It seems like everyone is hopping on the Tablet bandwagon lately, and Velocity Micro is no different. Usually the maker of high end Desktop PCs, Velocity Micro has only recently entered the tablet market. Their first entry is the Cruz tablet T103 and today we’re going to see if a tablet with a 7″ screen can possibly compete with the rest of the tablet market.

Features

• Full color 7″ TFT capacitive touch screen
• Android 2.0
• 512MB RAM
• 4GB AND 8GB bundled SD cards
• Li-Ion battery – up to 10+ hours of life, 24+ standby

Something else I want to point out is that this tablet comes in three flavors. They the are named the T103, T104, and T105. The only difference I can find between the three is the extra accessories that they include. For example, the T103 includes a 4GB and 8GB SD card, and the T104 (the one I got) includes 2 8GB SD cards. Also included with the T104 is a slipcase, Mini USB cable, and an AC adapter.

Box

Contents

Design

The Velocity Cruz Tablet measures 7.5″ x 4.75″ x 0.6″ and weighs 18.4oz. Compare that to the Samsung Galaxy Tab which is 7.48″ x 4.76″ x 0.47″ and weighs 13.23oz. They are almost exactly the same size, with the Cruz being slightly heaver and thicker.

Almost the entire front is taken up with the screen, which is how it should be. However, there is about a 3/4″ bezel around the screen. I would prefer that the screen goes edge to edge like my phone does, but that does not seem like the trend with tablets.

Screen

At the right of the screen (when holding it horizontally) are three touch buttons. They are back, menu, and home. These buttons are super sensitive and it is very easy to accidentally press them with your palm when you are holding it. The buttons also have lights behind them, but they only light up when pressed.

At the top if the screen is a light sensor, but I don’t think it is hooked up to anything because when I turn off the lights nothing happens. I was hoping it would turn on the light behind the buttons, but it doesn’t, which makes them very hard to see in the dark.

The top edge of the tablet has the volume, and reset button.

Top

The left side has a SD card, headphone jack, mini USB port, power plug, and the power button.

Left

The bottom of the tablet has two speakers, a docking port, and a Kesington lock slot.

Bottom

On the back is a removable cover that opens to reveal the batteries. While it looks like they can be removed and possibly replaced, I don’t know where you would go to find replacements.

Back

Batteries

The Cruz tablet does not come with the Google Market, but it does have the Cruz Market. The Cruz Market is a sorry replacement for the Google Market, but it does have a few apps that are useful, one of those is the AndAppStore.

Cruz Market

AndAppStore

Like the Cruz Market the AndAppStore is another Google Market copy, but this one has a lot more apps, and better features than the Cruz Market. One of the best features is that it will search for updates to your apps and notify you when it finds them. However, this only works for apps that were installed from the store. I was actually able to find some useful apps, including a Plants vs Zombies game that is not available on the Google Market. One thing to be aware of is that not all apps will install, and even if they do install not all apps will work. It ends up being a bit of an adventure to find the apps that both install and work.

Plants vs Zombies

One thing I found interesting is that in the Date and time settings it was set to automatically use network provided values. However, since this tablet does not have a cellphone receiver it does not have a network to get the time from. So I had to uncheck this and set the Date and time manually.

DateTime

Performance

Performance testing on a tablet is just like on a PC or Laptop. There are a variety of tools available to test the CPU, memory, graphics, and filesystem. Before we get to the actual tests lets take a look at the hardware inside the Velocity Cruz Tablet.

From the specs above I don’t think anyone is under the impression that this tablet is going to break any speed records. If you are looking for an ultra fast tablet then you might as well stop reading this review now and go find something else. Without a dedicated graphics processor, and only a 600MHz processor this tablet is certainly not for gaming.

Since I don’t have another tablet to compare this to I will be using my HTC Incredible. I ran each test several times and picked out the highest score for each.

So the first test I ran on this tablet is called Benchmark. It is a very simple test that goes through the CPU, Memory, Graphics, and filesystem and then displays a score at the end. As you can see from the scores below the HTC incredible wins in almost every test. This is no surprise because the Incredible has a faster processor and cost a lot more money. However, I extremely surprised that the Cruz got a higher graphics score than the Incredible. This does not match up with my real life experience. Games that run very smoothly on the Incredible crawl on the Cruz. So I am not sure what info the test uses to generate the score, it is certainly not game rendering.

