Strawberryland Forum

In other short news, The Menards Black Friday ad has leaked. And guess what is back?

I am going to get this projector, even though I don't have a room or a clear wall for it. If this is similar to DVD projectors I seen on Chinese stores, then this should come with a USB game pad and a mystery game disc. I want to know if this thing comes with NES roms or low quality homebrews.

Oh, and I also plan on upgrading to an HDMI DVD player. Menards has one for $15 that day.

There, just fixed the embed link on Prudie's post.

You all know that about two months ago, I went ahead and upgraded from old Hazel to Pumpkin, the RCA Maven tablet. He's probably the best Android tablet I have used so far, containing a nearly stock Android 5.0 UI, great performance, a rather small amount of bloatware, and rather amazing battery life. However, Pumpkin is nearly 11'' in size, comparable to an iPad. While playing games, the he can be a bit unweildly to hold, especially riding a bus or on a trip of sorts.

I wondered if I should have made Pumkpin a 9'' tablet?


A local farm store called "Runnings Farm & Fleet" is offering this "Bright Tab" for sale on Black Friday. Another store called Macs Hardware is offering the same thing. Doing my homework, I found the specs in the user manual here:
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.brighttablet.com/user-manual.html">http://www.brighttablet.com/user-manual.html</a><!-- m -->
(click on the 9'' Quad Core Tablet link and the specs are on the last page)

The tablet has an Allwinner A33 Quad-core CPU, a 9'' 800x480 TFT screen, either 512mb or 1GB RAM, and a 4000mAH battery. Pumpkin has an Mediatek MTK8127 Quad-core CPU, a 1366x768 IPS(?) screen, and 1GB RAM.

It already loses a few points for being a TFT LCD. I believe Pumpkin uses an IPS screen as the viewing angle is pretty good. TFT LCDs don't have such good viewing angles. Another loss is the 512mb RAM possibility. Sonic Dash requires a moderately beefy amount of RAM to run good, and 512mb RAM seems a bit small these days. I also know from experience that Allwinner CPUs can get very hot during use. Old Daffodil has an Allwinner CPU, and I was worried sticking her in one of those tablet cases could cause her CPU to fry itself.

Hmm... now that I think about it, perhaps I should just skip this tablet. Besides, I already plan on getting that weird DVD projector from Menards. I could use the rest of my budget for something else I want. Then again, I hear Mediatek tablets can be very hard to unbrick. Don't know how easy it is for Allwinner tablets to unbrick, but since I mostly stick with stock firmware, I shouldn't run into any bricking issues with either tablet.

The lower resoution, for one, is a turnoff, as I'm already used to 1024x600 and above. Any lower would look a tad too grainy for me. Suffice it to say, I'd definitely skip on that for the screen and the RAM size being way too anemic.

huckleberrypie Wrote:The lower resoution, for one, is a turnoff, as I'm already used to 1024x600 and above. Any lower would look a tad too grainy for me. Suffice it to say, I'd definitely skip on that for the screen and the RAM size being way too anemic.

Will do. The battery may not be as great as Pumpkin either. Pumpkin lasts me two days on a full charge, seeing as how I browse the web and play casual games in short spurts. Pumpkin doesn't get blazing hot either.

cpd2009 Wrote:

huckleberrypie Wrote:The lower resoution, for one, is a turnoff, as I'm already used to 1024x600 and above. Any lower would look a tad too grainy for me. Suffice it to say, I'd definitely skip on that for the screen and the RAM size being way too anemic.

Will do. The battery may not be as great as Pumpkin either. Pumpkin lasts me two days on a full charge, seeing as how I browse the web and play casual games in short spurts. Pumpkin doesn't get blazing hot either.

I'm thinking of shoving in at least a 3500mAh battery on my Kingcom tab, but I'm not sure if having one imported from China or some place else would be worth the trouble, i.e. customs fees and the like. One of my friends did order a bunch of RJ45-USB adapters before sans issues, so it may not be that much of a long shot.

Well, if the weather holds out, we are indeed going out of town Friday morning to start Christmas shopping. So far, I only plan to get the Menards DVD Projector... if any are left. According to the Menards website for our nearby store, they only have 24 in stock. :/

I'm still thinking about the $16 HDMI upscaling DVD player. I already have two other DVD players I bought from Menards BF sales in 2010 and 2011. It's excessive, but the 2011 was a no-name Chinese import with a USB input function; a literal impulse buy.

I lost the remote for the latter, and the former (a "HarmonTec" brand) is misplaced somewhere, while I have the remote handy. Figures. If I could just find either of those, I won't really need the HDMI DVD player.

Oh, I also plan on a Doublicious Sandwich from KFC. Those are awesome!

Well, I know what to ask for Christmas.

The Neo Geo X Portable system bundle from Amazon.

Yes, the emulation is crap but there is no way I will ever be able to afford a real Neo Geo system along with the games and peripherals. The various NG collections for Wii and virtual console only go so far.

So I've been thinking about getting a new tablet to compliment my A31s-powered one. Problem is that most of them ran on either Rockchip, Intel Atom or Mediatek SoCs. I don't mind the latter as I've messed around with them MTKs before, but it won't be until after Christmas where I'll get my hands on one.



The Lenovo Tab 2 A7-30HC's a 'swell candidate as it looks sturdy enough, far cry from the shoddy white-box ones littering tech stores and flea markets, but I hope it's still available by the time I'm able to spend $$ on it.

huckleberrypie Wrote:So I've been thinking about getting a new tablet to compliment my A31s-powered one. Problem is that most of them ran on either Rockchip, Intel Atom or Mediatek SoCs. I don't mind the latter as I've messed around with them MTKs before, but it won't be until after Christmas where I'll get my hands on one.



The Lenovo Tab 2 A7-30HC's a 'swell candidate as it looks sturdy enough, far cry from the shoddy white-box ones littering tech stores and flea markets, but I hope it's still available by the time I'm able to spend $$ on it.

Pumpkin, an RCA Maven Pro 11.6'', was on sale for $149 USD IIRC; the higher price likely from the larger size and the included detachable keyboard/touchpad. The RCA name is just a badge, but being $149, he performs very well and also has a 'swell battery life. The Lenovo pictured above would probably be a good buy. Hopefully it should still be in stock by the time you can purchase it.

As for me, I have started to rethink the BrightTab. I searched on Google for reviews a few days ago, but no reviews for the 9'' quad-core model could be found. Only reviews of an older 7'' Bright Tab were found and the reviews are mixed overall. Amazon has a 3-star overall rating, while Walmart has a 3 1/2.

Thus, I decided to buy the BrightTab after all, if any are left. I want to do some sort of review on it, perhaps even a video review for my YouTube channel. It will not replace Pumpkin, but if it's good enough, it will become his companion. I will test and compare general performance, game performance, battery life, LCD screen quality, and run an AnTuTu benchmark. Pumpkin's AnTuTu benchmark score is 22064, and the BrightTab probably won't get that high being a $59 China-tab. If it does though, I will be genuinely surprised.