Viewsonic launches slimline ViewPad 10e tablet

The Gadget Show  Wednesday 12 October 2011

Thanks to the easy availability of the Android OS and an almost desperate desire to compete with the Apple iPad, there is now no shortage of Android tablets. From high end tablets like the Motorola Xoom to budget offerings like the UK’s own Handypad there is a tablet for every taste, although few seem capable of taking on Apple’s iPad 2.

Viewsonic’s new ViewPad 10e may be aimed at the budget market, but it’s impressive design and decent specs means it might be a bit of a dark horse in the tablet race.

Read our Apple iPad 2 review

Like the iPad 2, the ViewPad 10e has a 9.7 inch screen and the case is only about a millimetre thicker than Apple’s tablet. The ViewPad has a 1GHz Cortex A8 processor and 4GB of storage, upgradeable to 32GB via microSD expansion card.

The ViewPad has very fast DDR3 memory, which should aid processing speed, and the display uses In-Plane Switching (IPS) to give amazing colour reproduction and much wider viewing angles that standard LCD displays. If the IPS display isn’t cutting it, however, you can output to a larger screen at up to 720p resolution using a mini HDMI connector.

The tablet runs Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) which is the version optimised for mobile phones, rather than Honeycomb’s more tablet-friendly version. On top of the standard Android 2.3 build, Viewsonic runs its own ViewScene 3D user interface, which gives up to 16 virtual desktops that can be rotated through like sides on a virtual 3D cylinder. The desktop screens support 3D widgets and each can display a different time zone, if that is how you need to organise yourself.

UK consumers will be able to find the ViewPad 10e from the beginning of November, price to be confirmed – although the indications are that it will be some way cheaper than the iPad.

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