Jexaa JexTab 812 HD review

Along the top edge there’s the power button and a rocker switch. This isn’t a volume rocker, as we expected, but instead acts as the Menu and Back buttons, which we found confusing. Volume controls are instead placed on the status bar along with Home, Back and Menu controls. The downside is that if you’re in a full-screen app – such as a game or a video player – you can’t change the volume unless the app itself has a control. Thankfully, the pre-installed video player has volume buttons on its control bar.

Performance from the tablet’s Rockchip 2918 processor isn’t great – it’s an older generation of chip from the Snapdragon and Tegra chipsets we’re used to reviewing, and it shows in the occasional interface lag. While web browsing, we noticed lag when pinching to zoom in, especially on Flash-heavy sites, and the SunSpider JavaScript test, which is a good barometer of web browsing performance, took over seven seconds to complete, which is slower than we’re used to seeing. However graphics performance is great – the JexTab will happily play 1080p video content without a hitch, and games are smooth too.

While some budget tablets are simply not worth having due to their lack of the Android Market, the JexTab is a different beast. The inclusion of a USB host port with mass storage and 3G dongle support (although we’d like to see more information about supported dongles on the website) and the ability to output 1080p via HDMI to a big screen, really make the JexTab punch above its weight, and compensate for the occasional bout of lag in the operating system.

The JexTab is a good-value tablet, but for just £70 more you could have the Acer Iconia Tab A100 which runs the latest, tablet-specific Android 3.2 operating system. With a range of sub-£300 Android 3.2 tablets from various manufacturers just around the corner, we’d recommend saving up some more to get a genuine tablet-specific OS.