I bought one these from Walmart. I expected a cheap tablet that cuts corners everywhere, and it does. However, it still offers a fairly good experience. You can have a fairly large screen and you can throw just about anything from the Play Store at it, and it all simply works, mostly flawlessly. So anyone wanting cheap, with extras like a physical keyboard and touchpad for more of a laptop experience, this RCA fits that bill.
I've done some performance testing, using various benchmark apps. Antutu is a overlord of benchmark apps it seems, but it doesn't show a very high performance for today's standards. 22k something. There is a competitor, the Nextbook Ares, which has the same size screen, and also has a keyboard (which is a little different, and its "backlit" feature is just bogus because the keys aren't translucent). But uses an Intel chip, and looking at the details of the various benchmarks, for pure CPU performance, it's about double that of the RCA. That's quite a bit.
However, though, there are multiple cores, so software can be made to use that, making it unlikely that the RCA is too slow for anything, really. The desktop experience might seem sluggish at first, but you can replace the launcher with something like Smart Launcher 3, which is more responsive and handier in my opinion.
But then comes the GPU performance. The RCA has a Mali 450, which might seem antiquated, but when you look at the details of various benchmarks, it actually performs better than the Nextbook! What I then did, is I looked up the various Nextbook benchmarks on Youtube, which there happen to be quite a few of them, and then I ran those videos side by side at the same time I ran the same benchmarks on my RCA. And what I hoped for turned out to be correct: the RCA was equal or faster for almost anything that involved 3D animation. So that put my angst for having a "slow" tablet to rest. The GPU is not bad. THe CPU is probably picking its nose most of the time, because it just hands off instructions to the GPU for most of the visual gruntwork anyway!
The only problem is the digitizer. It's very inaccurate. When you enable the dev-mode "show pointer location" feature that comes with Android in the settings menu under the dev options, it show a trailing line where you drag your finger around on the screen. You can also use a drawing app to let you test it. When I draw diagonally, the line comes out all squiggly. When I got the tablet, I noticed right away when in the browser for instance, when I scroll the content up and down slowly, that the window scrolls uneven, jerky. At first I though the tablet had a hard time catching up, but it turned out the digitizer's inaccuracy. If instead of using my finger I use the largest area my thumb will touch the screen, it becomes better. Aside from that, the resolution of the digitizer is too low as well, skipping every 2 or 3 pixels or so. But the vertical inaccuracy makes it suck too much.
So I was wondering if others noticed it too.
I tried dong the "calibration.ini" thing, which didn't do anything. I tried looking for calibration apps, but it seems all fake and none of it does anything. There are no calibration features in the settings. I've tried factory resetting it. I can't find custom roms for it.
I know this is a cheap feeling tablet, but for the money I kind of like it, except that the digitizer is spoiling it. It feels bigger than my A500. I can live with the low resolution screen. Various 3D game apps run very well. Love the touchpad. Keyboard is a little small and the qwerty row is shifted to the left a bit, but my fingers aren't that big, and I can actually live with it. Luckily the keyboard is not weird, with the backslash sitting in the correct spot. Cursor keys are good. There are no function keys, which might become a problem.
Now, if it weren't for that darn sloppy digitizer problem, I'd keep it. I have 1 more week before I must return it. I highly doubt I'll see any responses. These class of tablets are a complete mystery to me. In order for this to be profitable, they must be selling tons and tons of them. Yet, there is very little talk about it online. I don't get it.
I've done some performance testing, using various benchmark apps. Antutu is a overlord of benchmark apps it seems, but it doesn't show a very high performance for today's standards. 22k something. There is a competitor, the Nextbook Ares, which has the same size screen, and also has a keyboard (which is a little different, and its "backlit" feature is just bogus because the keys aren't translucent). But uses an Intel chip, and looking at the details of the various benchmarks, for pure CPU performance, it's about double that of the RCA. That's quite a bit.
However, though, there are multiple cores, so software can be made to use that, making it unlikely that the RCA is too slow for anything, really. The desktop experience might seem sluggish at first, but you can replace the launcher with something like Smart Launcher 3, which is more responsive and handier in my opinion.
But then comes the GPU performance. The RCA has a Mali 450, which might seem antiquated, but when you look at the details of various benchmarks, it actually performs better than the Nextbook! What I then did, is I looked up the various Nextbook benchmarks on Youtube, which there happen to be quite a few of them, and then I ran those videos side by side at the same time I ran the same benchmarks on my RCA. And what I hoped for turned out to be correct: the RCA was equal or faster for almost anything that involved 3D animation. So that put my angst for having a "slow" tablet to rest. The GPU is not bad. THe CPU is probably picking its nose most of the time, because it just hands off instructions to the GPU for most of the visual gruntwork anyway!
The only problem is the digitizer. It's very inaccurate. When you enable the dev-mode "show pointer location" feature that comes with Android in the settings menu under the dev options, it show a trailing line where you drag your finger around on the screen. You can also use a drawing app to let you test it. When I draw diagonally, the line comes out all squiggly. When I got the tablet, I noticed right away when in the browser for instance, when I scroll the content up and down slowly, that the window scrolls uneven, jerky. At first I though the tablet had a hard time catching up, but it turned out the digitizer's inaccuracy. If instead of using my finger I use the largest area my thumb will touch the screen, it becomes better. Aside from that, the resolution of the digitizer is too low as well, skipping every 2 or 3 pixels or so. But the vertical inaccuracy makes it suck too much.
So I was wondering if others noticed it too.
I tried dong the "calibration.ini" thing, which didn't do anything. I tried looking for calibration apps, but it seems all fake and none of it does anything. There are no calibration features in the settings. I've tried factory resetting it. I can't find custom roms for it.
I know this is a cheap feeling tablet, but for the money I kind of like it, except that the digitizer is spoiling it. It feels bigger than my A500. I can live with the low resolution screen. Various 3D game apps run very well. Love the touchpad. Keyboard is a little small and the qwerty row is shifted to the left a bit, but my fingers aren't that big, and I can actually live with it. Luckily the keyboard is not weird, with the backslash sitting in the correct spot. Cursor keys are good. There are no function keys, which might become a problem.
Now, if it weren't for that darn sloppy digitizer problem, I'd keep it. I have 1 more week before I must return it. I highly doubt I'll see any responses. These class of tablets are a complete mystery to me. In order for this to be profitable, they must be selling tons and tons of them. Yet, there is very little talk about it online. I don't get it.
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