iRulu R1710 7” Allwinner A31 Tablet

[Freaktab Developer Review] iRulu R1710 7” Allwinner A31 Tablet

The other day I was browsing through the new posts here on Freaktab…as I do multiple times a day…and I ran across a new sponsor…iRulu. I approached them about maybe doing a product review on one of their newer models so that our users could get more acquainted with the brand.

Jason from iRulu graciously agreed to send me an iRulu R1710 to try. Here’s a link to their product page so you can see what they say about it: http://goo.gl/MOi1Yz iRulu is a new brand name to us on Freaktab...and they have a nice variety of tablets and smart phones available.



Here is a link to my YouTube video showing examples of the tablet's performance:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_Gt...=youtube_gdata

One great thing about getting this tablet was that iRulu was able to ship from their warehouse in Ohio…here in the USA, so it just took a few days to reach me in Arkansas via UPS. A quick trip to Walmart revealed just a few Android tablets in the same price range, but all had only 1024x768 screen resolution. This tablet comes with a full HD 1920x1200 screen…which is a big plus.

Let me rant just a second on my displeasure with major box stores in the US trying to sell old technology to the masses (that don't know any better) at the same prices you can get much newer, higher quality stuff directly from the manufacturers or online stores in China. I can't believe that people are still buying that two year old crap...when this newer stuff is readily available. This is a case in point.

The colors of my headings will give you an indication of the pro’s and con’s. Pro’s in green. Con’s inred. 

First Impressions

I’ll dispense with the whole unboxing cliché by just saying that the box was secure and safe…no damage whatsoever. Inside the box was…the tablet, a stylus pen, a standard USB cable and an OTG cable, an AC charger…and a user manual in English. The factory charger is a micro USB cable hard wired into the AC/DC adapter...but I've found that the tablet charges OK with a standard phone charger with a micro USB cable.

Screen Size

It’s been quite a while since I’ve had a 7” tablet to mess with. It’s kind of handy. I haven’t invested in a tablet case yet…but it’s always a good idea to eventually add a case to protect it. While the tablet gives me the impression that it is very sturdy…it’s also surprisingly light in weight. While I generally prefer the 10.1" or 9.7" tablets for daily use, my 80 year old father likes the 7" devices because they are easier to hold. You have to wear your glasses to read them, though if you're old, like me. Screen size is a highly personal preference. iRulu also carries the larger sizes at reasonable prices.

This is a solid little tablet with a molded metal back cover with plastic trim around the front display. It comes with a shipping screen protector intended to be removed on first use. Another, more substantial screen protector remains in place to protect the screen from scratches during use. It also comes with a plastic scratch protector on the back cover.

The business end of the tablet has 1 micro USB port, 1 mini USB OTG port, a microphone hole and a headphone jack. The tablet charges through the micro USB port…so you can use a standard phone charger, a USB battery pack or with the included charger which has a permanently mounted micro USB cable.


The back includes the rear camera and one speaker.



The bottom…if you are viewing landscape has one slot for a micro SD card. The top has the power button and the volume rocker. The button design gives you a good firm strong feel when you press them, unlike the cheap fragile feeling you get with some inexpensive tablets.

Along with the display, there's the standard front camera for video calling.

Testing

Turning the power on for the first time, you see the iRulu boot screen with animation and a cool boot sound is played. The boot process takes very little time…maybe 30 seconds…if that. You do have the option of going to a quick boot when you power off the tablet.



The desktop has the standard Allwinner background screen. The launcher places the app drawer and shortcuts on the right side of the screen. The notification bar at the top is standard KitKat. The navigation bar at the bottom is a little different from the Rockchip screens. The home button is in the center with the recent apps button to the left of it and the back button to the right. The volume buttons are split on both ends of the navigation bar instead of placed together. I couldn't find a screenshot feature in settings...so no screenshot button.

Wifi – turns on and connects well to my home and work routers. No problems noted.

After entering my Gmail account, the first thing I did was log into Google Play Store and install the Antutu Benchmark 5 app. I got a score of 16245. Not bad…but not great considering that the RK3288’s now post scores near 40,000…and the Allwinner A80 is posting scores around 50,000. Now, I realize that total evaluation shouldn’t be based on benchmarks alone…but when you compare scores…it puts this device somewhere between RK3066 and RK3188. I don't put a lot of weight on benchmark scores. To me, its all about the hand's on user experience.

This is my very first Allwinner device, so I don’t personally have other Allwinner’s to compare it to. Please consider the price point as an important factor. We are talking about a less than $100 tablet…those other models are in the above $200 range…so let’s keep our perspective. This is a VERY good $100 tablet.



Subjectively, however…since I’ve played around with it for a few days, I HAVE NOT experienced any lag or any trouble running my usual test apps. I watched a few hours of Netflix shows and some YouTube videos…and didn’t experience a single hiccup. This is a very good tablet for below $100 US.

This tablet is surprisingly free of the wad of bloatware you usually find on tablets these days. iRulu only adds a Game app and a Store app to a very barebones set of apps. You get the standard browser, calculator, calendar, camera, clock, downloads, email, file manager, gallery, Google, Google Piny Keyboard, Google settings, Google PlayMusic, Google Play Store, system settings, sound recorder, 4K video player, and voice search. That’s it.

For now, I’ve only added Antutu Benchmark, Netflix and X-plore File Manager for the purposes of this review.



Video Quality
While I did mention they included a 4K Video Player…they didn’t included any 4K sample videos to view. While this is completely subjective…I’d just say that downloaded 4K samples are brilliant and sharp. Compared with the RK3066 and RK3188 tablets, the screen colors are richer and more brilliant. The R1710 provides about the same as my experience with RK3288’s which have a much more powerful GPU. That’s where I think Allwinner excels over the older Rockchip’s.

