Teclast’s new small 7.9″ tablet has a familiar screen, a decent build, enough power and a great price. The M89 has a 2048 x 1536 display with 326 PPI, it’s bright and sharp with a 4:3 aspect ratio. Powering the tablet is a six-core MediaTek MTK8176 with PowerVR GX6250 GPU. This chipset is better in my experience than the Helio X20 10 core CPU’s. The ROM is stock Android 7.0 so dated but with the 6 core chip runs fluid and gaming performance is decent that demanding games like PUBG run smoothly on lower settings.
This tablet also has GPS and micro HDMI out which most tablets skip. Below is the full video review and further down the rating with pros and cons listed.
Teclast M89 review video index: 01:28 – Unboxing 02:23 – Display 03:47 – ROM 06:31 – eBooks & PDFs 07:01 – Wifi 07:39 – eMMC 08:00 – Battery & charge times 08:49 – Audio 09:32 – Gaming (PUGB & Lineage II) 10:33 – Thermals 10:49 – Webcam 11:03 – Recap & final words
Overall for the price the M89 is currently selling for ($149) it’s a great tablet. Android version 7.0 might be dated but the tablet runs well, little bloatware and all the games tested were smooth and very playable. Just keep it on low settings. The retina screen is still great even in 2018 and it’s fully laminated with good colours and brightness. The build is a metal unibody with dual loudspeakers that lack volume, there is also some static over the 3.5mm headphone jack.
The 4800mAh battery is okay if you’re not doing anything demanding you’ll be able to squeeze out close to 7 hours of on-screen time with a low brightness level. But start gaming and use a high brightness you’ll see only 3-4 hours max.
I think Teclast have a winner here for the price and build quality. I hope the minor wifi disconnections can be patched and they release Android Oreo for this tablet. But somehow I think it will be stuck on Android 7.0 forever.
Ian
Got mine last week, and so far quite impressed. Excellent for HD video streaming (via 25Mbps satellite) and for action gaming. I’ve not yet experienced any of the reported WiFi dropouts.
Performance wise I’m finding it slightly better than my Lenovo Tab3 8 Plus which occasionally struggles with both streaming and complex games.
Strangely though it is less capable than the Lenovo running DJI’s G0 4 drone app, with video feed lagging >2sec. Mind you the app is a monster incorporating controls for 12 different drones each with their own characteristics and features.