Another one you ask, well its a mini review of something the next stage up for a OTG cable. IF you remember the OTG hub from last year, which i had to sell to a customer in a rush. . This was actually from Banggood, the same place as the Redmi 4 and Mi Band 2. Since its a quick one, no video on this.
The Packaging.
In all honesty, its a white sleeve with the cable and a stick with the stock code. Plain, simple and not much clearer than that.
A look from the top of the packet
Another look at the packet
Once opened, it shown that the cable was a bit stiff and it has a Micro USB input as well as the hub and a switch.
The OTG Cable.
Once opened, it shown that the cable was a bit stiff and it has a Micro USB input as well as the hub and a switch. There is a LED light underneath it which can be either red or blue too. Thats the basics
The side of the hub
The Micro USB Port.
Now the options for the switches are:
1: OTG Hub Function
This allows you to use up to 4 usb thingys (devices, like cameras, mice, keyboard etc) into your tablet at the same time. This does not let you charge it.
As per the site, it is supposed to work with the following devices:
Acer W4-820
Asus M80TA - This will not show the charging symbol
Asus T100TA - This will charge and allow you to use the hub AT THE SAME TIME)
Lenovo Mix 2 8"
Lenovo Mix 3 10
2: OTG + Charge.
Now This one is supposed to allow you to have the Hub and charge it at the same time with alot more tablets such as:
Dell V8P
Teclast Range of Tablets
Chuwi VX8 3G (running Windows 8.1)
Onda V975i, V975W (both Running Windows 8.1)
Onda V819i, V819W (both running windows 8.1)
Onda V891W
Livefan F8C
Asus ME400C
Ramos i8Pro
Vido W8C
Cube iWork 7, iWork 8
Ployer MOMO8W
PIPO W4, W5
Chuwi V10HD
ifive MX2
Colorful i818W
HP Stream 7
3: OTG for Certain Models
This is a special variant that only works on the Toshiba WT8 or the Lenovo Thinkpad 8, there is no reason or why this happens, but it exists.
The Testing.
Android:
Well its the one i did test with the other hub, but it did as it sort of should. Well it charged using switch 2 and switch 3 but switch one was using the OTG and no charge. aka this doesn't actually work with OTG and Charging at the same time.
it gives charge
OTG not working with switch 2
OTG does work with switch 1
Windows:
It was the same again to be fair, but it was also the need to install the drivers from the USB drive so it could not last long on power and it did switch off with the hub plugged in on switch 1, switch 2 did charge it back up again but sadly the OTG does not work on this mode.
Installing drivers with the help of the OTG Charger
Its charging on the second switch.
Conclusion.
This is a slight improvement on the other OTG Hub but sadly the trick of it charging and using OTG at the same time is going to be a tricky one. I know i could change a settings in the bios to fix this but that will risk bricking the tablet and not accepting the charge. With that in mind
omracer's Rating: 7/10
The Good Points:
4 ports on the OTG
Stronger Cable
Micro USB Port
3 different Modes.
Reasonable price
The Bad Points:
Modes 2 and 3 DO NOT WORK on the Onda V919 Air CH and Xiaomi Redmi 4, they just CHARGE either device, mode 1 does OTG only for both devices.
There could be signs of easily bending the Micro USB pin on the Hub (Not the port, the male connector)
Can be more expensive if purchasing in the UK.
And there goes another review, I will try to get more up this year but we will see with other projects and the like as well.
After some modding and tinkering, I have managed to get this to work properly and make it the DUAL OS Version: Thanks for the forums at 4pad which Have helped me out alot from reading.
Introduction:
This was another review I was planning, since the v820w is ok but not powerful enough for my needs anymore, sure it does chrome fine, but things like tinychat, OBS streaming, some steam games and video rendering (intel quicksync wise) is pretty poor and I think going to the Cherry Trail 4GB 64GB tablets might be a next stage up. Now this one I've bought was a USED one so don't expect the quality to be perfect. Costing me £113 from a user from ebay (the postage was £12, holy fuck, but this was insurance of the product he added on. But this can be bought from China for £144 including Postage and NO CUSTOMS FEES if you don't use express, Add £19 if you do. But the video eventually is below:
The Packaging:
Now this was nicely done with the Keyboard and the Case in the Box it came in. Now I had to reseal all 3 in a jiffy bag then tap a bag around it to run up to a home visit after work then run home (the friday 20th weather was crap anyway but it protected it. But you can tell ONDA have a nice angellic white design or even a Apple esque design with their packaging. The Keyboard was ok but the metallic plate is magnetic which is good for some things. Sadly the case was a dull colour but it was a genuine onda one which makes it a good deal for me in its navy blue finish with a creme plastic shell for the 919 AIR CH to go in.
