Novo 7 Elf first impression by mihaidsn

[mihaidsn]

After 3 days spent with novo 7 elf i'm able to write my first impressions. Lets see:

1. Tablet is very light and slim. Feels very good in hands. Casing creaks when pressing on edges. Is mad by plastic but a good quality plastic.

2. Touchscreen is good. Fingers slip very good over surface. I don't think that is glass. Viewing angles are very good even at lowest brightness. The only angle that is strange is from bottom to top when colors are inverted.

3. Battery tested in 4.0.3 firmware last about 4h 30min at first charge with moderate use (wathcing movies, surfing internet, play some games). The bad news is that after tablet lost all juice it took 9h to recharge with wall charger. Maybe it is not so good to let tablet fully discharge. Battery technology indicates LiFe. I don't know if it needs formatting at first charge. The good think at battery is that has a linear discharge. I've noticed that display and wifi are equal in battery consumption. Battery can also be recharged over usb connection.

4. Wi-fi is very very good. I have full signal in all my house event between two walls. I've tested internet speed with speed-test mobile and the results are very very good. 20Mb download and 20Mb upload with a G only router. I don't have a wireless N router to test.

5. Video play capability it is as advertised. It play with no frame drop 1080p high profile mkv adn mp4. Also divx, xvid and all other formats are hardware decoded witch means that cpu stay on lowest load and result is low power consumption. It also able to hw decode stream-ts and stream-ps network streams. This format never hw decoded on other tablets i have. I give a big plus at this capability.

6. Games are working good. I've tested some gameloft games like: order & chaos, modern combat 2 (crossair it is not centered in this game), modern combat 3, avatar, spiderman, gt motors, dungeon hunter 2. In ICS firmware some games are not playing full screen. Personally i have downgraded to 2.3.4 to be able to play full screen games. In 2.3.4 screen adoption has two options: center to center game but not full screen and full what means that games are streched to fill screen. In ICS is available only center option and some games are not working full screen.

7. Factory firmware is ICS 4.0.1 but to me was so laggy and i decided to upgrade to 4.0.3. In 4.0.3 first thing i've noticed that the status bar is not hide anymore in games and movies. Both 4.0.1 and 4.0.3, when play movies with other video player except default one, display 2 subtitles. I think one is hardware decoded by the system and i can't set char set. It is a very annoying thing. I can't watch movies with subtitels because of this. Instead i've been forcet to watch moveis with stock player that has the options to set up char encoding and sub size. Now i use 2.3.4 firmware and watch movies with mx video player.

8. Overall, tablet worth the money i've spent. I am waiting that ainol release factory firmware 4.0.1 with some improovments or 4.0.3 with hide status bar capability.

[dfranz]

Thanks for your review, I may be adding to it soon.

[mihaidsn]

Second recharge from 20% to 100% using wall charger took 3:30min. So i guess is not very good to let tablet complete discharge. I will make a battery drain test using only video play and post results. Anyway, battery is not good like novo7a. Stated at 3700mah and with high resolution screen and maybe diferent wifi module this could be less eficient.