CloudPad 800w full review!

Much like locally branded phones, tablets offered by local brands have leveled up. The local tablet scene is barely discernible from the one last year – gone are the sluggish, single core, low resolution offerings with cheap plastic bodies, replaced by fast, quality HD tablets with designs that you’d expect from foreign brands. Today, we’ll be reviewing one such tablet – the CloudPad 800w offered by local brand CloudFone.

CloudPad 800w specs

•    2GHz Dual Core Intel Atom Z2580 processor
•     PowerVR SGX544 MP graphics
•     1GB RAM
•     32GB of internal storage expandable via MicroSD up to 32GB
•     7.85-inch XGA display (1028 x 768 pixels)
•     5 megapixel rear facing camera
•     2 megapixel front facing camera
•     WiFi, Bluetooth
•     GPS, A-GPS
•     4,600 Li-Po battery
•     Android 4.2 Jellybean
•     SRP: Php 8,999

A design lifted straight from Apple

There’s no beating around the bush – the CloudPad 800w looks eerily like the iPad Mini. From back to front, it’s unapollegetically desinged like Apple’s offering. Of course, there are a few things that’s not present on Apple’s best selling tablet – it doesn’t have a physical home button, and all the physical home buttons that it does have are all grouped on the left side along with a microSD card slot. The 3.5mm jack and USB slot are located on the top of the device.

The large, Intel Logo on the back should clue in anyone looking at the CloudPad 800w from behind that it isn’t a product from Cupertino if they still had doubts about its lineage. As is the norm for mobile devices, the 5-megapixel camera is located on the back. The metal back cover gives the CloudPad 800w a premium look and feel, which shouldn’t come as a surprise as CloudFone has earned a reputation of offering products with fantastic build quality.

Much like the first generation iPad Mini, the CloudPad 800w sports a decent XGA display which has a resolution of 1028 x 768 pixels. While the resolution may be a bit low for some people, it gives the CloudPad 800w a slight boost in performance as it doesn’t have to power an HD or even a full HD display. We found that the display was very bright and had good color reproduction. The display is also easily readable under direct sunlight, though the absence of an ambient light sensor means that you’ll have to adjust the brightness yourself.

Solid performer through and through, thanks to Intel’s silicon

We knew coming in that the CloudPad 800w would be a performer, thanks to its 2GHz dual-core Intel Atom Z2580 processor. While on paper, the Z2580 processor is only “dual-core”, you have to keep in mind that it uses Intel’s hyperthreading technology, which essentially makes it function like a quad-core processor. Our initial unboxing benchmark with AnTuTu yielded a score of 21,997, though another pass with AnTuTu near the tail end of our review yielded an even higher score of 22,020. Unburdened with a full HD display, the CloudPad 800w has a lot more processing power to dispense towards other tasks.

As far as actual use goes, we rarely experienced any lag compared to other local tablets that we’ve reviewed before. As you’d expect, our gaming sessions were very smooth and lag free, even with a lot of zombies on the screen with Dead Trigger 2. We did notice that it takes a bit longer than usual to load levels in the game.

We did notice that the CloudPad 800w has weaker WiFi reception than other tablets we’ve tested before. We usually get at least three bars of WiFi from our router located on the second floor when we’re on the first, but the CloudPad 800w completely loses any kind of WiFi signal in the same spot.

Mediocre camera

We’ve said it a couple of times before and it bears repeating: we don’t recommend taking photos with tablets, simply because of how akward it is and the relatively poor cameras on local tablets. But if you just can’t resist, you’ll be happy to know that the CloudPad 800w takes decent enough photos for uploading to social media.

Great battery performance

The CloudPad 800w’s battery endurance is one of its strong suites. The 4,600mAh battery had more than enough juice to get through a day with moderate use. With heavy use, we managed to clock in 9 hours of useful battery life with at least 20% still remaining in the tank.

Verdict: Great buy from CloudFone!

We wholeheartedly recommend the CloudPad 800w to anyone looking for a tablet that has the legs to go the distance without compromising on performance. While it may not have an HD display like its competitors, the CloudPad 800w’s impressive battery life and performance make up for it.