Pipo P9 Testing/Review

[belier]

Hi Riley.

I'm the owner of Pipo M9 Pro 3g. I like it a lot. The only negative point is battery duration.
Extremely short when 3g activated.
I was considering buying a Pipo P9.
Is it worth the upgrade?
Will be the difference noticeable?

Thanks in advance!

[dandy101]

Looking for a decent tablet with 3G

Hello!

My name is Alex, I'm new to the freaktab forum.
I was considering a budget Chinese tablet with 3G for about 250 EUR.
The Pipo P9 and Cube Talk 9X got my attention as I was surfing the web for specs and reviews.
Both seem very compelling - the P9 with its 10.1 screen and 16:9 aspect ratio and the Talk 9X with overall comparable performance, build quality and especially 3G!
I've seen that some resellers offer a 3G version of the Pipo P9. Is it fake or real? Couldn't find any information about experiences using 3G connection on the P9.
Hope I can get some answers here. Also if you guys know of any other good performing 3G slates, let me know!

Cheers!
Alex.

[giouncino]

I can only say that 3G performance of cube talk 9x are outstanding (it is rated 21Mbit/s in download), pipo tablets are ALL rated at 7Mbit/s, actual speed of Pipo is generally 2-3Mbit/s.
In terms of pure 3G performance cube is definitely better.

RK3288 of Pipo P9 is a little bit faster than MT8392 of the cube though.
I think you need to know exaclty how you will use your tablet:

games - movies: PIPO P9 (for the 16:9 aspect ratio)

browsing - reading - 3G: Cube talk 9x that has 4:3 display ratio

[ThomasDM]

Reading all this is making it really hard to make a decision. Just like dandy101 I'm having a hard time deciding whether to buy the Pipo P9 or the Cube Talk 9X. Gaming isn't important, most of the time the tablet will be used for the web and reading but I'd also like to watch a TV show from time to time. Which one is most likely to last the longest and most likely to have the fewest problems?

By the way, does anyone have any experience with the Import Tax & VAT Insurance from Pandawill? For 5% they promise to cover any import tax & VAT, this seems like a pretty good deal considering I paid nearly 50EUR on import taxes on a 108EUR phone last year.

[giouncino]

I think that for your use is better the cube...

[rrileypm]

Giouncino, do you have stock in Cube now? Hahahaha!!!!!

[wolan82]

P1/4/9 5Ghz support and wifi range

I m just wondering if the new P range is supporting 5ghz WiFi as I have seen on boxes of P9 and P1 there is only 2.4ghz and when I had P4 (there is nothing on the box about wifi) for 2 weeks it also havent seen 5ghz at all but I though it might have been problem with rom. So can some of you check and confirm this. Also how about the range in regard to P4 from my own experience I was very surprised comparing to my old M8 Pro which almost doesn't work in my living room (so i was thinking of buying wifi repeater) and only thanks to 5ghz higher speed wifi is more or lees usable but P4 had full bars at the same spot and T9 which replaced P4 is also quite good but not as good as the P4 was but can use quicker 5ghz to compensate.

[dandy101]

Bay Trail

So I've decided to go with the Teclast x98 air 3G. The Intel Bay Trail Z3736F seems to do the job better than RK3288 or MT8392.

[giouncino]

RK3288 is faster than intel bayTrail and more compatible with application

[giouncino]

Giouncino, do you have stock in Cube now? Hahahaha!!!!!

Hey Randy! at least this time I answered analyzing specific needs of the user!

So I can say: Are you paid by PIPO ??? hahahah!

[dandy101]

Bay Trail

It seems that tablets with RK3288 don't have decent 3G connectivity and that matters for me the most. MT8392 has the 3G speed I'm looking for but seems to be slower than Intel's Z3736F. So at the moment I'm considering to order a bay trail device. Sometimes it's quite hard to decide when you don't know the specifics nor have the experience

[giouncino]

It seems that tablets with RK3288 don't have decent 3G connectivity and that matters for me the most. MT8392 has the 3G speed I'm looking for but seems to be slower than Intel's Z3736F. So at the moment I'm considering to order a bay trail device. Sometimes it's quite hard to decide when you don't know the specifics nor have the experience

I totally agree with your analysis! (just for your knowledge: mt8392 is not slow as you can image!).
In any case you're right, Intel bayTrail is a good SoC designed at 22nm! (rk3288 and MT8392 are at 28nm).

[Triophile]

Interesting thread.

I've been chewing over which one of these tablets to buy (as an upgrade from a Nook HD+ with custom ROM), and am gravitating towards the P9 at the moment, though it's disappointing to hear that the 3G's not great. From ads on ****, I see it being claimed that the P9 multitasks well (ie, listening to a YouTube tune while word processing). My Nook will only single-task, and something which will multi-task would make the tablet a laptop replacement for me. Be nice to be able to do some tablet gaming too.

Cheers, Jon.

[rrileypm]

I now have several 3288 devices and a couple of MTK8392's.

While the 3288s seem to provide better Antutu scores...side by side...I really don't see much difference in performance from screen to screen. My P1/P9's are the same as my iFive Mini 3GS with regard to running apps and playing games. Wifi appears to be the same on both.

I can't tell you about 3G performance because I haven't tested them. My only 3G version is the MTK and I don't have a SIM that will fit it.

Everyone knows I'm a Pipo fan and cut my teeth on Rockchip development...so I'm more comfortable with the RK3288's. I prefer the way Rockchip lays out their firmware to MTK's structure.

I've learned quite a bit about MTK development, too and have made several MTK ROM's...but the MTK devices are very picky about what you can do with them. My biggest complaint is read/write permissions on the internal/external SD's. I had to solve those problems by switching to CWM Superuser because SuperSU would not open those permissions (Titanium wouldn't work until I changed the Superuser app). Another problem is with the way IMEI numbers and NVRAM information is saved...you have to back both up before you flash...or you will loose the ability to use the device as a phone. Rockchip doesn't seem to have this problem.

So far I have not experienced the Intel or any other brand of tablet CPU...so I can't say whether they are better or worse than the two I've mentioned above.

All I can say is that my P1 and P9's rock...and I have a P4 on the way (thanks Geekbuying.com). The reason I ordered the P4 is that it seems there are more things that need fixed to make it's firmware stable...and I want one to test with. I think one of the reasons is that Pipo chose to use 4.4.4 instead of 4.4.2 on that particular model...and it takes a while to iron out glitches in a newer version of Android.

There's my two cents...anyway.

[Triophile]

Thanks for that info, Riley. I don't think there's a problem with a possible bias towards the Pipo gear - if it's generally easier to work with, then fair enough :-) Sounds as if my limited experience could very well lead to unwanted consequences with the MTK stuff too.

I did think about going the Baytrail way, but I've got as many other Windows machines as I need right now, and I need to try and boost my meagre Android knowledge instead really. I think the P9 is likely to be my next purchase, unless the latest nVidia SOCs start proliferating in affordable, 10-inch tablets. That said, I don't need tons of power, just enough to get the job done smoothly and efficiently in a tablet for productivity use.

Cheers, Jon.