Slim and light, expandable memory, 4G, lowish price, decent battery life
Low quality screen, underpowered processor, poor cameras
The Tab 6 is the latest in Vodafone's cheap but not always cheerful tablet series. It boasts 4G connectivity and Android Lollipop, but slips up on processing power and a less than impressive screen.
First impressions
It's not all bad for the Tab 6; it does have some good things going for it -- most of all its price. At £150 it just about qualifies for the budget category of tablet and because it's available on pay as you go, there's no set monthly cost for data if you don't want it -- you can simply use Wi-Fi. Still, if you do decide to splash out on network access, you can get it fast 'n' furious with 4G capability for nippier downloads and smoother streaming.
Vodafone's current offer includes 6GB of data for your first month, which is pretty generous -- but just remember you'll need to use it up within 30 days. After this, you can pay more for 30-day data bundles and still get online while you're out and about without having to commit to a pay-monthly contract, which starts at £17 a month.
Screen and design
At a sliver under 8mm thick and weighing in at 406g the Tab 6 is a neat little package and feels reasonably well built too. However, the 9.6-inch screen offers a standard HD resolution of 1,280x800 pixels. The size of the screen means the tablet is really too big to deliver a truly sharp picture with anything less than full HD resolution. At 157ppi it's distinctly so-so, with small text and even the Android icons showing a little fuzz around the edges. It's reasonably bright but colours tend to look less than vibrant, even a little washed out.
Software and processor
The Tab 6 arrives running the latest Android 5.0 Lollipop operating system, which is good to see on a low-end device. The quad-core processor is clocked at 1.2GHz and backed by 1GB RAM. That's respectable but not outstanding, despite what Vodafone's 'blazing fast' marketing campaign would have us believe. It certainly isn't blazing fast when it comes to general use, generally preferring a more sedate approach to multitasking, with apps loading in their own sweet time, especially when you have a handful running at once. Our AnTuTu benchmark test delivered a score of 21,419, which puts way behind even the likes of the budget-priced Tesco Hudl.
Photography
The 5-megapixel camera on the back won't be breaking any records either. There's no flash or autofocus, although there are a couple of settings for HDR and Panorama. Picture quality is very much so-so, with an unimpressive level of detail, washed-out colours and sluggish white balance. As is still too often the case with tablets, it would have been more useful to swap the 2-megapixel camera on the front for the 5-megapixel rear model to ensure better quality selfies and video calls.
There's a measly 16GB of memory on board to store all of your photos and videos, but you can beef that up by an extra 32GB via microSD card. It would have been better if the Tab 6 catered for higher capacity memory cards (128GB please!), now that they are commonly available.
There's a good-sized 4,600mAh battery on board which should keep you going into your second day even if you're using the tablet pretty intensely.
Conclusion
The Vodafone Tab Prime 6 offers a decent, but not outstanding set of specifications for its low-end price. If it was available for below £100 it would be a standout bargain. As it is, its so-so screen, processor and cameras don't help it to stand out against competitors.
CPU: Quad-core 1.2GHz MediaTek
Operating system: Android 4.2 Jelly Bean
Memory: 16GB
Display: 9.6in IPS LCD (1280x800 pixels)
Camera: 5 megapixel rear camera; 2 megapixel front camera
Wireless: Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.1
Ports: Micro USB, microSD card slot, 3.5mm headphone jack
Battery: 4600mAh
Size: 244x146x8mm
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