The bag when i got home from work
Unwrapping the packaging
The case and the box for the Tablet (The keyboard was inside the case)
Inside the Tablet Case
A look from the outside
Underneath the Bluetooth Keyboard
The Keyboard on the front
The look at the charging pointof the keyboard, this is micro USB
This is technically the back of the Case
Now the box is a Apple styled box which does give it a charm and the simplicity of the design is what makes it very stylised and mostly desirable. Even though the colour of the tablet in the box is actually different from the one pictured on the Tablet.
The front of the Box
The side of the box to show off the slimness of it
Onda and Serial Numbers
The other side of the box with just the ONDA logo
The back of the box. Featuring the specs of the tablet
ONDA and QR Codes
A Look Inside the box:
Now when we open the box we see the plastic screen cover sealed on the top, then underneath, in a bag is the golden looking tablet itsself. Now this doesn't look as golden as the picture which is a slight put off but then the boxs underneath are empty, except a Dell USB to Cloverleaf Charger, which is the first i've ever seen but its not needed for this review. Since this was a used one, this DIDN'T have a Manual so that made things quite quicker to review.
The plastic screen protector on the top of the box
The Tablet itself
The back of the tablet
A closer look at the top of the back of the tablet
The dell charger and the Micro USB Cable
Now the Tablet itself is actually quite meaty yet slim, with a metallic frame as well as the gold from close up but then the close look is that it doesn't look that gold and more of a brushed metal, which is fine for a chinese tablet like ONDA. There are screws at the bottom of it and the buttons are nice and strong along with the close to each other connectors like Micro HDMI, Micro USB and the 3.5mm earphone jack.
The close up of the buttons
The top of the tablet, notice the windows button and webcam like the v820w had
The micro HDMI and the Microphone port
Then you can see what i mean with the close up connectors
The front of the tablet with the windows logo.
Getting it Set Up:
Fitting the Screen Protector and the Case:
This was the tricky ish part before evening turning it on, applying the screen protector. I managed to get it done mostly right in the second atempt even with some air bubbles to push out and there also was the fitting the tablet in the case, which actually was quite nicely done.
See, it fits nicely in the case
The buttons are ok seated. There is a bit of a close to the plastic but its not the end of the world
Well it might make a difference with the case fitting the camera, a problem I did have with the v820w since i DIDN'T use an official case
The First Turn on:
Now this was quite smooth, it turned on, a profile with "Y" came up and also it was looking in English, now don't be fooled here, the settings to get it working in English aren't always 100% which I shortly found out but, it felt responsive, the internet worked, the keyboard that came with it was paired and had little trouble. The size was easy to read (its actually on a 200% scale) and the battery was ok. But when i started installing Skype, things were looking towards a English reinstall.
You can tell its a retina due to the small size of the ONDA logo
The logon screen with Y and then my profile (always make a new profile when using a MS Account before signing in as one)
What the keyboard looked like with the case (since there is a magnetic strip) and the screen
The Tablet with MY touchpad bluetooth keyboard and that worked LAG FREE.
A summary of the Specs for the ONDA
The problem which means a Reinstall was needed.
Reinstalling Windows:
Note: There is a quicker fix of slipstreaming the onda Drivers into the Windows 10 installer using NTLite, Follow a quick Guide i made HERE
Now this would sound intensely tricky on this, and you are right but towards the end. So with a copy of Windows 10 x64 build 1511 put on a usb drive thanks to rufus (already having a copy of the iso on my laptop makes things in life easier), I got it installing quite well and wiped all of the partitions, . Now this is NOT A DUAL BOOT VERSION, so there is nothing to worry about with deleting all 3 partitions and since this is a 64gb version, there is less hassle with space which the v820w had major problems with. But I was on the desktop within about 30 minutes.
The squashed BIOS
the second tab
the third tab
The final tab, this is used to boot into the USB Drive
Look how tiny the install screen is
This is tricky due to the size of the text compare to the window
it gets going nicely
The Drivers:
NOW THIS IS THE BITCH PROBLEM. Since there was little drivers working and on the v820w the wifi was OOB which means things are easier a little bit, Sadly this was not the case with this one, infact it was the reason this review was delayed by a day. But Thanks to TechTablets having a copy of the drivers. Getting them wasn't the issue. And although the battery was too low during the end which didn't help, it was a reasonable time of getting them done. Which eventually had to be another Wifi driver to use, it took about 2 hours to get going.
The drivers not installed
This one was a fucking nightmare, the solution was to disable the driver signing feature but that didn't work
The audio driver was also a issue, but disabling the driver signing feature worked
But then it was working except the Intel AV Stream camera and ANOTHER REINSTALL and making sure it worked without driver signing did the trick, until the wifi problem was no networks detected but this was not even fixed until that wifi patch and a few reboots. When that was done, it was actually working nicely. So lets begin the Tests...
