My experience running Android on a Windows tablet ($250 HP Omni)

[pm]

I bought a HP Omni 10 (10" Intel Baytrail Windows 8.1 tablet with 1920x1200 screen, USB out, HDMI out, $250 shipped right now on Amazon) about a week ago. I've been playing around with Windows 8.1 and it is slowly - very slowly - growing on me. In general the tablet is pretty good, it feels solid in my hands, runs fast enough and feels smooth to use. One thing is that I have a lot more apps on Android than I do on Windows, so I was interested in trying out the Bluestacks Android program which lets you run Android apps on Windows.

I downloaded it, installed it and the initial screen was a bit confusing and it took me a while to figure out how to get my apps from Google's Play store over to it. There was some slight keyboard weirdness - it misses strokes sometimes - but generally worked well.

In summary, the performance is surprisingly good. I didn't try any real games - like Real Racing - but I did try Osmos and World of Goo which involve a lot of animation and they worked great. In fact, everything worked really well. I have my doubts that more action-oriented games - like FPS shooters or racing games - would work well, but of my stuff, everything worked exactly as I thought it would. About the only super confusing thing is getting everything set up but once I got it working, it seems to be working pretty well.

So if you want Windows 8.1 but also want Android, Bluestacks is an option.

 

[ChronoReverse]

How much RAM does your Omni have? Is it more than 2GB? I've been wondering how well Android emulation would work with a 2GB tablet.

 

[pm]

It's 2GB:
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c03984112&cc=us&dlc=en&lc=en

I think it works pretty well - for the limited number of things that I've tried.

 

[ChronoReverse]

Thanks, that's something I've wanted to know. Now I'm considering picking up a Miix 2 (8 incher) more seriously.

 

[Kenmitch]

Hmm....That's interesting.

It's a great entry level Win8 tablet for the price.

 

[poofyhairguy]

Thank you for the thread and the mini-review pm. That is an interesting tablet, amazing how far we have come in a short amount of time...

 

[pm]

Adding a few more thoughts to my mini-review...

It's a 32GB tablet. Windows and HP preloads eat up ~16GB leaving roughly 16GB free. It has an micro-SD card reader in it - HP ships with an 8GB card which has the recovery files on it. But you could pop this out and stick in a 64GB micro-SD giving you lots of space. So far, the 16GB empty space is good enough for me.

The screen is gorgeous. I don't know that it's an IPS display but it is crisp and colors look great and it's plenty bright.

The sound is pretty good - but not great. The volume level goes louder than an iPad - to my ears anyway, and it's louder than my Asus TF101 , but it's tinny.

Battery life seems pretty good - it seems to be in the roughly 6-8 hour range based on my totally unscientific usage. It's not as good as an iPad but it's pretty good.

It doesn't have a fan, and it can get pretty warm in the center - behind the HP logo on the back. But not "hot", just "warm".

It comes out of standby more or less instantly, and boots to Windows in about 14 seconds - I timed it the other night.

Performance in HTML5 apps is pretty good - Google Maps works well. But also I tried with an app that's in a closed beta called "Easel" which is an HTML5 3D cutting app that can drive a CNC. So you draw things in 3D and set up a hobbyist CNC machine with it and you can visualize the output and then it drives the CNC machine to cut it. Anyway, it's a halfway beefy app in my opinion, and it runs fine on the Omni 10.

In general, I really like my Omni 10, although figuring out all the correct swipes in Windows 8.1 is still taking me time.

 

[Zaap]

Interesting idea. How much space does Bluestacks/basic apps take up? (Internal or run off SD?) Is it kind of like running a ROM within Windows, or do Android apps run seamlessly?

 

[pm]

Interesting idea. How much space does Bluestacks/basic apps take up? (Internal or run off SD?) Is it kind of like running a ROM within Windows, or do Android apps run seamlessly?

Bluestacks itself seems to take up about 112MB ish. Apps take up whatever they are, I guess. World of Goo, for example is ~50MB. I don't have an SD cards in right now, but I assume it will act like a removeable SD card in Windows and just give it a drive letter.

I'm not sure what running a ROM is like, but you can put Bluestacks in a Window or make it fullscreen and I think it's running live when its in the background but I don't have a good way to test it. I guess I could try playing a movie on it and then background it and see if it makes progress or freezes. But definitely you can put it in a Window and then run Chrome on the side because I was doing that a bunch of times while I figured out how to set it all up.

If you want to check it out, Bluestacks runs on any Windows or MacOS box and it's free (although it mentions something about premium subscriptions but I can't see what I get for not buying the premium version). It seems to run the same on my desktop as it does on my tablet...

 

[Zaap]

Thanks, I'll have to check it out.

Edit: sweet- messing with Bluestacks on my MacBook.

I was asking if it was like a ROM (probably not the best way to put it) meaning does it run an Android environment, or do apps run as if they were in the native OS environment. Now I see it is an emulated Android install.

At first it was a little confusing until I installed the Play Store (from play.google.com in a browser) and installed a more familiar launcher (tried Holo- Nova wouldn't work).

Pretty cool to mess around with! I'd to try it on a Surface Pro or something.

 

[Oyeve]

Thanks PM! I am running GTA3 (android) on my win7 PC!

 

[bearxor]

I've been running BlueStacks on my Surface Pro for a while and I ran it in my Venue 8 Pro when I had it. It runs really well in both cases. It can be a little jittery at times, but it's perfect for filling in those "holes" you might need in the Windows ecosystem.

One of the advantages of having a "real" computer with you all the time.

If anyone's interested in a replacement launcher for the crappy one included, I'm using Nova.

 

[bearxor]

Thanks, that's something I've wanted to know. Now I'm considering picking up a Miix 2 (8 incher) more seriously.

You should consider the Dell Venue 8 Pro refurbished. $153 right now from Dell Outlet.
http://slickdeals.net/f/7019354-del...et-w-coupon-code-64gb-as-low-as-182-free-ship

 

[ChronoReverse]

I'm wondering whether to get the DV8P or pony up more for the Thinkpad 8 and its 1080p screen.

 

[Ravynmagi]

For some reason it was a mess for me when I tried it on my Dell Venue 8 Pro. Apparently out of the box it has the screen resolution backwards, when the tablet was in portrait, Android apps would be in landscape, and vice versa. I had to edit some file to manually add a resolution. Unfortunately landscape resolution wouldn't work in full screen and the image quality was definitely degraded.