The XPad X801?s performance as a tablet leaves a lot to be desired

We liked Simmtronics XPad X720 for its graphics, 3G support, seamless performance and above all its economical price. While evaluating this Simmtronics tablet, we felt the same vigour missing. Despite some of its attractions like a 2G SIM slot, 3G via dongle, a USB 2.0 slot, an 8-inch/4:3 ratio display, a bigger battery and 8GB internal storage, it failed to qualify as our ideal 8k tablet, something which the lesser priced X720 readily pulled off among 4k tablets.

XPad X801 has a cheap metallic back panel with a shiny yet matte finish, hence smudge free. But the shiny front display is exactly the opposite and so gets smudged a lot. The panel has smooth curved edges, which makes it comfortable to hold, but it can?t obscure the fact that it also feels a little heavy. The build quality is good, compact to some extent, and quite sturdy compared to some faintly built 8k tablets like Acer Iconia B1 or Intex iBuddy Connect.

Its display has a decent but regular 800 x 600p resolution and looks okay. We found the video playback of SD videos all right. The tablet can serve your modest needs very well. You can do your social networking, read and reply back to your mails, play music at a fairly good tempo and lastly watch non-HD movies. There is Google Play, so you can download games and apps too, but most games will just hang or run awkwardly on it.

For our final verdict, we put the tablet to our broad performance tests, to see where it stands amongst other 8k tablets. In Antutu test, it scored just 2,153 which is very low. We have seen some 8k tablets register upto 5k. The score of 527 in Vellamo Web browsing performance test is again among the lowest. The same average performance echoes in An3D bench and An3D bench XL 3D graphics test with ordinary scores of 4,957 and 10,077 respectively. Its battery lasted a decent five hours in our battery test.

The tablet has dual cameras, the 2 MP rear one looks a little washed out but so do the cameras in most of the budget tablets. The 0.3 MP is good enough for video chats and conferences.

Most of the 8k tabs have 4GB internal storage, of course it can be expanded upto 32 GB, but this has 8 GB internal storage besides the 32 GB external. The presence of SIM slot rids you of spending extra on a data card, but this one supports only 2G. A lot of tabs in this price range have 2G SIM slot and support 3G via dongle. It?s better to go for tablets, like Zen A700, which support 3G via SIM and fall in the same price range.

Xpad X801 can?t be recommended for its performance. And if your job is restricted to just checking mails and watching movies, you can manage even with a 4k tablet.

Estimated street price: Rs8,500