Factory Specs:

CPU Processor	Allwinner A31 Cortex-A7 Quad core 1.0GHz
GPU	POWER VR SGX 544 MP2 8 engines Brilliant Colors
Operating System	Google Android 4.4 KitKat
Size	7" WUXGA (16:10 Screen) Capacitive
Resolution	1200*1920 Retina IPS screen
Touch Screen	Full Size, 5 Point OGS Capacitive Touch Screen
RAM	1GB DDR3 quick, but could use 2GB
Capacity	8GB not much room for apps/data
Camera	Dual Cameras(0.3M Front/2.0MP back)
Input Device	Built-in Microphone
Output Device	Built-in Loud Speaker mounted on the rear...hard to hear...low volume.
WIFI	Support (IEEE 802.11b/g)
LAN	External Fast 10/100 Mbps if equipped with an Ethernet Adapter
USB dongle 3G	Support WCDMA、CDMA2000、TD-SCDMA(3G Dongle Not Included in Package)
Card Reader Slot	TF/MMC Card slot X 1
AC Power Adaptor	Input AC100-240V, 50-60Hz, Output 5V 1.5A
Battery Pack	3.7V 3100mAh Li-Polymer rechargeable battery, "enjoy longer running time" Not so much...
Dimension	106*186*7.5mm
Weight	235g
Picture Viewer	Support JPG, JPEG, GIF.....
Media File Audio	MP3, WMA, WAV, APE, OGG, FLAC
Video Player	Support AVI, RM, MKV, WMV, MOV, MP4,PMP,MPEG, MPG, FLV, 3GP, MPG, H.264, etc（Support PIP）
Music Player	Support MP3, WMA, MP2, OGG, AAC, M4A, MA4, FLAC, APE, 3GP, WAV, support playlist
G Sensor	Yes
Languages	English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese, Dutch, Greek, Russian, Italian, Indonesian, Norwegian, Polish,Hungarian, Swedish, Chinese (Traditional), Chinese (Simplified)
Software	Fring, QQ, MSN, Youtube, Google Map, Document to go, Multimedia Player,Application Store (Bloatware)
Input/Output Ports	Power Jack*1, 3.5mm Headphone Jack*1, Micro USB 2.0 port*1, HDMI port*1, TF Card Slot(Max to 32GB)*1
Accessories	USB Cable, OTG Cable, User Manual, AC Charger, Stylus Pen

Disk Space
The tablet is advertised as a 8GB/1GB device. While settings states there is a total of 8GB storage…the root/system partition is 1GB and the internal SD card is 4.5GB. There is only 1GB space for installing apps in the userdata partition. I’m not aware of a way to increase the userdata partition on an Allwinner device like I do in my Rockchip and MTK ROM’s….so there is a space limitation for apps.

Battery Consumption
Considering this tablet has such good performance and is running a brilliant 1920/1200 screen…you have to realize that there is a down side somewhere…and in this tablet’s case…it’s battery consumption. This is one thing that I noticed right away. You can literally watch the battery drain from the notification bar like a clock. That’s even with brightness turned way down. I was able to watch about 2 hours of Netflix on a single battery charge. One way around this poor battery performance is to have a USB battery pack available. I happen to have a 10000mAh battery that charges the tablet in about 30 minutes and contains enough power to put 2 whole charges on the tablet while away from an AC charger…so I wouldn’t completely call the battery situation a total deal breaker….but you have to make note of it in your decision to purchase this product. Those battery packs are around $20 from multiple suppliers. I keep 2 of them charged and ready at all times…with as many electronic devices as I have.

If you are a stickler for long battery life…don’t bother with this tablet because you will be very disappointed. You may as well spend some more money on one with better battery life.
However, if you are one of those people who put the tablet down and let it sleep between uses…it appears that the battery doesn’t drain a whole lot in sleep mode.

Game Play (Really Yellow...if it showed up better on the site)

There’s a game called “Don’t Touch the White Tiles” that you can play side by side with another device. Placed next to a Samsung Galaxy S5…the scrolling effect of the game is a little choppy compared to the S5. While games are playable, they are noticeably slower on the R1710. Stick Hero and Minecraft play perfectly on the R1710…just to test a few games. Again, we’re talking a $100 tablet…not a $200 or $300 tablet or phone…so keep that in mind.

Custom Firmware Support

One factor people take into account before making a purchase is the availability of custom firmware and community support for a device.

I’ve done hundreds of custom ROM’s for mainly Rockchip devices and some MTK devices and I have yet to do an Allwinner ROM. But the process of doing an Allwinner ROM doesn’t seem to be that much different…when you get down to the basics of rooting and tweaking. So I am planning on doing a custom ROM for this device very soon. Actually, I’ve done some practice runs with a ROM kitchen I’ve written and everything seems to run smoothly…I just haven’t tested the end product as of yet. I didn’t want to change this tablet from the stock configuration for the purpose of this review. So now that I’m almost complete…it’s time to get to work. Stay tuned for some Allwinner RileyROM’s for iRulu tablets…and hopefully more product reviews featuring their other products.

My recommendation

If you are looking for a Christmas stocking stuffer for someone special…or an alternative media device to the much more expensive and high end devices…yes…I think you will be happy with this tablet. Screen size is a personal preference and the 7” devices are a very popular option. This tablet has a really nice display and does everything I like to do…surf the internet and watch movies and YouTube videos. Game play is possible…but not if the player is used to playing the same games on faster devices…but there’s plenty of games that function very well on this tablet. If you have a battery pack, or don’t mind connecting the charger frequently…this tablet is a very good option. Don't expect Bluetooth 3G, or HDMI output...because it isn't available....but if you want a tablet that's reliable...this is a good one for the price.