PiPo S1 Android Jelly Bean Tablet Review

For a little less than just Php5,500 the PiPo S1 Android Tablet is a bargain hunter’s delight! Despite the very low price tag this tablet is amazingly powerful and elegantly designed. It’s amazing that it’s not getting enough hype in local tech sites. Anyway, we’ve been playing with this for more than two weeks now and we’d like to share with you guys our full, unbiased, and comprehensive review. Read on.

PiPo S1 Spec Sheet

• 1.6GHz Dual-core processor (RK3066)
• Quad-core Mali 400 GPU
• 1GB RAM
• 8GB Internal Storage, expandable up to 32GB via microSD
• 7-inch capacitive touchscreen, 800×480 pixels
• 2.0-megapixel rear-facing camera
• 0.3-megapixel front-facing camera
• WiFi (b/g), 3G via Dongle, G-Sensor, HDMI port (No GPS and Bluetooth)
• 3,200mAh Battery (4 Hours est. working time)
• Android 4.1 Jelly Bean

As you can see in the spec sheet, this tablet ain’t no slouch. We’ll get to the performance later though for now let’s take a look at what’s outside. By the way if you haven’t read our PiPo S1 Unboxing post, click here.

Premium Design but not-so-nice Display

The PiPo S1 looks much more premium that what you actually paid for it. The tablet is made mostly of glossy plastic making it quite thin and lightweight. The buttons and ports are neatly located at the sides of the device including a TF card slot for additional storage. My only complaint is that the glossy piano black back is a magnet for fingerprints and smudges, hehe.

What could use major improvement though is the display quality. Probably to keep the cost low, PiPo put in a display with just 800×480 resolution. Stretched over 7-inches there’s no way you’ll miss the pixels, lol. This is even more evident when you start watching videos or when you play animation-intensive games.

While the screen resolution is indeed a downer, let’s note that this is so far the only thing we could nitpick about the PiPo S1. That’s an achievement considering the amazeballs price right? So far, so good.

Amazingly Powerful for the Price

Where the PiPo S1 truly shines is with the actual performance. As you saw earlier, the PiPo S1 rocks a powerful processor, quad-core graphics, 1GB RAM, and Android 4.1 Jelly Bean out of the box. All of this combined gave it a very respectable score on the Antutu benchmark test. Would you believe that a device priced at Php5,489 outscored the likes of the Samsung Galaxy S2 and the Galaxy Note? I could barely believe it myself! In fact it’s almost at par with the Asus Prime Tablet. This is really impressive!

Translated to real life use we found the PiPo S1 to be the smoothest Android experience we’ve had on a budget-friendly tablet. Animations and transitions were smooth and we only experienced occasional lags and delays.

Gaming is good thanks to quad-core graphics

The quad-core graphics chip kicks to high gear when you start playing games. We tried several graphics intensive titles and almost all of them worked wonderfully great! Usual suspects like Shadow Gun, Dead Trigger, and NBA 2K13 all played out smoothly. There was only once instance in Dead Trigger where we lagged and that was when the screen was already swarming with zombies.

You’ll obviously have no problems as well with casual titles like Temple Run 2 and Angry Birds Star Wars.

Perfect for watching videos, reading, social networking, and browsing

We get to witness the power of the graphics card, processor, and Jelly Bean when it comes to watching videos. The PiPo S1 can easily play 720p videos with no hiccups whatsoever. To make things sweeter they also built in an HDMI port which lets you play YouTube or videos on your big TV! Sweet. This is definitely an awesome media device!

Other than the videos, the PiPo S1 is ideal also for social networking, browsing, and reading eBooks or comics. The form factor is small so you can easily take it with you while you walk around your house or something.

Everything considered, the PiPo S1 delivers in spades when it comes to performance. If there was a gauge for performance-per-peso then this should probably be one of the devices at the top of the list!

Battery Life is Not Good

The battery rating of the PiPo S1 probably stuck out like a huge thorn in the spec sheet that you guys saw earlier. Unfortunately I’ll have to confirm that the battery life of the PiPo S1 sucks. If you want to use this for extended periods of time be sure you have the charger with you otherwise you’ll run out of juice fast.

To give you guys an idea how bad it is we watched the whole Royal Rumble video on the PiPo S1. Total runtime is 2 hours and 45 minutes. We barely finished it before battery went kapoot.

Verdict: If you can get over the battery life and resolution, the PiPo S1 is AMAZEBALLS

To summarize: resolution isn’t the best and the battery sucks. However the engine running this device is a BEAST and the price is ridiculously low. After a lot of thought and real-life testing we can say without a doubt that the compromise is acceptable. One can easily get around the battery problem by having a mobile charger.

Again, the PiPo S1 is just Php5,489. A-M-A-Z-I-N-G value here folks.

If you want one just head over to Lazada to order.

If you want to see the PiPo S1 in action on video, check out the Unbox Video Podcast below. PiPo S1 segment starts at 13:36. 🙂