Coby MID8065

The MID8065 ($149.99 list) is the tweener of the bunch in?Coby's latest crop of low-cost, Google-certified Android tablets. Sporting an?8-inch screen with a 4:3 aspect ratio, like the Apple iPad, the 8065 eschews the more common 16:9 found on most Android tablets. Otherwise, the MID8065 shares the same internal components as the smaller MID7065?and larger MID1065. As such, expect the same so-so performance coupled with a decent selection of ports, and access to Google Play, which you don't always get with bargain-bin tablets.

Editors' Note: The Coby MID8065 is virtually identical to the?MID7065?and?MID1065?except for screen size and price, so we're sharing a lot of material between these three reviews. That said, we're testing each device separately?and comparing it with the competition in its size/price range.

Design and Features
The 8-inch screen and 4:3 aspect ratio may have you thinking iPad mini, but aside from the similar proportions there's really no comparison. The MID8065 is made from nondescript black plastic and is squat and heavy at 8.3 by 6.25 by 0.45 inches (HWD) and 1.07 pounds. It's closer in size to the Amazon Kindle Fire 8.9". Along the right edge are the power plug, 3.5mm headphone jack, micro USB port (for syncing, not charging), and a mini HDMI port. There are Power and Volume buttons along the right side, with a microSD card slot on the left. ?

The 8-inch 1,024-by-768-pixel LCD lies somewhere between the fairly good IPS LCD found on the larger MID1065 and the subpar 7-inch LCD found on the MID7065. It looks reasonably sharp and offers good viewing angles, but like the MID7065, the screen doesn't get all that bright. Colors also tend to show a bluish hue, especially on white backgrounds. It's a much lower quality display than the one found in the Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0, but that tablet is in another stratosphere when it comes to price. The 4:3 aspect ratio is pretty rare for Android devices, and while it's good for browsing desktop websites, apps designed for phones look awkwardly stretched and squat. Apps written for tablets look good.

This is a Wi-Fi only tablet that connects to 802.11b/g/n networks on the 2.4GHz frequency, and you get Bluetooth 2.1, which is a nice bonus for a budget-minded tablet. The MID8065 comes in a single 4GB model, and our 32 and 64GB SanDisk cards worked fine in the tablet's card slot. There's also a 2-megapixel rear-facing camera and a 0.3-megapixel front-facing camera.

Android and Performance
The MID8065 is powered by the same dual-core 1.2GHz Amlogic Cortex A9 processor with 1GB RAM and a MALI 400 GPU found in the larger MID1065. It topped the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 (10.1) with its dual-core 1GHz Cortex A9 CPU in our benchmarks, but can't match the Kindle Fire HD 8.9" with its dual-core 1.5GHz TI OMAP4470 CPU.

Coby uses a different touch screen digitizer that doesn't feel quite as imprecise as the one found on the MID1065, so things are less choppy here. Performance is basically equal on all three Coby tablets?there's some occasional lag, but it feels on par with the Galaxy Tab 2. There's a delay between when the Power button is pressed and when the display wakes up.?

Android 4.0 "Ice Cream Sandwich" is now two versions behind the latest 4.2 "Jelly Bean" build, but Coby at least left it unskinned, which makes it appealing to Android purists. Newcomers, however, might be better served by the more polished, easy-to-use custom Android skins like Samsung's TouchWiz or the heavily modified Android featured on Amazon's Kindle Fire tablets. If you're a fan of pure Android, however, you'd be better served by the Google Nexus 7.

For video support, you get Xvid, DivX, MPEG4, H.264, and AVI at up to 1080p resolution. For audio, MP3, AAC, FLAC, OGG, WAV, and WMA are supported. Screen mirroring worked fine using a mini HDMI cable, and the tablet was able to output video at 720p or 1080p resolution. The 2-megapixel rear-facing camera takes pretty abysmal still images and choppy, noise-ridden video. The 0.3-megapixel camera should be strictly reserved for the occasional Skype call and nothing more.

In our battery rundown test, which loops a video with screen brightness set to max and Wi-Fi on, the MID8065 lasted an unimpressive 3 hours, 11 minutes. The Kindle Fire HD 8.9" turned in 7 hours and 14 minutes, while the Nexus 7 lasted 10 hours, 30 minutes in the same test.

Conclusions
The MID8065 lands in the middle of the pack of Coby's latest tablets, with the same middling performance, but an unorthodox screen size and aspect ratio. As with the larger MID1065 and smaller MID7065, the MID8065 is simply a serviceable Android tablet for the budget constrained. It's got a better screen than the MID7065, so if you're between those two, the MID8065 is the one to get. Spending $50 more can get you a much better tablet, like the Nexus 7, while stepping up $120 will get the vastly superior Amazon Kindle Fire HD 8.9" that also has four times the internal storage.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/uBQOlANF17w/0,2817,2417902,00.asp

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