My first Atom X5 Z8300 Cherry Trail tablet arrived, if you didn’t catch the Youtube unboxing and Windows first look video in the TechTablets channel here it is below. It’s the first 8-inch tablet to ship out of China with the X5 Z8300 so I was keen to test the performance of the lower end Atom X5 Z8300 against the X5 Z8500.
So far my frist impressions aren’t good:
- No charger included (Not a biggie as I have plenty, but still)
- Battery calibration is way off, battery stats report 59% wear already? And seems to report only half the battery
- Screen while 1280 x 800 isn’t super sharp, but normally still okay for an 8-inch tablet but this one lacks brightness (It’s 100% looks like 50% brightness compared to others)
- Single mono speaker is very poor, reminds me of the Chuwi Vi8
- 3.5mm audio jack lacks volume and causes distortion past 60% volume.
- X5 Z8300 performance is much less than the X5 Z8500 reviewed in the X98 Pro. Around 15k in Icestorm 1.2 Vs 25k on the Teclast X98 Pro. I didn’t expect this much of a gap.
- 19GB free in Windows 10 home, 32bit install was used
- Some stutters in Windows, minor lag here and there
- Randomly powered off on me twice
- Larger than normal gap between the digitizer and IPS panel below (My guess is almost 2mm)
- A test of 3DMark showed it got to 85 degrees, but didn’t trigger throttling according to HWinfo
Now the positives:
- Build quality is okay, similar to the Chuwi Vi8 (first model)
- Windows is activated…
- According to my USB meter the battery capacity it works out to be around 4200mah
- Ummm not much else… oh dear.
I’ll have some benchmarks and gaming tests soon. But first I’m fully draining the battery and charging it now overnight in an attempt to correct this issue and hopefully recalibrate it. This is no doubt the last Onda tablet I will buy. No way in hell I’m going to buy the Onda v919 Air CH to review, their quality overall has to be one of the worst out there. The V116w was a build quality nightmare and the V919 Core M 3G another disaster with countless issues.
My hopes are pinned on the Tecalst X80 Plus/Pro and Chuwi Hi8 Pro. Check back tomorrow for some benchmarks on the X5 Z8300, they might be slower than other X5 Z8300 tablets I imagine due to lack of optimization, drivers and because it’s and Onda.
I got this tablet from Tinydeal here.
Jamie Brahm
Any Idea when the Teclast or Chuwi eight inch cherry trails are actually being released?
Chris G
11 of November apparenty.
Ragnar Ironblood
From the article here http://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-core-m-broadwell-benchmarks,27656.html I have concluded that Baytrails were the only Intel SoCs that somewhat didn’t need additional cooling.
Joe
I just got this tablet on Tues from a seller on Taobao. Mine came with a 2A usb wall charger and otg cable separately.
So I’ve had a few days to play with it and here are my thoughts.
Build Quality – It is nice and solid. I don’t detect any defects. The buttons work as expected.
Design/Choice of Components – What you regarded as quality, I’m more inclined to point it out as design decisions to reduce costs. It’s supposed to be a low cost tablet afterall. However, I think the design could use some work. It is very thick and the large air gap in the screen is a huge turnoff. The brightness is enough for indoors. Have not tried using it outdoors yet. The colors and depth seem washed out. Maybe this is a brightness issue. But pictures and video feel lifeless. The speaker definitely sucks and is hard to hear clearly with the volume turned up. With headphones I thought it was ok and I did have it over 60 volume.
System/Speed – So far I have used it for internet browsing and watching movies and it is adequate. No slowdowns detected. I can’t get HWinfo to work. it only shows the summary page. Can’t display sensors. Using the latest stable build, not beta
Battery – Using Battery Bar and it says 59% battery wear. Full capacity is about 4178 mah. Estimated usage time for light web browsing is about 4hrs on 50% brightness. I have not tried to do a full test of battery life on various activities.
So far I like it for what I intend to do with it. Watching movies, and internet browsing when I am overseas in China. Thickness and the air gap is the only thing that annoys me. Everything else I could live with.
Jamie Brahm
It doesn’t sound great to me. For one, for video watching, the speaker volume is kind of key.
And the lower cherry trails, are only better in terms of 3d graphics or RAM capacity versus the bay trails . So if your not gaming (which with low volume, and low brightness you may not), the the chuwi hi8 which costs the same, and has better resolution, brightness and speaker volume would seem a better choice.
Actually the speaker volume might be forgiveable in gaming, but the brightness less so.
Hotaru Tachibana
then thats too bad. Most china tablet has soft speaker sound!
Jamie Brahm
Some are loud enough, some are inaudible with speech etc. Wide variation. But if you can’t hear what people are saying, not so good for movies.
Jamie Brahm
Here’s another thought – the v919 air CH – should be based on the design of their recent core -m. And if it is, that actually might by alright, yeah? I mean its 4gb, cherry trail, 64gb storage – if the screen and speaker are okay, that could be a decent onda device?
Jamie Brahm
The screen brightness in the video, looks ..okay, on a typical direct viewing angle, but seems to become terrible at lazier or wider viewing angles. Not bright, but visible, at least indoors. Would you say thats about right? Or does the screen brightness really ruin any experience?
