Aluratek CinePad 10.1″ Android 4.0 WiFi Tablet

My father and I bought this tablet for my mother for mother’s day, and I wanted to make sure that this tablet will work out of the box before I give it to her, because I’ve seen quite a number of reviews where devices don’t work out of the box.
I was a little skeptical about buying this tablet but for the price and functionality I couldn’t resist. This also helps me decide on what kind of tablet I want to get as well since I’m also a student on a budget.
This is my first review on any tablet ever and my goal here is to help others find out if this tablet is right for them or their friends or family.

HARDWARE:
I found this same model on other websites (J&R, Tiger Direct, etc) and the specs are completely different, so I looked into the tablet itself for it to give me the truth.

There’s a volume rocker up on top with another button for “M”. I think that’s a menu button because when I do press it it pops up with the menu.
The camera is located on the top right of the tablet (when holding it in portrait mode)

It does NOT charge via USB. It has its own power cable.

HDMI, MicroSD, 3.5mm headphone jack, power button, is on the bottom of the device (when in portrait mode).
The power button is really small but I usually use the back button
I tried Fruit Ninja and it’s CAPACITIVE 5 POINT TOUCH, which is something I feel SHOULD be listed about this device for all you Gameboy PSX and Nintendo emulator players.
The Aluratek 10″ AT110F FEATURES:

CPU Type: ARM A9
CPU Speed: 1GHz
GPU: Mali 300
OS: Android 4.0
RAM: 1GB DDR3
Capacity: FLashs Memory: 8GB/ microSD slot up to 32GB
Display: 10″/1024×600/16:9
Display Type: Capacitive (It is 5 Point Touch)
Communication Protocols: USB, WIFI: 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR
Battery Capacity 3.7V / 6000mAH

Miscellaneous: Built in G Sensor
Built in Speaker
Bult in MIC
Support HTML5

Webcam Type: Front Facing VGA 0.3MP
Accessories: Quick Start Guide / USP cable / Power Adapter – This also came with a pair of white basic headphones
Dimensions 10.24 x 6.25 x .6in
Weight: 1.15lb
There you have it, the true specs right on the box!

PERFORMANCE
Scrolling through home screens like a maniac and flicking the app drawer frantically like it’s something everyone else does actually doesn’t produce any lag. Maybe a tiny tiny bit but nothing short of a deal breaker. There has been SOME unresponsiveness, but that can be my high expectations of this device.

BATTERY:
Using this tablet with Wi-Fi enabled, Bluetooth disabled, some downloads, video watching, game playing, and brightness to the max, I am at 33% at 4hrs 3m 45s. 61% of battery is the screen, 35% is wifi, tablet idle is 4%, and bluetooth is 2%.

APP STORE/PRELOADED APPS: IT DOES NOT COME WITH GOOGLE PLAY!
There is nothing wrong with not having google play because there are alternatives. On top of that, not having Google Play means paying less for the product. You can also root it if desired but I’m not going there being that I’m not that savvy and don’t want to mess up my mothers gift.
It comes pre-loaded with the Amazon App Store which is great. I also downloaded the 1Mobile Marketplace for it to give my mother more variety. It also comes with Appinstaller for .apk’s and File Manager, but I think Astros is better.

ACCESSORIES:
Along with this tablet, I purchased the Synthetic Leather Case + USB 2.0 Standard Qwerty Keyboard for 10.2” & 10” Google Android Epad Apad Tablet Pc MID Zt-180″. The stylus is useless.
I couldn’t find a screen protector for this tablet probably because it’s new and possibly because I didn’t look hard enough.
The keyboard/case works great, I mean the one thing that bothers me is the kickstand which, if you don’t extend far enough, it’ll just fall.

DISPLAY:
I find the display the selling point of any tablet. For example the Kindle Fire has an LCD Gorilla Glass IPS display with 1024×600 resolution while this is a plastic LCD with a 1024×600 resolution. My HTC phone has gorilla glass and I compared the two to see how they fare in certain lightings.
The display on the Aluratek is amazing. It’s like I’m looking at a gorilla glass display. The viewing angles aren’t the best but when you look at it dead in the screen it’s very comparable to a higher priced tablet.
This is not as much of a fingerprint magnet as other devices but it does come with a cloth to wipe it down with. I recommend lense wipes/microfiber cloths.

CAMERA:
I highly doubt my mom is going to use video calling, I mean she might at some points but who knows. This camera features a 0.3MP front facing camera, none in the rear unfortunately, but that’s ok. Couch surfers aren’t going to take pictures of their lap.
The camera is fine, not a necessity and not a deal breaker for the kind that it is.
I can see my self clearly on Skype but when I look at my phone I have purple lines going horizontally on the camera. I don’t know how that can be fixed. Skype WORKS, but the strange purple colors get in the way. There may be an older version that works but I haven’t found that out yet. A quick google search should help.

BROWSING/FLASH:
This comes preloaded with Flash 10.2, but every time I tried to get a flash 11.apk it seems to just not want to download. Tells me that there’s conflicting signatures and all that jazz.
Browsing on the Cinepad is very good. I’m not a fan of the stock browser so I installed the Dolphin Browser via the Amazon Marketplace
Do you watch Flash Content or use MathXL or go to your college websites? This does it all! Especially with HTML5 support. Even with Flash 10.2 it still works really well. I highly recommend downloading the Dolphin HD browser for all your flash needs, it’s really good at what it does. The pages load smoother too for the fact that you can change it so you can enable flash content on certain pages.

