Velocity Micro Cruz T410 – Review
The Velocity Micro Cruz T410 is the latest 10-inch tablet to appear and it’s selling for under $300. The question is, is it a better package than the 7-inch Velocity Cruz T408, which sells for $198.99.
The Micro Cruz T410 runs on a 1GHz single core ARM Cortex-A8 CPU, with 512MB RAM and a meagre 4GB of storage, of which approximately 500MB is available for apps, with another 2.5GB for storage of media files. Luckily Velocity has included a microSD slot for memory expansion, allowing for a further 32GB of space.
The Velocity Micro Cruz T410 only has a single speaker on its rear, yet volume is pretty good, and clear enough for video or music files. The Cruz T410 measures 10.8 x 6.8 x 0.4 inches and weighs just over a pound.Portwise there’s the microSD card slot, a USB socket, and a headphone jack. Connectivity comes via WiFi-n or Bluetooth. Along the top is a power button and volume dial, and a microphone is positioned on the slate’s bottom edge.
The Cruz T410 comes with Android 2.3 Gingerbread, optimized for phones rather than tablets. Velocity Micro has promised a firmware upgrade, which could mean Ice Cream Sandwich becomes available on the tablet. As it is, Android’s basic apps are all there, but there’s no access to the Android Market and no Gmail or Google Maps. Users will have to make do with Amazon’s Appstore for Android. That still gives users a selection of more than 20000 apps, but finding and installing the best apps can be a bit more difficult than just downloading your favorite Android Market ones.
The Velocity Micro Cruz T410 features a 1024 x 600 pixel screen which can be slightly awkward for viewing pages or apps in landscape mode. Nevertheless, once you adapt to holding the tablet in portrait mode text input is problem-free, although it’s a bit tricky in landscape mode since the keys are elongated and narrow.
Performance is good if not as snappy as with premium tablets such as the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1. Overall performance is similar to premium Android tablets from about a year ago, so navigating the OS or streaming media are a bit tardy for anyone used to today’s premium tablets, but fine for anyone who doesn’t know any better. The T410 is nonetheless fast enough for Angry Birds or Fruit Ninja, even if the latest games are bordering on unplayable. One slight nuisance is the lack of a permanent app bar in Android Gingerbread, since unlike the phones Android 3.2 was designed for, the T410 lacks physical buttons.
The promised firmware upgrade will fix that, even if Velocity Cruz settles for Android Honeycomb. A significant difference between the 7-and 10-inch Velocity tablets is battery life. The 7-inch T408 gives around 4 hours of use, while the T410 bigger battery delivers a healthy 6 hours, quite decent for a budget tablet. The 7-inch T408 and the 10-inch T410 have the same processors and RAM, and although the 10-incher gives better battery life, we think most people would prefer the smaller device, as it costs just $200. The 10-inch Micro Cruz T410 will cost you $290.68 at Amazon.
Enjoy these Velocity Micro Cruz T410 pics:
Here is short review video of Velocity Micro Cruz T410 tablet courtesy of Liliputing:
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