iBerry Auxus AX02 Review

Making it to the first batch of Android Ice Cream Sandwich-based tablets to emerge in India, the iBerry Auxus AX02 follows the Zync Z990 and Ainol Novo 7 Paladin, straight into our review labs. After dishing out a piece of the Gingerbread, the company was quick enough to launch the Auxus AX02 and it wouldn't make you grin over the price, which is well intact at Rs.10,000. To know if the tablet is worth every penny, and how it fares against its competitors coming with price tags that read Rs.1,000 to 2,000 less, here’s the review of the iBerry Auxus AX02 tablet.

Design and Build quality

The newest iBerry tablet with Android’s newest flavoured operating system looks like the usual 7-inch tablet. The Auxus AX02 equips a 7-inch capacitive touchscreen on the front side with a steel circular button, giving this tablet a distinct look, compared to the most recent ICS tablets that we’ve got to lay our hands on. Besides, the front side also shows the secondary VGA camera for video conferencing. Flip it, and the backside imprints all logos and certifications, and before you overlook, there’s the 2 megapixel camera, speakers and the reset button. It was nice to see the physical, steel volume controls, while the right side has been embedded the power button, charging port, microSD card slot, headphone jack, HDMI and mini USB port.

This iBerry device maintains the sturdy build that we saw in the BT07i. It feels solid when held in one's palms, but it leaves us wishing it were lighter in weight. It appears sleek and solid, but once you pick it, you’d only wish it had been lighter. Also, the sturdiness has taken away the smooth edges, or so. The device has some sharp edges on the backside, luckily the front side is smoother. The buttons and ports also seem well integrated. The 800 x 400 WVGA touchscreen is responsive, but we were left wishing for a better display quality. The display of this tablet is a fingerprint magnet.

Features

User Interface

This iBerry is fuelled by a 1GHz ARM Cortex A8 processor and 1GB RAM. Running on the Android 4.0.3, iBerry hasn't customized the UI a lot for the AX02. The homescreen shows the Google Search icon on the left upper corner, while the Menu icon stays on the right side. A click on the icon, and you are taken to choose between Apps, and widgets. Here you will also find the Android Shop icon for quick access to the Market.  

The UI is slick and we didn't find it lagging and the navigation is smooth, too (owing to the quick responding accelerometer). On the lower right side, you will see the Back, Home and recent apps touch buttons. The AX02 scored 3095 on conducting the AnTuTu test. The scores are far better than most of the tablets in the same class. In fact, it's better than tablets posing a much higher price tag. In the Linpack benchmark, the single thread test emitted a score of 15.57 MFLOPS, while the multi thread score was 14.39 MFLOPS.Media

We started testing the video bit first. Apart from the stock player, the company has also bundled ES Media Player and MX Video player. We tried a couple of video files, like XVid, MOV, MP4 and WMV files of varying resolutions. The device managed to handle 1080p quite well without any stutter, whatsoever. The viewing angles are good. On the music front, we played our test MP3 files and the device managed to throw out some peppy tunes. The loudspeakers are loud enough to fill a small room, making listening to music and video viewing pleasurable. The device comes with 4GB memory to load your favorite content, and it is further expandable up to 32GB. Both music and video interfaces are simple.

Connectivity

The AX02 quickly connects to the Wi-Fi and 3G users will have to manage with the external 3G modem support. Though there is no standard USB, the company has included the mini USB to USB convertor, which again is a good addition, we must say.  There is also room for mini HDMI port and you can connect the tablet for viewing it on an HDTV for large screen viewing. We like the tabbed iBerry browser, but the web browsing isn't swift. The pages were slow at loading and the zoom in and zoom out functions were sluggish, and overall the performance was a little dull. It’s only during web browsing that we found a lag in the performance. The iBerry AX02 comes bundled with some apps, like Aldiko eBook reader, Skype, Twitter and Facebook.

CameraAlthough we have no complaints about tablets that come minus a rear camera, iBerry AX02’s inclusion of a rear camera is a welcome change. This tablet has both a VGA front facing and a 2 megapixel rear camera. The camera comes minus flash and auto-focus, so one shouldn't expect much from it. It flashed some decent images in bright light, but almost useless for low light conditions. It is debatable as to whether users prefer/ don't prefer holding the huge tablet for taking clicks, but we feel manufacturers need to start taking this feature more seriously.

Batterythe iBerry AX02 equips a Li-Po 4000 mAh battery. The specs sheet reveals video playback up to 5 hours for the tablet. But in our continuous video playback test, the device ran a low resolution movie for up to 5 hours 40 minutes, which is commendable. With average usage, the tablet is good enough to stretch through a day.

Verdict

The iBerry AX02 attaches a price of Rs.9,990, which is higher than that of the last two ICS tablets we saw. However, iBerry has crafted the AX02 with a solid build, good battery life and a slick UI. Sure, there are issues like it's dull with multi-tasking and a slightly heavy form factor, but those ready to give these issues a miss can sure consider this device when looking for an affordable Android Ice Cream Sandwich tablet, so far.