During several days we have tested the MID1045 tablet in different activities like web browsing, gaming, viewing documents and watching Flash clips. For navigating the Internet, we have installed multiple browsers like Mozilla Firefox, Dolphin, Opera; the tablet loads the pages with average speed and scrolling through them is fine unless we browse content-heavy websites.
When watching Flash video clips inside the browser, the content was a little sluggish while inside a window, but when we have maximized the video to full screen, the playback was fluent.
To test the gaming capabilities further, we have installed games like Angry Birds, Vector, which are in 2D format and ran flawlessly. Next, we wanted to see how 3D games run so we installed Death Rally which ran perfectly fine which surprised us considering the high quality graphics (thanks to the Mali400 GPU). We have installed then GTA III, but after the initial cutscenes, the game was pretty sluggish and we believe that is because of the CPU speed limitation.
Viewing documents is not an issue for this tablet with the preinstalled software or other applications, thanks to the large diagonal screen. Speaking of the screen, we really liked the viewing angles, even if it is a TN-based display; the resolution isn’t very high (1280x800) so not a lot of resources will be used when running 3D applications.
The tablet feels solid thanks to the aluminum back and having stereo speakers is a plus. The audio jack can be used to plug in the included stereo headphones or connect other amplified audio devices. Both frontal and back cameras are of low quality and we would recommend them only for occasional use.
Most people will be surprised that the well-known Google Play Store was not included with this tablet; COBY wants us to use GetJar for installing the applications or the file manager for browsing the APKs that we have just downloaded off the Internet. There are already workarounds available in order to root the tablet and for forcing installation of Play Store; with it installed, we will have access to much more applications and rooting will allow us to have more control over the tablet with the installation of utilities like Greenify for conserving battery life.
Talking about the battery, it can last for more than a full day during normal use; if we have a lot of applications eating resources in the background, we will be surprised of the loss of battery power even with the screen off, during standby. We have charged the battery by connecting the tablet to our computer, but also to the supplied power adapter; the tablet seems to charge the fastest while off, with its own power supply plugged in.
These being said, we were quite pleased with the tablet performances, considering that this is a mainstream tablet with a single core Allwinner processor. On May 2013, COBY will launch a dual-core based tablet available with the same screen dimensions.
The Kyros MID1045 is currently available online for about 200 Euros; at this price the MID1045 has quite a competition; we feel that if the price will fall even more, this product will become quite interesting.
COBY Kyros Internet 10 Touchscreen Tablet (MID1045) is Recommended For:
We would like to thank again to COBY Electronics GmbH and Royal Computers for making this review possible!