And is the speaker volume decent, even if the quality is poor?
According to benchmarks the only difference between the lower cherry trail, and the former baytrail is not CPU benchmarks but the GPU. I think there maybe up to a 30% difference in graphics.
BUUUT, if in this model it runs too hot, that really is a concern.
As for 32bit windows, its smaller. On a 32gb eMMC, that’s quite helpful. You could also likely re-format the system with new windows 10, and save even more space by having a smaller recovery (they often seem to be large for some reason)
Some of these things you would expect and anticipate with a new chipset tablet that retails at the price of models released more than a year ago. I guess it just depends on whether those are experience ruining downsides, or just downsides? It would be great to get an opinion on that – because some people do want cheaper gear. Tablets are replaced lots too, so probably better not to get them diamond encrusted unless you have lots of spare cash. Then again, I anticipate the teclast and chuwi models will also be cheap. Shame they seem to be awhile off.
And shame onda has gone down hill. A while back, they were one of the better brands, at least with some models. Still worth keeping your eye on the cheaper models in general I think. If there does happen to be one without game ending downsides, thats sort of a gem, to many.
Chris G
It’s okay for indoor use, but I have seen much brighter screens. The viewing angles aren’t good, it might be due to that larger air gap in the screen. More reflections perhaps? With intel’s gfx power saving disabled the brightness increases a little.
It’s definitely faster on the GPU than the bay trail. But it does get to 85 degrees, whereas the Bay Trails normally stay under 70 degrees. Even so the Cherry Trail is still 30%+ faster with throttling.
The speaker volume is poor and the quality of teh output jsut as bad. Driving my inear headhpones it distorts around 60% volume. No other tablet does this. Ona v919 Air 3G was an okay tablet, but ever Onda I have seen since have many issues and flaws.
I’ll get teh Chuwi Hi8 Pro, Teclast X80 Pro or Plus and one of these should be good I think.
Jamie Brahm
Wow, okay the combination of poor speaker volume, and lower screen brightness is kind of a killer there. One without the other and the tablet may still have uses – but both, in a tablet, which the chipset for is primarily a graphical advantage – kinda pointless, in fact the chuwi vi8 ultimate or hi8 may be a better choice until we get more cherries – I guess we have to wait for a better 8 inch cherry trail (or m-core). Do you know how long it will be before any of those are released?
Yeah, the 919 was okay. And I think there was one or two before then that were okay. But recently, oh boy! (and over the same time, teclast, cube and chuwi have all upped their game significantly)
Thank you muchly for your reviews and opinion btw – having these quick, and objective evaluations sorts the wheat from the chaff – there are great chinese tablets, but knowing which models..
Ragnar Ironblood
Hey Chris make a comparison review between this one and decent Vi8U.
Chris G
Sold my Vi8U, but I will compare it to the X5 Z8500. I do in this video compare the benchmarks of the two chips: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ad5mzlbvl0Y
Laura
oh also, i expected a big drop in performance from z8500, it’s quite logical, for 3 reasons:
400 mhz less on the cpu
100 mhz less on the gpu (100 mhz is A LOT for a gpu)
8″ means smaller mainboard which means less dissipation power which means more thermal constraints
Chris G
I didn’t study the clock speeds enough, but your right, 100Mhz is a big step down for the GPU. Well it still performs better than the GPU on the Z3735F. CPU scores as expected about the same.
Laura
don’t be surprised that 2gb tablets ship with 32 bit windows, it only makes sense as 64 bit OS and applications require more ram and would be even more limited
Chris G
That’s true.
Rob
Typical onda problems again, who are buying the piles of garbage they produce? They tend to be a little cheaper than other brands for a reason, I don’t blame you for not buying anymore of their products, in fact I wouldn’t review them if they sent them for free!
Chris G
Not sure who buys them, fools like me haha. But only because it was the first X5 Z8300 release. They have just proven to me yet again, they make the worst tablets out there.
Kyriakos
If you hadn’t reviewed this tablet I am sure a lot of us here would buy it not knowing 🙂
Thanks for the sacrifice!
Chris G
The reason the sites here 🙂 Seperating the good from the bad.
Peter Ong
Tiny Deal? I didn’t have a good experience with this eTailer. I’d bought a few things from them, small accessories are still ok but not those > 100USD. I’ve even asked for refund from Paypal from deal with them. I suspect you got an engineering / demo sample (just like my previous experience).
By the way, I haven’t come across any Chinese tablet maker that don’t bundle a charger. Chargers’re dirt cheap in China. Reputation void for not providing even a cheap necessary item is like commit suicide in their market.
Rob
I tried buying a phone off them once, never again. They didn’t honour the price saying it was a typo and then refused to refund me! Had to open a PayPal dispute in the end.
Albert Lyubarsky
Off topic.
“Build quality is okay, similar to the Chuwi Vi8 (first model)”.
What do you mean by that? Latest models have worse quality? Can you elaborate, plz.
Chris G
The build of the first Vi8 model is a little worse, the new Vi8 ultimate and hi8 pro have a metal trim and much better speaker.
SEN
ONDA working really hard to spoil the name of intel. 😛