DHL finally came through today, their customs dept stopped messing about with my X98 Plus and delivered it. Heres the unboxing and hands-on video. (I’ll have more in the next few days)
As you can see in the video, the build is the same as the X98 Air III. The new square edge metal unibody housing.
First impressions:
- eMMC is a Toshiba 064G70 and speeds are good.
- Performace is much like the Z3735F
- Feels slower than the X98 Pro (as expected 1.84 Ghz Vs 2.24 on the Pro)
- Battery life is back, should last as long as the X98 Air 3G, so 6-7 hours.
- Temps seem much better than the X5 Z8500, so far 61 degrees c max benchmarking. I think gaming should see this get close to 70 degrees (Perfectly fine) and it doesn’t look like it will throttle unlike the X98 Pro
- Geekbench 3 = 729 single and 2104 multi.
- Icestorm 1.2 = 11263.
- MicroSD slot supports HS cards. Read and writes over 60mb’s
So far so good. It’s not a power house of a tablet. I expected this with the lowest clocked Atom Cherry Trail X5 in it. Around 50% of Ram free in Windows on first boot. Price? $174 at Banggood with BG’s coupon Xmas06
David
Hey Chris, thanks for the review. Do you know what the refresh rate of the X98 plus is? I can’t seem to find that information anywhere, I notice in your comparison video it flickers while the X98 Pro does not.
kdog
Why the x98 plus if the x98 air 3g is faster and dual boot?
richie
it was written many times – it depends what you prefer – design, 3g, dualboot or more ram
X98 air 3g pros over X98 plus
– dual boot (at this time, maybe later will be X98plus dualboot too)
– little faster (but only older version with Z3736f, “new” version Z3735f is in same performance level)
– 3g
X98 plus pros over X98 air 3g
– 4GB ram
richie
but I’m too still thinking, which version to choose: X98AIR III (better price – with separate license W10pro) vs. X98PLUS (4GB ram) vs. X98PRO (better cpu overal performace + 4GB dual channel ram)
but I need only windows (office, web, rdp)
Chris G
Well I think for the 4GB of Ram and the main factors is Intel don’t make the Bay Trails anymore so stock is running out and no doubt Teclast will stop making the Air 3G when they do.
Mikaboshi
Teclast is planning to launch x9i pro with dual boot.
http://www.teclast.com/zt/X98Produalos/
kdog
Why the x98plus if the air 3g is raster and dual boot even if you do not nées the 3g?
jegarfor
what about updating these tablets to Windows 10 threshold 2? any problem? I hope it won’t lose drivers during the update….
does this one fit in this keyboard? http://www.dhgate.com/store/product/metal-aluminum-case-wireless-bluetooth-keyboard/174633497.html
Romain Bourdy
Hi Chris,
Can you tell of the RAM is single or dual channel on this device ?
Thanks !
Stefan
Single Channel, as you can see here: http://ark.intel.com/de/products/87383/Intel-Atom-x5-Z8300-Processor-2M-Cache-up-to-1_84-GHz
Jamie Brahm
Has anyone ever tried stripping the drives on a tablet (bit of an aside)?
If you had say 64gb internal storage eMMC, 64gb high speed microSD, 64GB high speed USB flash drive nub (or more if possible), you could create:
8gb system drive
16gb striped between two drives, faster than emmc
144GB stiped between three drives, fast as SSD, for programs and caching, media
You would need a full USB port in 3.0 or 3.1, and you’d need a script to change the drives to permenant drives as soon as windows loaded, and before the stripping kicked in.
Hard drive is the biggest bottle neck on PCs. I think that some of the difference between core m’s and baytrails/cherry trails is disk speed between eMMC and SSD. If you could create a three disk stripping array in windows, with all high speed disks, you could speed up the tablet.
Anyone tried this?
Ivan Joy
hey man, how’s the performance on this tablet compare with the air ii?
Chris G
Feels slower https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjM3lr6q5j8
Rabi
There is something wrong with benchmarks. z8300 ice storm should be a lot higher ( http://www.cnx-software.com/2015/08/23/intel-atom-z3735f-vs-atom-x5-z8300-benchmarks-comparison/ ). Either its drivers problems or gpu is seriously downclocked (whats why it’s not overheating?).
Stefan
They ran the Benchmarks in 1920x1080p, the X98 Plus has a resolution of 2048x1536p. So its no wonder that they get a much higher score
Rabi
3d mark renders benchmarks in its default render resolution and outputs scaled version of image to desktop, which shouldn’t affect performance.
Chris G
I thought the same, updated the drivers still 11k score. According to HWInfo the GPU reaches 500Mhz (Max clock) and it doesn’t over heat. But it feels as if they could have limited max turbo times on the SoC via the bios? Not sure. I did some more tests today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjM3lr6q5j8
George Tragoudis
Hi Chris, Is the USB port 3.0? Besides the 4GB RAM, there doesn’t seem to be much of advance from the Air 3G? That’s probably why the small price difference.
Chris G
MicroUSB 2.0. wish it was USB 3.0.
jamz
Ooh, just placed an order today for the Teclast Air 3G. Should I cancel it and order this one? Mostly concerned about battery life, but that extra 2gb of RAM is tempting
Chris G
At this point the Air 3G feels faster to me. 4GB isn’t helping it much unless you’re going to multitask on it and need that extra 2GB.
parachufla
How behave android emulators on the tablet?
Good enough to forget dual boot? (casual games, light applications…).