The Tests:
The Cameras:
Now after the drivers managed to work, I got a picture, which is nice. The thing is, the quality of the camera actually shocked me on how its pretty good for a 2MP OV2680 camera (on both front and back). Well the video, now that was 720p on the FRONT and back camera. Which was a smooth 30fps too, sure there was some grain around but it was a good quality image to be fair, Ok this isn't ideal for vlogging but its nice for a skype call or even the skype sex phase.
The rear camera
This actually looks clear for a selfie.
So this one suprised me and its a good look, of course this isn't powerful enough for streaming since the OTG drains more battery than its lead to believe (more on that later on) But its a improvement on this tablets already shocking impression.
General Web Browsing.
Now this one is for the majority of people and actually, it does work reasonably smooth, in Chrome as well which is a shocker with it dealing with RAM, it made the v820w lag mostly badly, but with this one, its actually 2.9 out of 3.6GB used. There was a little bit of a slower loading time which is not surprising since the z8300 is actually slower than the z3735f.
Video Editing:
Now this one was an interesting one. Since it was actually doable, like the video I was editing was smooth and there were some settings to look at but it DID RENDER correctly with OPENCL, not intel quicksync which was ok but not ok in the sense that on a data sheet, intel mention Intel Quick Sync video which Movie Studio 12 didn't notice. But it had taken 29 minutes to render a 3 minute video in 720p, 30fps, 4000kbit rate and 192+ kbps audio. But using the touchpad and keyboard, it was actually easier than the 820w to do things to the timeline.
Video Editing with Movie Studio
It started.
Video Playback and Screen Mirroring:
Now this was a bit of a odd one, since this was acutally a test to do wth a certain life show of a certain west land with thrones. But bascially the screen mirrored nicely with the Micro HDMI cable and there was no problem compared to the v820w having to cut the cable. We do however have a problem with watching that show on the tv, since there was massive blocking and lagging occuring in scenes like the choosing of the king and the command to find a cure of the stone people zombie things, which did stress me out a little bit and dishearten people watching it on this tablet.
The screen mirroring
But the resolution of the screen was set to 1920x1080 and that got rid of the black bars on the tv but it made the view of that tablet look like it was only through the middle. This was easy to change via the charms or notification on the right hand side.
Android and the long term guess fixes.
With Playom soon to be a fully working business, I had to be getting this to work to use as a till, after reading forums and such, some mods I had to make and flashing the Dual OS bios had made this actually a reasonable tablet that works to a degree.
The Mods:
This was basically making a bit of foil to help drain heat away from the battery (not itself) and more from the CPU, this has helped with the shutdown issues a fair bit of times, the russians mentioned foam, I used kitchen towel and a invoice from a supplier for playom. This actually proved its worth and can work to a degree, but the thicker it is, the better this works
Part one of this mod
Part two of this mod
Android.
This is when things made the tablet work better. Which Flashing the dual os bios is possible by the program (GUI) that comes with the Y05D117 bios update and that can be flashed by the disable rom verify and also flash/program all sectors being ticked. This then brings up the bootloader to be this
The boot options almost every time
This can be useful but you might have to use a decent android rom for it, the Remix OS is crap and doesn't work for Paypal here, aka you can't even charge someone, but the original rom can and works nicely. The easy way to get it brushed (install it) is by letting it format the entire thing and then it will want windows, but use Switch OS or going into the bios (Power and VOL+) then boot and change order to the UEFI usb first. Rufus can make the drive UEFI FAT32 in GPT then copy the files over in the download. Remix os has 8GB storage, The android rom has 16GB.
The Conclusion:
Even though there is possibly still so much to do with it features still being wanted, the experience I've gotten from it are more question marks which i need to answer or things, like for example the 8GB of ram is actually set to 800mah instead of up to 1600mhz which makes it that compatible with Windows 10. That and there were problems with using OTG. Games i've not had chance to test since i've got a steambox now.
omracer's Rating BEFORE Mods: 3/10
omracer's Rating AFTER Mods: 7/10
The Good Points
The golden surface of the air ch looks amazing
The case fits
64GB storage as one partition
4GB RAM for chrome etc
Windows 10 Home in English and not Chinese only version.
The cameras can record 720p in 30fps
Nice and usable when video editing before ready to render#
Android works nicely :)
The Bad Points:
Can be slower than a z3735f
MAJOR PROBLEMS WITH DRIVERS AFTER CLEAN INSTALL
randomly turn off tablet
Can be heavy for a tablet
Intel Quicksync not fully integrated
EDIT: Can only work for a long time when plugged in, battery does not last
That comes to at least some of the conclusion of this border stressful tablet, more reviews coming soon, when i can get chance to film them.