GAMES:
I couldn’t resist. I had to play a couple games on here to see how great the memory and processor can really perform, even though my mom is not a gamer.
I tried Front Line Commando and that game worked really well. I also tried Angry Birds (which is pre-installed) and that worked really well too, hardly any lag. I haven’t tried any other games. For the sake of the review I ran a benchmark test with AnTuTu Benchmark and it received a total score of 2616.
DOCUMENTS/MUSIC/VIDEO:
I use Kingsoft Office via the Amazon App Store for my office needs. I used Adobe PDF Reader va the Amazon Marketplace to see how it reads the PDF’s.
Reading PDF’s on this baby is great with the Adobe PDF reader app. It is so much better in landscape mode than in Portrait.

Going through Powerpoints with the Kingsoft Office app is great too. If you’re a student and view pdf’s/powerpoints for class, this is the best.

The music player is not Play Music and it is extremely basic. So I downloaded Google Play Music via the 1Mobile Market. It won’t play. So I googled for their apk and got it via theandroidsoul but still no go. It plays the music but I have to hit OK after the error and it force closes. The basic music player works fine though.

I put a wildlife.wmv file in and the preintalled movie player had no problem with it.
TRANSFERS:
Just a quick one here… I was able to transfer 250mb worth of content that took about a minute to go through. So it’s pretty quick.
Conclusion:
I bought this tablet with the $10 instant discount so the total was $189.99 w/ Free Shipping. The product came within 3 business days. I am very happy with this product and I know my mom will be too. I’m considering buying the Aluratek 7″ Tablet for my own personal needs but I like the way the Kyros 7″ w/ 4.0 looks. It’ll take me a little longer to decide but I’m sure performance wise they are very similar.
This tablet will be perfect for students and couch surfers and gamers. It does not replace a Tegra 2 but it does work well.

My ONLY disappointment is that I can’t get Google Play or Play Music, but that’s fine, it wasn’t meant to have it in the first place otherwise it would’ve been installed, right? I think rooting will solve the problem though. The 1Mobile Market and the Amazon Appstore is perfect enough.
This concludes my review and I hope it helps you.
Happy Mothers Day!

NOTE: I could not test the HDMI, it wants the mini-looking one. I will also update if there’s any problems from here on out.

UPDATE 1: I tried Skype 2.5.4.162 and I just couldn’t get it working. I’ll keep trying as I search around and update you readers about it. I mean the app works but it says that I can’t use the video because I have it turned off… and it does that every time I turn it on.

UPDATE 2: Upon playing with the device some more I noticed there is one extremely tiny dead pixel. It’s a shame that it has that but I don’t see any more. I think it’s bound to happen with some devices, but I’ll keep updating if there are any other issues. I’m still keeping a positive head on this. I mean you can barely notice it.

UPDATE 3: There’s a problem…. I took it out to try the Tango app someone requested, when I tried to download it I was told that an SD card was required to download it. I looked into Storage Settings and it’s not detecting the 8GB of storage built in. I tried a factory reset, still no go. I even tried to hook it up to my computer, it stays trying to detect it. I put in my 16GB Micro SD card, and it still doesn’t work. I may need to format my SD card which I’m willing to do, if that’s what it takes to get this working. But I shouldn’t have to. I’ll keep you up to date.

Update 3.5: I contacted Aluratek via email regarding the issue but have not heard from them. I didn’t expect to, but if I can’t contact them I’ll get ahold of J&R for a return if the problem can’t be fixed. The memory is flash memory so I doubt it’s this common to face these issues, yet possible to happen. I showed it to my mom and she was shocked, we were even able to stream on a movie website and the picture was really nice. The tablet is truly a performer. I’ll keep you informed on the process, especially customer service.

Update 4: Tech Support from Aluratek was fantastic and they helped me completely. Everything is back up and running better than ever. I have posted the solution steps in the Comments in case anyone else has any problems just like mine. I can now happily give this to my mom to take home and enjoy. If you have any further issues, the wonderful team at aluratek can be contacted at support@aluratek.com. I will come back and write a review after a month of use and let you all know how it has been doing. For now I’m going to try some video applications that work and update that part in the comments. Oh yeah, Norman from Tech Support is the one who helped me.

This is my first review and my first tablet and I am very suprised how well it works. I read many reviews on many other tablets that people had many problems with them. This one had what I wanted, 10.1 color screen, Android 4.0, wi-fi and a very good price. I charged it up and turned it on and it connected right up to my internet. This is a new product and it did not come with a manual so I called the company and they said it was so new they had not received them yet, but would be getting them. It was not too hard to figure out most things like, downloading apps, books free from the library, games, web, e-mail and even MSN. I have not tried movies, I have a tv for that. People that see it say the picture is great and I think it is better then my laptop.

When I got the tablet, and for a few days afterwards, it worked great. There’s more than enough space to download what I wanted, and it ran the way I wanted it to without freezing or lagging. But a few days later, my amazon appstore started getting frozen downloads, which stopped me from getting anything new. I wasn’t able to fix this with just clearing the cache or data, so customer support told me to uninstall the appstore and re-download it. But when I went to do that, it told me I needed an SD card to download the file. When I put an external SD card in, the tablet did not recognize that I had one there, and the internal SD card was unmounted for some reason. When I told it to mount the internal one, it would do so, but unmounted it automatically a second later. I found a fix for this online from someone who had had the same problem and had contacted Aluratek customer support. It involved doing a factory reset. After that it worked perfectly again, for another two weeks or so. Now, the appstore has messed up again, and as soon as I uninstalled it, the problem with the SD card started again, and some of my apps are uninstalling themselves from the device for no reason. I do not want to do another factory reset, as I have a lot more things to lose by now, so I’m currently looking for another way to resolve the issue. I’m not sure if it is a problem with the device, or if the amazon appstore is just corrupting something. Other than that, I think it is a great tablet. It can handle game apps easily, the internet works well, and it has enough internal memory to store a good amount of things. It seems that this isn’t a common problem from other reviews I’ve seen, so I would recommend this product.