When it comes to tablets, Apple’s iPads and devices running Google’s Android OS are most popular among potential buyers. In a bid to gain some marketshare, Microsoft and Intel have been working together to give the required push to tablets running on Windows 8.1 OS. Tablets running Windows have a lot of possibilities, serving as a good replacement to laptops. Today, we’re looking at iBall’s affordable Windows 8.1 tablet, called Windows Slide WQ32. Priced in the Rs. 16,000 range, is it a good value for money tablet? Let’s find out in our detailed review.
Design and Build
The iBall Windows Slide WQ32 is a well-built device. The back panel is made from tough plastic and has a glossy metallic-like finish to it. The front panel has an 8-inch HD screen covered with Gorilla Glass to offer protection from scratches and minor scuffs. The tablet is lightweight, easy to hold, operate and carry around. Overall, the build quality is quite sturdy.
All the physical controls such as the power / sleep and the volume rocker are placed on the top-right edge of the tablet. The tablet has a microSD and SIM card slot as well. These slots are covered with a sturdy plastic flap to stop dust from entering the tablet. On the top edge of the tablet, you have a 3.5mm audio jack, a microHDMI output port and a microUSB port.
Features
The iBall Slide WQ32 Windows tablet has an 8-inch HD IPS display that runs a resolution of 1280 x 800 pixels. The system is powered by Intel’s Atom Z3735D quad-core processor clocked at 1.33GHz, with turbo-boost up to 1.86GHz. The tablet also has 2GB of DDR3 RAM and 16GB of built-in storage. This can further be expanded up to 64GB using a microSD card. That’s not all; the tablet also supports USB OTG (on-the-go).
The tablet also comes equipped with a 5MP auto-focus camera and a 2MP front-facing camera for video calling. Other features such as 3G connectivity and Bluetooth 4.0 are also present. That’s not all; you also get a year’s subscription to MS Office 365 and 1TB of cloud storage space free for a year. The tablet is powered by a 14Wh Polymer non-removable battery, which iBall claims to offer talk time of up to 8 hours on 3G network.
Performance
Software
Software The iBall Windows Slide WQ32 comes with that latest Windows 8.1 OS preinstalled. This means the tablet can run everything that you can do on a PC running Windows. The tablet takes about 10 seconds to boot to the Metro UI with Live Tiles, which is pretty impressive.
iBall has pre-installed Microsoft Office 365 on the tablet, which is valid for a year. You also get 1TB of free storage space on One Drive for a year, thus letting you back up all your important data on the cloud.
Screen Quality and Touch
Despite being priced in the sub Rs. 15,000 range, iBall hasn’t compromised on the hardware. The 8-inch HD screen on the iBall Slide WQ32 tablet is pretty good. It is bright and offers good colour reproduction. Text and images on the screen look crisp. Viewing angles are also very good. The touch response is also quick and the sensitivity is pretty good. All this adds to a smooth Windows 8.1 experience.
Windows 8.1 Touch Gestures
While you may not be able to have the best Windows 8.1 experience on a desktop PC or a laptop, without a toushcreen, it sure feels different using the OS on a tablet. In fact, Windows 8.1 seems to have been built keeping tablet PCs in mind. When on the desktop, swiping from the right edge of the screen you get quick access to Search, Start, Settings and Start / Shutdown buttons. Similarly, swiping from the screen’s left edge lets you switch between the background apps. To close a running app, a simple swipe from the top to the bottom does the trick.
Camera
The primary 5MP camera module is decent enough to capture occasional photos. We clicked some photos, and the camera was able to capture decent photos with it. However, the photos weren’t the sharpest we’ve seen on a tablet. In fact, some pictures did turn out to be a little blurry. The front-facing camera is average and we noticed some framing in it. The photos captured using the front-facing camera looked grainy, even when taken in good lighting condition.
The above image was clicked in good lighting conditions. While it does look decent, the sharpness is missing. We also recorded some video clips to test the video recording capabilities of the camera. After gauging the performance of the videos shot, we concluded that both the cameras on the iBall Windows Slide WQ32 are just average.
Multimedia
To test the multimedia performance of the tablet, we transferred some music and full HD video clips on the device. The stock music player and Windows Media player supports playback of MP3, AAC and WMA audio files. We were able to play the music files without any hiccups. The audio wasn’t too loud, but loud enough to understand what’s being played. The tablet was able to playback full HD videos without any issues too.
Web Browser
Internet Explorer on Windows 8.1 has improved quite a bit, compared to the earlier vesions of Windows. It’s faster and smoother in operation. Web page rendering is also pretty fast. There are two different modes; you can either run it in the form of a regular Windows browser, or in the modern UI mode, using the Live Tile interface. To test the HTML performance, we ran the PeaceKeeper and SunSpider JavaScript benchmarking tools, both of which logged a score of 633 and 439, respectively. While these scores aren’t extraordinary, they are decent considering the hardware and the tablet’s affordable pricing.
Benchmarks
We also ran the CrystalDiskMark benchmark to test the Read and Write speed of the tablet’s onboard storage. In the sequential test, the benchmarking tool logged read speeds of 134 MB/s and write speeds of 42.3 MB/s, which is pretty good. Overall, we were pleased with the performance of the iBall Windows Slide WQ32 tablet.
Verdict
The iBall Windows Slide WQ32 is priced in the Rs. 16,000* range. It is by far the most affordable Windows 8.1 tablet that we’ve used so far. We like its good screen, decent battery life and overall performance. The affordable price tag and 3G connectivity is what makes the iBall Windows Slide WQ32 a value-for-money tablet and we highly recommend it.
