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A**R
Just buy it already!
As a frugal person I buy some of my automation systems like I buy my cars, slightly used but still good quality and at bargain prices. As background I've built about 20 computers as a hobby over the years so I know my way around computers. I had been looking for a tablet since December and have spent a lot of time looking at specs and comparing prices. I've bought two tablets before from internet markets in China and got good systems at good prices. However, I didn't like the extended wait for shipment from China and of course always worried about the support availability if I ever needed tech support from China. So after about 3 months of searching Chinese web sites and Amazon comparing prices I saw the RecPad 10 listed on Amazon, a tablet comparable to the quality and prices for a good bargain but quality Chinese sourced tablet, AND they were based in California. So it took me about 5 minutes to review the tablet specs and determine them to be exactly like two tablets I had looked at for months without buying. I also saw a refurbished tablet listed at a substantial savings. So bought that one and paid the modest shipping fee.I received the tablet 1 day ahead of the promised arrival date. It came well boxed in its original packing material with everything neatly packed like a new system would be. As a refurbished system I expected it to have been used with maybe a scuff mark on it somewhere, but the tablet itself was spotless. I turned it on and it went through startup and presented a login screen to first establish connection to my home wireless system and then a login screen for a Google account. With these two settings in place it finished booting into a typical Android 5.1.1 home display screen. My android phone is also 5.1.1 so there was no learning curve for using it. Out of the box the battery has about a 80% charge on it.As other reviewers have stated there is no bloat ware loaded on the system. There were only about 15 basic programs loaded, so the system is a blank slate that you can personalize the way you want. As comparison my phone and other tablets came loaded with software I didn't want and had to deinstall, or worse, some of the apps are coded in such a way that they can't be deinstalled. You won't have that issue with this tablet.There was no issue connecting to the Google Play Store to download my preferred apps which include Kindle, WPS Document Editor, Hulu, a few news apps, and a weather app. All work with no issue. In fact, some of the same apps on my phone or other tablets hang up at times awaiting responses from the network, but I've never had a hangup with this tablet and web pages respond smoothly, Hulu plays flawlessly, and I'm typing this review with the WPS app and a Logitech keyboard that uses a unified USB chip, which the tablet recognized and connected to in about 1 second of my plugging the chip into the mini usb port. Whether using this plugged in keyboard or the onscreen keyboard I've had no issues typing in input.The screen is clear and fonts on webpages easy to read even if they are set small. I looked at a few 4K videos on youtube and they compare in quality to my samsung 4K Tv. Touch responsiveness is great with no lag.I don't do skype, facebook, twitter, or any of the other social media stuff so can't comment on those apps. However given the way everything else works I don't foresee any issues if someone wants to use those apps. I did take a picture with the forward facing camera and it looks ok. However, I have never understood the desire for someone to walk around with a tablet taking pictures. No matter the electronics built into a tablet the tiny lens on it will never match the quality of a good DLSR with a good lens. So I place little value in camera specs on a tablet and can't further comment on how the cameras work.I have several SD cards which the system would not recognize so I emailed Rectonics with a question on a Sunday and got a response back from a company Rep a few hours later on a Sunday. Turns out SD cards need to be formatted with FAT or NTFS before the system will recognize them. Using a computer I formatted a 2GB card to FAT and a 64GB card to NTFS and they both work flawlessly. So the only issue I foresee someone maybe having is attempting to move an SD card between a camera and the tablet to transfer files. The cameras I have format in exFAT, which the system won't recognize. However, there are many ways to work around transferring files. So I don't believe this is an issue. I have a few USB thumb drives and using the right adapter to plug them into the tablet they all work flawlessly too.On specs its length and thickness is the same as an IPAD Air. The RecPad 10 width is 1.5mm less than an IPAD Air. So almost any IPAD Air cover should work since the RecPad is slightly smaller in one dimension. I bought one of the Snugg Silicone covers and it is a perfect fit, even in the width setting since it is a stretch on cover. The back camera and the power button location on the Air and RecPad 10 are the same. So those holes lined up perfectly. The speakers are in a different location so the Snugg covers over the speakers. However, as with cameras I don't expect tablet speakers to be bose quality so I don't use or put much emphasis on speakers. I use ear buds or headphones If I want to watch a video. On the Snugg cover I had to use a little pair of sharp manicure scissors to cut out holes for the volume rocker, the earphone jack, and the USB plug. However that was easy to do and the holes I cut line up well for all the ports I needed access to.The IPAD Air 2 has the same length, same 1.5 mm larger width than the RecPad, but also has a smaller thickness than the RecPad. I haven't checked the camera location; etc on the Air 2 so can't vouch that an Air 2 case will work as well as an Air 1 case. Unless you just have to have an Air 2 case you can go with almost any Air 1 case off Amazon and it will fit but depending on its style you may have to cut out the holes I noted above. If the case has hard fixed snaps that hold the tablet along its width side the RecPad is 1.5mm smaller in width so those snaps may not it well. So it is safer to go with a case design that doesn't snap in along the tablet's width.I've had the tablet for about 5 days now so haven't had time to do a few common things like wirelessly print from it, bluetooth connectivity, etc. As I test other Items I'll update this review. As other reviewers have previously noted this is a solid tablet that is well worth the money. If you want a tablet for web surfing, videos, music, wordprocessing, etc this tablet does all those things with ease and no responsiveness lag. For those type activities this tablet is the best priced versus quality I find on Amazon now. Add the outstanding responsiveness from the vendor and this is clearly a 5 star tablet.
