Check in: How do you like your X98 Plus? What do you like to do with it?

[Alexandra]

(I have the original Windows model.)

My answer to this topic is kind of theoretical so far, because I’m still slowly configuring Win10 to my liking (lots of real life going on lately). Buuuut that said I have been pleasantly surprised by this little tablet.

The form factor is pleasing, light enough and easy to handle. It runs Windows just about as well as it needs to. It boots up quickly and battery life is good. After turning off eye candy and such most screens scroll smoothly (a big deal for me) and touch is decently responsive. The screen is pleasant and headphones work well (the speaker, not so much). Only having one micro-USB sucks, and having to choose between charging and accessories sucks, but they aren’t dealbreakers. The slow storage (Samsung emmc and sdcard in my case) is a bummer.

This SHARKK mouse has proven excellent so far. Good feel, reliable inputs (except for wheelscroll not always activating in sync with its audible “clicks”), long battery, 2 side buttons, cheap. Can’t lose.

So far I’ve found it to be an excellent comics reader due to the good screen and 4:3 aspect ratio. Current reader app is Cover, not sure I’ll stick with it. Tablet’s also great for PDF reading. It’s a good video player — the Plex and Netflix apps are solid. I’m slowly exploring the Win10 app ecosystem to find out what’s worth bothering with. Nextgen Reader is a solid RSS app so far, and I seem to prefer Baconit to Readit as a Reddit client. Being new to Win10, I’m unsure where all these self-contained Win10 apps store their data, which is of concern to me since I tend to wipe/reimage my Windows partition fairly often. Hopefully it’s somewhere easy to back up from.

I hear Win10 is missing some touch-friendly features from Win8.1, and it does seem a bit spartan in that regard (why aren’t there gestures for things like showing the start menu or taskbar?!). TouchMe Gesture Studio goes some way toward addressing this. Right now I have it set so touching with two fingers and then tapping to the left (index finger) brings up start, or doing the same and tapping to the right brings up taskbar. Swiping down with four shows battery status. Various two-finger left/right/up/down swipes manipulate browser tabs. WIP, but it already feels much more functional.

Installed Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2016. All work well. Haven’t broached Adobe products yet, which will likely work less well.

Yesterday the tablet came in handy displaying recipes in the kitchen. This old tablet stand I had works great.

Gaming may be a lost cause. The two staples I’ve sampled so far, GZDoom and Unreal Tournament ’99, both ran poorly. (Granted, both were heavily modded coming from my desktop machine.) But I’m not sure this little mobile CPU/GPU can keep a solid 60 fps in anything due to power saving features and such. More experimentation needed. I’m hoping it’ll at least be good for ancient DOSBox stuff.

Discovered WIDI was a thing yesterday. It was easy to get it casting to my 2014 1080p Sony TV but the resolution mismatch made the TV image squashed. Playing a video didn’t work very well either, so I can’t think of much use for the WIDI. Nice option to have though.

All told, while I’m not finding my X98 Plus indispensable yet, it’s almost always functional for the stuff I’m throwing at it, it would be great to work from while traveling, and after I’m all settled in I suspect I’ll keep finding more and more fun little uses for it. It’s been a very good first foray into Windows tablets.

[Randolph]

Thanks for posting.  I did a clean install of Windows Pro.  My goal with this tablet was a replacement for an 8inch Winbook tablet which I used for travel and in that form factor, the keyboard was just a bit too small for touch typing.

I haven’t yet figured out how to get the touchscreen to recover from sleep.

I wish the magnet on the keyboard was stronger; it slips too much.  I like to use these devices on my lap and the whole thing slips down too frequently.  On an airplane tray, it is fine.  Other than that, I like the keyboard very much — I can type quite quickly on it.

Screen is great and it is snappier than I expected given the reviews.  Overall this is a great cheap travel tablet with keyboard.

[matt]

Hi guys, I have had my x98 plus for about 10 days now and have a few questions. Overall Im fairly impressed by it although it does have some quirks such as it never keeps the correct time when switching between OS. It seems to keep time if i work in Win10, shut down and restart in win10 but if i switch to android or vice versa it looses correct time…

I got an american charging plug (I think) in the package, did everyone get a charging plug as the contents list on GB website says ‘Tablet, OTG and USB Cable’. This plug has now stopped working after only 3 charges! Tablet charges via PC USB but not thru the plug. Wow dead after 3 uses!

Also, I want to hook the Teclast bluetooth keyboard to the x98 via OTG cable, do I have to use a powered USB hub to make this work?

Havnt received the 32GB Samsung SD cards yet so not sure if they work yet. Everything else seems to be ok at this early stage…

cheers

[Alexandra]

Randolph: Does the power button not wake it? Seems to here.

Which magnetic keyboard are you using? I guess there’s an official one? I went third-party and it also attaches with magnets, and yeah, not strongly enough. Combined with the mediocre trackpad it wasn’t worth $64+.

By the way, button5 (side button) on the SHARKK mouse I mentioned in the OP broke the other day after only light use. Luckily SHARKK has a good customer service rep so I imagine they’ll replace it.

Matt: Attached is a pic of the charger I got. I would think it’s safe to replace it with any other microusb charger with the same specifications.

I doubt most keyboards require a powered hub. Mine doesn’t.

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[Gal]

Randolph, to fix the touch screen not working after sleep, you need to replace one file in INF folder under Windows. I can’t remember exactly what is the name of the file but therebis a thread here with the solution.  Look for it. If you can’t find it , let me know and I’ll upload the file for you.

[Randolph]

Thanks, Gal.  I found that elsewhere on the forum, it is touchscreen.gt and when placed in INF, the problem vanishes.  I am traveling with the X98+ and Teclast keyboard now, indeed typing on it.  I’m very happy with it.  This seems to be the minimal size at which I can type without substantial errors, and the battery life and screen are fine.  I travel frequently and keep a laptop ready to go — all I have to do is sync email and one drive prior to my trip — and this is a fine device for that purpose.  I would like them to solve the driver issue on the sd card reader though the 32GB one works fine and I haven’t filled it.

The only thing I think of as a bug is that the magnet that positions the keyboard is too weak.  This is not a problem on a desk or other hard surface, but on a lap, it tends to slide out a bit and then suddenly pop off.  I’m thinking of a hackey solution to this problem or adapting a different case to this keyboard as I like the keyboard and the size is perfect.  I’ll try beefing up the magnet and report back.

BTW, two points on that.  I use the Microsoft Mobile Mouse 3600, along with the Teclast keyboard.  Both have the excellent property that they connect immediately and reliably to the X98+.  The bluetooth connections work much better than other tablets I have used.  I’ve had cases where I had to recreate the connection to join the keyboard, but no problems here.  Second, the battery life on the keyboard is unusually short.  Not so short as to be a problem, e.g. a computer intensive, week-long trip doesn’t use up a full charge — but I now charge the keyboard after every trip, where I used to charge the keyboard (an HP model for an 8 inch tablet) every second month or so.

So I’d say: if your primary use is Office, including big excel spreadsheets, email, browsing and the like and you put a great priority on portability, the X98+ is a very good candidate.  It is as small as touch typing can get with a nice feeling keyboard, whole package under $250 with mouse and SD card.

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