Jexaa JexTab 812 HD review

Most tablets we see are either 7in or 10in models, but Jexaa’s JexTab 812 HD has an unusual 8in screen with a 1,024×768 resolution. Also, instead of the latest version of Android, Honeycomb 3.2, it runs Android 2.3, which is really a smartphone rather than tablet operating system. On some budget tablets this is a recipe for disaster: to make sure that incompatible apps aren’t installed, some manufacturers remove access to the Android Market. Jexaa has instead used a standard Android installation, and in our testing we didn’t find any apps that wouldn’t work correctly.

The problem with installing Android 2.3 on a tablet is that the operating system doesn’t support large resolutions. We’re not sure how Jexaa has gotten around this, but we found most common apps – such as Amazon’s Kindle app, NewsRob (our favourite newsreader) and Google Maps – had no problems stretching to fit the screen’s larger resolution. Even games such as Angry Birds worked fine. What you’ll miss out on is Android 3’s dual-pane views for apps such as email, where your inbox and the currently selected message are displayed side-by-side.

For a budget tablet, the JexTab feels well made, with an aluminium frame and a glossy plastic casing. It has a fairly plain design, but the aluminium helps to protect the ports which are all on the left side. There’s a standard 3.5mm headphone jack, a mini-USB data port, a mini-HDMI output and a Type A USB host port, as well as a microSDHC card slot.

The host port supports 3G dongles, so you can get online away from Wi-Fi networks. In our tests, however, we couldn’t get it to work with the latest Huawei E367 HSPA+ dongle or its predecessor, the E1750 (called the Premium and Standard dongles from the Three network). An older E160G did work, however, and we managed to get it working using some information gleaned from the web. Unfortunately, there’s no information on Jexaa’s website on supported dongles or the settings required to get them working, so we hope this will be rectified soon.

Of course, the USB host port also means you can insert flash drives and external hard disks to access their files. The JexTab supports both FAT32 and NTFS partitions, so most PC-formatted disks will work. Jexaa has installed a file manager app so you can even copy files from a flash drive to a microSD card or to the JexTab’s internal memory.

Along the top edge there’s the power button and a rocker switch. This isn’t a volume rocker, as we expected, but instead acts as the Menu and Back buttons, which we found confusing. Volume controls are instead placed on the status bar along with Home, Back and Menu controls. The downside is that if you’re in a full-screen app – such as a game or a video player – you can’t change the volume unless the app itself has a control. Thankfully, the pre-installed video player has volume buttons on its control bar.

Performance from the tablet’s Rockchip 2918 processor isn’t great – it’s an older generation of chip from the Snapdragon and Tegra chipsets we’re used to reviewing, and it shows in the occasional interface lag. While web browsing, we noticed lag when pinching to zoom in, especially on Flash-heavy sites, and the SunSpider JavaScript test, which is a good barometer of web browsing performance, took over seven seconds to complete, which is slower than we’re used to seeing. However graphics performance is great – the JexTab will happily play 1080p video content without a hitch, and games are smooth too.

While some budget tablets are simply not worth having due to their lack of the Android Market, the JexTab is a different beast. The inclusion of a USB host port with mass storage and 3G dongle support (although we’d like to see more information about supported dongles on the website) and the ability to output 1080p via HDMI to a big screen, really make the JexTab punch above its weight, and compensate for the occasional bout of lag in the operating system.

The JexTab is a good-value tablet, but for just £70 more you could have the Acer Iconia Tab A100 which runs the latest, tablet-specific Android 3.2 operating system. With a range of sub-£300 Android 3.2 tablets from various manufacturers just around the corner, we’d recommend saving up some more to get a genuine tablet-specific OS.