J**T
Nice Screen; Slow; No GPS; Terrible Front Camera
This has a nice screen--allegedly the same screen on a recent model of iPad and it has a nice, no-nonsense stock Android operating system with no bloatware. Wireless and Bluetooth work acceptably on the RecPad 10. Video and movies play OK--this may have been the major priority of the designers. The stock speaker is fine, as tiny speakers go. My needs are fairly modest; I am not a gamer and I use this for reading ebooks, web-browsing, and other office applications, and the battery life is better than average, despite the great screen's likely demands. However, in the bargain, the RAM and info management systems on this tablet creak and crawl at times under these modest "loads." The device itself (and it is new) takes up to 2.5 minutes just to boot up. Page loading in a browser is typically fairly quick . . . but loading some apps or starting new operations within an app can cause odd, ten-second delays, or delays so long that Android says "App X is not responding. Do you want to wait or close it?" Sometimes the volume button also takes ten seconds to register an action, too. Otherwise, at best, scrolling pages usually results in some hesitance and stuttering progress, something that any designer I think would try to eliminate, even in a budget tablet. I rarely use a tablet as a camera, so I am not too invested in camera quality. However, for my money, the front camera on a tablet is as important as the rear, for Skype calls. The front camera on this is about the quality of an early (and I mean 2001 era) cell phone camera, dark, grainy, drekky. Also, there is no real GPS on the device. Some people may make peace with these deficiencies, but for the same price I notice these options: the Lenovo Tab 2 10 (less talk of slow system progress in reviews; better cameras; real GPS) or the Asus 8 S (64g SSD/ 4gb RAM, smaller, but faster). I have to add I was driven to try this because my Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 (2014) has terrible battery issues, as do many of these Galaxy tablets. I am trying out the RecPad experimentally in the interval before I try to replace the Samsung battery. Note that the Samsung, apart from its battery issue, was ideal, and had none of the deficiencies mentioned here. Bottom line: I think it is silly that even a $200 tablet still operate as starved for processor resources or RAM under *normal* circumstances; the RecPad people cut a few too many corners in trying to bolt a stock Android system to this nice screen.
X**X
and returning it was easy on the customer service front
MEMORY INCORRECTLY ADVERTISED, This tablet can only expand up to 32GB of memory. About 168GB less than advertised.The microSD card is only SDHC compatible, not SDXC, SDHC cards only offer between 4GB to 32GB.It shipped quickly, and returning it was easy on the customer service front. The company did well in that regard. I will say that the exterior is beautiful, but that's the only thing I found impressive about this device. It suffers from incredibly slow processing power I bought an older generic 10.5S Samsung tablet with less memory for cheaper and found it to be about 10x faster. Even though the specs seemed similar. Misleading advertising, beautiful design, but very slow & sluggish, not just with wifi, but even when swiping between application menus, also, the memory expansion is incorrectly advertised.Try a used tablet on E-bay with a more trustworthy brand. I was really hoping for a lot with this tablet. I was really impressed by the design and the promised memory capacity, it didn't live up to those expectations. The misleading memory advertising kills me, it was the major reason I bought it, and it became the major reason I returned it. Other than freezing/lagging between app menus.**SD stands for "Secure Digital", SDHC stands for "Secure Digital High Capacity", SHXC stands for "Secure Digital eXtended Capacity". From the names only you can tell the main difference in all three i.e. storage capacity. SDHC cards offers between 4GB to 32GB and SDXC offers more than 32GB.
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