#ivankyo

So this is an honest business review of the VANKYO MatrixPad Z4, which is currently one of the cheapest 10-inch tablets on Amazon in the UK. It comes in a fairly well-presented box and packaging. Straight out of the box you have the tablet, of course, then underneath you have a support card, quick set up guide and a full user guide. You, of course, get the USB charging brick and cable, it is, unfortunately, micro USB and not USB Type C but what can you expect for a tablet within this price range.

From first impressions, you can tell that the tablet has been made from cheaper materials so it has a full plastic back and the screen feels like a very hard plastic to imitate glass but it doesn’t have that rigidity or coldness of glass so I’m fairly sure it’s plastic but this is a durability benefit as it won’t smash or crack like glass does if dropped. It weighs 484 grams in total so it’s fairly lightweight.

The whole device can creak slightly under pressure but overall it feels very stable and isn’t just going to bend in half. As for ports and buttons, on the left side as mentioned it has a micro USB for charge and sync a micro SD card slot for expandable storage, a 3.5mm headphone jack, an up/down volume rocker, a power button and what looks to be a microphone hole. There are no other ports or buttons on the other 3 sides of the tablet.

When held in landscape mode you have a front-facing 2-megapixel camera then on the rear you have a slightly better 8-megapixel camera with a flash. The tablet runs on a 1.5GHZ quad-core ARM processor with 2GBs of RAM and 32GB of onboard flash storage, which can be expanded to 128GB with a micro SD of course. This is all fairly standard within this budget range and is enough to accomplish basic tasks such as web browsing, email checking etc. It is also running the latest Android version which is 9.0 also known as Pie which is impressive.

It has a 1280 x 800 pixel HD display which is bright enough but in my opinion, it could be brighter, especially when using outdoors in sunlight it can seem a little dim. And that screen is powered by a 4500mAh battery which Vankyo says will give you 8 hours of use but I’ve found if you’re watching videos or playing games that can come down to around 4 hours of use time.

It is fairly slow at loading up apps initially and has a small lag to touch inputs but nothing shocking, especially when considering the price range. YouTube is again slow at loading and it can stutter a little now and again but overall it’s a good experience. So if you’re just using this as a casual tablet for browsing or watching the odd video then I don’t think the speed or small lag will be a problem to you but if you plan on using this as a daily device for work or gaming then I can imagine that this slowness will begin to become frustrating.

Moving on to the camera. To be honest, the camera app is very basic, it’s literally just a point and shoot app, no HDR or portrait modes or anything like that. Also, the colours are a little off, they’re coming through a little grey and washed out, I’m not sure whether that is just the screen or the camera its self. But to be honest, you shouldn’t be buying a tablet to use as a photographing device these cameras are merely just a utility to use if needed and aren’t really the focal point of the device.

So in summary, for the price, the VANKYO MatrixPad Z4 is a great piece of technology. I wouldn’t advise purchasing one for heavy usages such as daily work, gaming or video editing but as a casual use device for web browsing and the odd video, it’s perfect. It would also serve well as a tablet for kids to just play simple games and watch YouTube kids and Netflix as it’s mostly made from plastic it shouldn’t smash if dropped and if it is broken then £80 lost isn’t the end of the world and it can easily be replaced with another.

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