Cruz Graphic	Incredible Graphic
Cruz CPU	Incredible CPU
Cruz Memory	Incredible Memory
Cruz Filesystem	Incredible Filesystem

The next test is called PI. This test only tests the CPU and it does this by making it calculate PI and reporting the time it took to complete the task. Again the Incredible gets a higher score, but this is no surprise because as I said above the Incredible has a faster processor.

Cruz PI

Incredible PI

The last test draws a simple 2D graphic and tracks the FPS. Again the Incredible gets a higher score, but not by much.

Cruz fps2d

Incredible fps2d

There were also several 3D graphic tests that I tried to install, but none of them would work in the Cruz.

On to the battery test. Since there isn’t an app yet that does a battery test I had to invent my own. For this test I loaded up the Cruz with a bunch of movies and played them one after another until the battery died. I also set the screen brightness, and volume to 50% and turned off WiFi. I started the test a 7am and it took all the way until 4:30pm until the battery died. That is an amazing 9.5 hours.

Now that we have gotten past the tests I want to talk about my actual experience with the tablet and some of the things I saw.

One of the first things I noticed when I took the Cruz out of the box was how heavy it is. I know it is the same weight as the Galaxy tab, but for its size it just seems really heavy. This is probably due to the large batteries I saw earlier, but those same batteries also were what gave the Cruz it amazing run time score. The weight is certainly something you have to take into account. Since the Cruz does not have a stand, or a way to prop it up, you will find yourself holding it in you hands when watching movies or reading books. This can eventually get tiring if you are not used to that weight.

While watching movies the video randomly stops with a message “Sorry, this video cannot be played”, but the audio keeps playing. However, when I restart the movie it will play just fine. I cannot directly blame the tablet because it may have something to do with my encoding method.

Also reading books is very nice on this tablet. Switching pages can be a bit laggy but otherwise the text is very clear and easy to read.

The biggest problem I had was with the screen. Velocity Micro lists this screen as being “Ultra Sensitive”, but what I experienced was just the opposite. The sensitivity was so bad that I originally thought this screen was resistive, but when I tried using a stylus it would not respond. The problem is that quite often the screen would not recognize my touch at first. My initial reaction was to press harder, but since this is a capacitive screen that did not help. Instead I just had to wait until the screen responded. This made flipping between the home pages quite difficult because you have to move your finger quickly, but was tolerable with everything else like movies and books.

Also the screen has some viewing angle problems. When tilting in certain directions it darkens and it is difficult to see. I put together the image below to give you an idea of how the screen looks from different angles.

Screen Angles

The touch buttons, on the other hand, are Ultra Sensitive. It is very easy to accidentally press the buttons while holding the tablet and send yourself back to the home page, this is especially annoying when reading a book or watching a movie. The touch buttons also don’t lite up in the dark, they have a back light, but it only comes on when a button is being pressed.

Last, but not least, I would like to mention the audio. The Cruz Tablet has two speakers which are at the bottom of the tablet, but they are fairly weak. When playing movies at full volume I had a hard time clearly hearing the words that were spoken, even in a quite room. When in a noisy room it was impossible to hear anything. I highly recommend a set of headphones if you are planning on watching movies on this tablet.

Support and Warranty

Velocity includes a 1 year warranty with the Cruz tablet. Not a great warranty by any means, but certainly better than the 0 day warranty you get if you by a Chinese knockoff tablet.

As for support, Velocity has the standard methods for getting help, including Phone, email, website, etc. I did buy a desktop from them several years ago, and when I needed replacement parts their support team was always helpful. I don’t have any reason to believe that tablet support would be any different.

Conclusion

This is by no means a high end tablet. With a paltry 600MHz processor and only 500MB of internal RAM it will not win any performance awards. However, it also does not come with a high end tablet price. The Velocity Cruz tablet retails for $250, but I managed to pick mine up for $80 off. At only $170 I think this tablet does a great job of playing movies and display text. I am very comfortable recommending it to anyone looking for a cheap, but usable tablet. Add to that the amazing battery life of 9.5 hours and I think I have a winner.