I managed to get around nine hours of web browsing and video streaming over a Wi-Fi connection with some emailing, some eBook reading and the odd game, which is better than you’ll get from most other tablets at this price point. The average smartphone will do a much better job.
The first produces grainy images in all but the best lighting, while the latter tends to over-expose outdoors and under-expose indoors, with fuzzy image quality and excess noise to boot. The Hudl has a 2 megapixel front-facing camera and a 3 megapixel rear snapper. If speed matters to you, however, then you need to look to the new Nexus 7 or wait for the next wave of high performance tablets to arrive. It doesn’t struggle to run HD video and you’ll only notice the odd pause if you’re used to working with something faster. Performance won’t be a deal breaker for the Hudl’s intended audience. It runs smoothly, then jerks, runs smoothly, then jerks – and so on. In GFXBench Tesco’s tablet still competes with the old Nexus 7, putting out 4.6 frames per second (fps) in the onscreen T-Rex HD test and 16 fps in Egypt HD, but again the benchmarks don’t reflect the everyday reality. It’s going to cope fine with 2D games like Plants vs Zombies, but more demanding 3D games like Asphalt 8: Airborne run in odd fits and stutters. If you like to game while commuting or out on a trip, then the Hudl isn’t for you. I also noticed that the touchscreen isn’t always perfectly responsive, very occasionally needing a good prod rather than a light tap for an app to spring into action or a scrollbar to move. There are small but noticeable pauses when switching from app to app, while some graphical effects like the covers carousel on the Amazon Kindle app jerk slightly. However, in practice it doesn’t feel quite as slick. In Geekbench 3 it’s actually quite fast, with a single-core result of 491 and a multi-core result of 1385, which would put it ahead of Tegra 3 tablets like the old Nexus 7. The tablet runs a quad-core Rockchip processor with four ARM A9 cores and an ARM Mali 400 GPU, which speeds along at 1.61GHz. Performance is the area where the Hudl shows its flaws, sadly. In many ways it’s a more likeable approach, and at the moment you even get a few money-off vouchers shoved in the retail box. The difference is that where the Kindle Fire locks you in an Amazon-centric world, the Hudl gives you access to anything you can get on the standard Google Play store. It’s clear that Tesco hopes Hudl will work in a similar way to Amazon’s Kindle Fire – as a gateway and player for its physical and digital stores.
Meanwhile, a discrete “T” logo in the bottom right-hand corner takes you through a vertical carousel of Tesco services, including Blinkbox movies and music, Tesco groceries, Tesco bank and Tesco Direct online shopping and the free Clubcard TV service. The Tesco widgets might be a bit in your face, pushing you to launch Blinkbox music and movies, or to check your groceries and view your Clubcard points, but nobody is forcing you to keep them on the home screen.
The Hudl runs Android 4.2.2 with only a light selection of widgets and enhancements on top, and these are aimed squarely at first-time tablet users and Tesco customers – exactly the people who are most likely to buy a Hudl.Įxpert users might find the initial setup tutorials and Getting Started tips annoying, but a lot of people using a tablet for the first time will find them helpful.
Original_slideimages/Hudl-screen-grab-3.jpgĪmazingly, Tesco has got its approach to software right as well.