference, the iPhone 11 achieved something in the region of 7000 points.
So the benchmarks weren’t great and it’s evident that some of the tech in this table is a little dated now (it did release last year) but how does that related to day to day use?
Video or visual performance was good, it offers a crisp and fairly bright image but it’s unclear what the actual NIT output is. Colours pop out more in dark conditions but the image is still watchable in bright conditions too. Viewing angles are positive too. Reflection is an issue but that’s inherent with all tablets. At 10″, it’s a nice size for watching movies or alike. Scrolling through menus, apps or scrolling a webpage is a little sluggish and can’t quite keep up with my finger but it wasn’t too off-putting.
Gaming performance was better than expected and it’s capable of playing most, if not all current games. Less demanding games such as Rise Of Kingdoms ran like a dream and it held it’s own against Call Of Duty Mobile too. The performance wasn’t quite as good with COD, it was a little sluggish but it was still very playable and in fact, you can start calling me Mr MVP please. I played a few games and it took a little while to get used to the controls but I got kills, I won games. It was comfortable to play too, using both thumbs on screen at the same time.
Audio performance was average at best. There are two speakers at the bottom of the screen, which are well-positioned for when you’re watching content in landscape mode but the sound was tinny and lacked bass. Volume-wise, it can get loud but the quality really drops off then. The tablet does come with a 3.5mm headphone jack (Bluetooth as well), so stick some decent cans on and you’ll be fine.
Camera performance was poor. The rear camera took a very grainy image, with very little detail and it won’t offer something worthy of going on your Instagram profile. The flash works, that too isnt great but does help a little. The flash can also be used as a flashlight, which is very dim and almost worthless. The front-facing camera is of similar quality but more than adequate for video calls.
Battery life was ok and the 6 hour playback watching content was realistic. After the first use, I left it on standby for a couple of days, with very minimal battery life lost. Storage is about 26GB after the OS and standard apps are installed, which leaves plenty of space for your own apps. Don’t forget this is expandable up to an additional 128GB if so desired. This does also has dual WiFi, so stick it on 5GHz for better performance.
Verdict
This is a budget tablet, with a retail price of just £139.99 (or £99 for 2GB), which I think is a fair price for the performance and spec you receive. It has its flaws but I expected that at this price point. For everyday general use of browsing, watching content and playing the occasional game, this will be fine. For anything else, you will have to increase your budget.
To purchase, head over to Amazon now!