As these tablets have usually better performance on windows than android, it could be the case android on windows runs not worse than android native (at least before community improvements). Does it happen?
Edgeworth
I’m embarressed! That seems pretty well. I have a Air 3g what is really nice. Feels good and works not bad. But there are disturbing things. It only has 45 hz, not 50 oder 60 hz. And it has the 7% battery bug which isn’t fixable for me. But if there is a new one with the new processor without the bugs – I will buy it! I’m really really looking forward to your review Chris. As long as you don’t find big bad bugs I will definitely buy this one, I think.
Great to see a Cherry Trail Tablet under 200 Bucks with a decent Battery Life and without the heat problems – Maybe Teclast has fixed it because of your great work. Thank you Chris. 🙂
Neil
im thinking the 2048×1536 resolution is too much for a Z8300 to handle smoothly,you should try turning down the resolution a little to improve performance
Ευάγγελος Τριανταφυλλόπουλος
Chris, can you inform us if X98plus has same spare USB header on board like X98pro ?
Do you believe that i could attach a 4g usb for mobile internet at the same usb spare port inside the housing??
COASTER19
I would be very interested to know this as well!
richie
Chris, can you check if X98plus has same spare USB header on board like X98pro ?
Kyriakos
Thanks for the quick review Chris,
After watching your review, I decided to cancel my X98 Air 3G order from Gearbest (8 days order still processing) and buy X98 Plus instead from Banggood. Happy to hear its not overheating and the battery life is good!
kdog
Why do you prefer X98 plus instead of x98 Air 3G?
Kyriakos
primarily for the 4GB RAM which means better multitasking performance (more browser tabs). I dont need the 3g functionality (especially now it no longer supports GPS)
kdog
OK but Z3536 is faster than Z8300?
Do you have Dual Os?
Kyriakos
current batch of Air 3G uses Z3535F apparently
Kyriakos
http://www.banggood.com/Teclast-X98-Air-3G-Quad-Core-9_7-Inch-Dual-OS-IPS-Tablet-p-967230.html
“Attention: Teclast X98 Air 3G tablet adopts Intel Bay Trail-T Z3735 Quad Core 1.83 GHz CPU processor now, and not supports GPS!”
kdog
X98 Air 3G remains the best choice with Z3736, no heat,dual boot, best battery life and thiner?
Why should I choose X98 plus or power?
Can you comment?
Thanks
highwind
X98 Plus has
– “no heat” either (read above)
– “best battery life” aswell (again: read above!)
– double RAM
– (currently) cheaper pricetag
And the X98 Air 3G isnt thiner either… the case has a different shape with “rounded” edges (which you my like or not) but the overall thinkness is the same
But overall all those Tablets (besides the X98 Pro) are very similar, if you dont need a certain features (3G or Dual-Boot for example), just choose the cheapest
Kyriakos
the better battery life is in comparison to X98 Pro. it has the same battery life as X98 3G though.
kdog
You can find Air 3G with Z3536 (on gearbest or aliexpress) wich is better (faster) than Z8300
I do not need 3G but DUAL-BOOT
Kyriakos
the order I just cancelled was from Gearbest and it was the Z3735F.
better is debatable. Z8300 comes with 4GB RAM and Gen8 GPU which probably makes a more difference in everyday use rather than a few % difference in CPU.
richie
imho every seller has today only Z3535f version (and without gps), wich is little slower than oldeset model with Z3536F => Z8300 is in same performance level with Z3535F
Agogohome Agogohome
Chris… I assume you ordered this from Banggood? How did you manage to get them to send it in the original box? I have tried many times to request original packaging, but the staff either don’t understand, or act dumb. Everything they dispatch arrives in flimsy thin foam and a grey bin liner. Half my orders get damaged en-route 🙁
Chris G
@agogohome-agogohome1 50/50 chance to get the original packaging. Request it just after ordering, but today my Cube i8work Ultimate arrived and it’s in a white foam box. The box max it look like live organs for emergency transport or blood packs.
murdic
Heh, paused the vid and zoomed it to answer the question. 64-bit. BTW, the non-Android thing might be because Microsoft has been working on what they’ve called Project Astoria, which was supposed to provide an Android emulation environment to run apps within Win 10, like Bluestacks was intended to. That project’s gone quiet, with rumours that it’s been canned. That might mean that the tablet manufacturers will go back to dual bootery or abandon dual OS altogether.
Agogohome Agogohome
I doubt manufacturers will ever abandon dual boot… and why should they, if as you say, ‘Project Astoria’ has been canned?
murdic
They wouldn’t – unless windows licenses were conditional.
murdic
Another thing that occurs to me is that emulation shouldn’t take anywhere near the internal storage that a parallel Android OS installation takes up.
Pablo_2015
can you taste ps2 emulate?
Alexandra
Probably not. PS2 emulation is highly CPU dependent (and a good GPU helps too). Do these mobile CPUs really have that much power? I doubt it, though it’d be nice to be wrong!
Pablo_2015
You can see in this link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nhM2Y3pKUw whith the chip z3740, can be play
Alexandra
Cool! Thanks for the link.
MadMax
Good news so far Chris, mine is on the slow boat so I am looking forward to the new videos. So little info on this model up until now. Let the benchmarks begin!
murdic
Is it 64-bit Windows OS, Chris? There are some Windows 64-bit apps that I’d love to run on something iPad-ish.
Chris G
Yes it’s 64bit Windows 10.