Jexaa JexTab 812HD review

Jexaa is UK-based company that specialises in producing cheap Android tablets, and like other models at around this price, its JexTab 812 HD doesn’t sport Honeycomb. Instead, you get a slightly modified version of the designed-for-smartphone Android 2.3.

In theory that’s a bad idea. On many other tablets of the JexTab’s ilk this usually leads to major flaws: smartphone graphics don’t normally scale up well to a tablet’s larger screen, and look ugly as a result; the hardware is usually slow, cheap and nasty; and, critically, there’s usually no access to Android Market.

The JexTab 812 HD knocks all these preconceptions firmly on the head. Its slightly modified user interface looks sleek, with none of the pixellation that we’ve see afflict other Android 2.x tablets.

There’s plenty of room on the desktop for application shortcuts and widgets too; at least as much as you’ll find on an Android 3 tablet.

Nor is it poorly made. It’s slim and light, and although the rear panel is cheap glossy grey plastic the front fascia’s aluminium finish feels expensive. It’s the screen that’s the star of the show, though: it measures an unusual 8in across the diagonal, uses capacitive, multitouch touchscreen technology, and although the maximum brightness looks low at a maximum 208cd/m[sup]2[/sup], it doesn’t come across that way in day to day use. Quality, in fact, is very good.

The other thing to note about the JexTab’s display is that, unlike any other Android tablet on the market, it matches the iPad 2’s resolution of 1,024 x 768, which means it’s more comfortable to use in portrait orientation than tablets with wider aspect displays.