I don't have the time to do a full review, but here is my quick overview of the Onda V975W thus far.
The build quality is pretty average. It has a nice aluminum back with a plastic front bezel. No aluminum chamfered edges here, its cheap plastic that can dig into your hand a little bit while using. Nowhere near the quality of an iPad, but i'm sure everyone already knew that.
The screen is the same one that's found in an iPad air (IPS 2048x1536), and as I stated before it has a slight gap between the the glass and the LCD - maybe 1-2mm. The viewing angles are good, but i did notice the screen has a purple like glaze when viewing it at a titled angle; not sure why as it's only view able when the screen is solid black? The glass is not Gorilla glass. It's pretty much the same glass as you would get if you bought a replacement iPad screen on Amazon. I don't' have any real issues with it, except it's a finger print and smudge magnet.
Only one USB port is on the tablet, so you can't charge and use a USB hub at the same time without rigging an adapter of some sort. It has dual stereo speakers on the back. The sound is somewhat tinny and weak, but does an adequate job if you're watching video content or listening the music. The tablet also has a Micro HDMI port if you're wanting to connect it to a TV or external monitor.
The tablet uses the Intel Z3735D quad-core CPU - 1.33Ghz and turbo's up to 1.83Ghz. You won't see all cores turbo up that high, but one or two may. I usually see the tablet sitting at the 1.4-1.5Ghz mark when doing heavy browsing. The CPU seems surprisingly quick, but I haven't benchmarked it yet to see where it's at.
The iGPU is based of Ivy bridge (valley view) I believe. It's cut down quite a bit, so don't expect real gaming performance here. I did install Torchlight II, and at 720p with the lowest settings it jumps back and forth between 15-30FPS. Might be playable for some?
Additionally, the iGPU also comes with 512MB of system memory allocated to it out of the gate. I went into the BIOS and changed it to 256MB, as I'd rather have the extra system memory (1.7GB usable). The extra video memory did nothing for Torchlight II performance and I didn't notice a difference with anything else as well. 2GB of total system memory seems adequate for basic use, but with a lot of tabs open in IE and other programs running in the background, you can quickly approach the 1.7GB limit.
I will say 32GB of storage isn't much, but the tablet does have a SD card slot that I believe supports up to 64GB. This is mostly a web surfer and client device for me, so having a lot of storage isn't what i'm looking for. I didn't get a chance to bench the reads and writes of the storage as of yet, but I plan on it.
Since my wife primarily uses this tablet, web performance was crucial. Her old iPad 2 is a bit long in the tooth now, and web performance is pretty terrible with iOS 8. I will say browsing performance is good once you reset Internet explorer's settings to default. If you don't, the web performance is slow and terrible. The wireless adapter is wireless N, but it's 2.4Ghz only and it doesn't seem to have the best reception. Even with a mediocre wireless adapter, IE Metro still does a good job an loading web pages quickly. I tried both Chrome and Firefox, and they were too slow to use in desktop mode.
Battery life is just okay...her iPad 2 has much better battery life overall. I could probably get 5-6 hours of constant use? Windows 8.1 sleep mode doesn't compare with iOS, at least not with this tablet. When I first got the tablet, I was losing 20% of battery overnight. :thumbsdown:
I did some research into the issue and was able to fix it the best I could doing a Sleep study to find the culprits. Now it uses about 6-7% in that same time period. If you're looking to travel much with this tablet, you may want to have a charger handy. It also takes a while to charge this tablet as well.
Wrappings things up, I first say, this is not a tablet for someone who wants a perfect out the box experience. You have to change the language to start, update to the latest BIOS; update all of the drivers (even beyond the driver pack), and have some time to do research when things don't act like there supposed to.
I wanted a Windows 8.1 Tablet with a iPad like form factor and comparable screen, and that's exactly what this tablet is. It was $200 shipped, and for that price it really is a great value Windows tablet. I've owned the ASUS T100 and they HP Pavilion X2 and the Onda V975W tablet is my preference over each of them. While the others may have better support, battery life, and a true working out of the box experience; none of them have a beautiful 2048x1536 display with a 4:3 aspect ratio. Now I know most people like 16:9 for android and windows tablets, but I prefer the 4:3.
When I get some more time I will do a quick video on the tablet to show performance and show how it performs for general use (Also do some benchmarks). When I make the video, I'll link it here.
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