Viewsonic ViewPad 7 review

Switching the device on we started to notice some of the drawbacks of the tablet and found that it’s not quite as polished as the Galaxy Tab. For starters, the 7in touchscreen has a resolution of 800×480. This is the same resolution as on the Nexus One smartphone. While this resolution looks very sharp on the smartphone’s 3.7in screen, on the 7in tablet it’s a little low and graphics and text can look a little blocky.

Screen quality is decent, but far from impressive. Contrast is quite low and bright screens have a mottled appearance to them. Viewing angles are quite tight and we found that we hold the tablet pretty much straight-on in order to see it clearly. We also found some content hard to view. In particular, black text on a white background ends up looking grey and can be hard to read unless you zoom in.

Zooming and rotating the screen aren’t quite as smooth as on the Galaxy Tab, either. This is mainly due to Viewsonic’s choice of a 600MHz ARM11 processor, rather than the 1GHz Cortex processor favoured in high-end Android devices. This processor can struggle when playing HD video, so it’s not the ideal product for a media player. It’s a shame in some ways, as the stereo speakers (either side of the screen in landscape mode) are actually pretty good, producing crisp and clear audio. Their only shortcoming is a lack of bass, but that’s to be expected from such small drivers.

The ARM processor has one other drawback: no Flash support. It’s a little disappointing, but the Apple iPad is successful despite not supporting Flash either. Despite these drawbacks, browsing the internet on the ViewPad 7 is both easy and simple.

Fortunately, the choice of Android 2.2 and access to the full Android Market means that there are no other drawbacks on what you can install. With more than 100,000 apps now available, including support from big companies such as Sky and Amazon, there’s a wide choice of software you can install on this tablet.

You’ll need to visit the Market, as Viewsonic hasn’t installed many applications by default on the ViewPad 7. In fairness, this isn’t much of an issue and it’s better, in our opinion, to choose what you want to install rather than getting a device stuffed full of software.

The only application of note that ViewSonic has installed is the Aldiko eBook reader. This supports titles in the popular ePub format, although DRM-protected titles can’t be read. That’s not a huge drawback, as you can always install the Amazon Kindle app if you want to read new paid-for titles.