Gadget Review: iBall Slide i701 - This Windows tablet is almost a hit

In the past few weeks we have been repeatedly speaking about budget computers mdash from the Rs 13K Chromebooks to the Linuxbased Rs 5K laptop by IIT Bombay A recent addition to this lineup is the ultraportable iBall Slide i701 a 7inch Windows tablet that costs just Rs 5K Without doubt the i701 has set a new milestone in budget computing but it has also thrown up a few questions on the rigidity of Windows 8 Lets take a lookiBall Slide i701Design Theres nothing extraordinary about the way the iBall Slide i701 looks but it gets a silicon matte finish in the back thus offering a good grip The edges are sleek and the corners get a round touch Overall the device makes optimum usage of space and looks like a cute 7inch deviceRating 710Display The fact that iBall has managed to put a 7inch IPS touch display in a device that costs Rs 5K is a feat in itself But while we have to commend the makers for that we cant help but notice the compromises made in the process and how they affect our experience For example the viewing angles have been compromised heavily So in the same angle where you can see the top part of the screen clearly the bottom part appears darker It causes a lot of discomfort most noticeably while using the touch keyboard Theres an oddity in the contrast levels caused by lowviewing angle which make certain keys shine brighter and hence hurt the eyes The touch is good but limited to five touch points Users would find the text size of menu and apps too small for comfort Though the device supports 1280x768 we found 1024x600 to be the optimal resolution for usage Unfortunately most apps dont work at this low resolutionRating 410Connectivity The surprise elements with the iBall i701 dont end with the price The device supports USB on the go 35 mm auxin and mini HDMI As for wireless connectivity it comes with Bluetooth and wifi bgn As for accessories the device comes with three multicoloured hard plastic back covers Rating 1010Battery The i701 gets enough juice from the 3200mAh battery to last nearly four hours Though this is insufficient for a tablet with this price tag we shouldnt be asking for moreRating 710Camera There are two cameras mdash a 2MP rear camera with flash and a VGA camera in the front Both offer averagequality pictures and video Rating 610User interface amp OS The device runs on 32bit Windows 81 single language with Bing with a free upgrade to Windows 10 when its made available The OS gives the i701 an edge over other tablets simply because of the fact that you can run most of your Windows desktop apps in the i701 However the small screen size and lack of support in Windows 81 OS and apps for lower display configurations such as 1024x600 makes working in the device quite challenging Often the text gets difficult to read We advise our users to install most apps from the Windows store This will make it easier to negotiate the tiny controls in desktop appsRating 510Hardware amp Performance Despite the low price iBall has managed to squeeze in Intel Atom CPU Z3735G clocked at 133 GHz with Intel HD Graphics Even though the builtin RAM is 1GB the processor manages to pull of most of your computing tasks as well as support most lowend games Of the 1GB RAM it gets 32MB as dedicated video memory the rest is used as graphic and system memory At this price the i701 is amazing as we had no issues in multitab browsing either The device comes with 16Gb builtin storage but out of that just 25GB is available for users However one can expand it up to 32GB using the microSD card slotRating 1010