TABLET ❘ £220 from Amazon www.snipca.com/47663
Tough cookie
High-quality tablets can be expensive, which can make you wary about taking them on holiday, handing them over to kids, leaving them around pets or even lugging them out into the garden. The R10 tablet from Chinese manufacturer Doogee seeks to reassure you in two ways – it’s cheaper than most (so cheaper to replace) and tough enough to withstand impacts that would finish off less robust models.
The R10 has a 10.4in screen and runs Android 13 from its MediaTek Helio G99 processor. It has 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. If you’re worried this is a little on the light side, there is a microSD card slot that lets you expand storage by anything up to 2TB.
As you might expect from the price, this specification won’t give you optimum performance levels. It runs the Android operating system just fine, as long as you stick to basic apps such as email and web browsing. It’ll also handle a bit of light gaming, but isn’t going to run the latest 3D titles at a satisfactory frame rate.
The difference is stark if you compare it with our current favourite tablet, the Samsung Galaxy S9 (£768 from www. snipca.com/47493, reviewed in Issue 667 – see page 30). In processor benchmark tests, the R10 ran at 30 per cent of the speed of the Galaxy S9, so it certainly isn’t slick. Switch to graphically intensive apps, however, and the R10 can only manage around eight per cent of its rival.
One area that did impress, however, is its battery life. This lasted for 18 hours 47 minutes in our general-use trials – almost doubling the battery life of the S9. So there are definite benefits to having hardware that doesn’t make too many demands. It takes a while to recharge, though, requiring around seven hours to go from zero to full. A half-hour charge with the supplied 18W charger took it from empty to 14 per cent.
The IPS touchscreen has a 2000x1200-pixel resolution, with a maximum brightness level of 340cd/m2. The screen finish is highly reflective, however, which can make it tricky to see anything in direct sunlight.
Its protective layer comes courtesy of a rubberised external bumper that protrudes from around the edge of the device, so if it’s dropped on a flat surface, it will land in a way that ensures the screen is fully protected. It also comes fitted with a screen pro
