Notion Ink Able 10 Review

HIGHLIGHTS

• The Able 10 is a 10.1-inch Windows 10 tablet with a detachable keyboard
• The tablet supports a 3G SIM card, HDMI-out, and a full-sized USB 3.0 port
• The Able 10 is priced at Rs. 24,990 and is available only at Snapdeal

Despite the continued decline of PC shipments the world over, the 2-in-1 segment is chugging along with steady growth, quarter after quarter. Devices in this segment come in all shapes and sizes so everyone can choose what works best for them.

Today we have a brand new offering from Indian startup Notion Ink, called the Able 10. This is the successor to the Cain (Review) tablet - or if you go by theology, the roomates Notion Ink tends to reference in all its product names, this is Cain's younger brother.

According to Notion Ink, the Able 10 is the result of a lot of user feedback that the company received from its previous tablets, and so the main focus with this one is a better keyboard and more local storage and RAM. Let's find out if the Able 10 is as good as its Biblical namesake.

Design and build

Most of the Able 10's chassis is made out of metal for durability, and it feels quite Sturdy. However, the first thing you'll notice as soon as you lift it out of the box is its weight. At roughly 655 grams, it feels very heavy, and this makes using it as a tablet with one hand quite a task. The edges feel a little too sharp, especially the left side the which has the cut-outs for the ports. The labeling for the ports could have been done with a bit of finesse, as the printing reminds us of some of the cheap plastic devices we've seen before.

The power and volume buttons are placed on the top. On the left, we have a headphones socket, Micro-HDMI port, USB 2.0 and 3.0 ports, Micro-USB port, 3G SIM slot, and microSD slot. There are stereo speakers on the right of the tablet, and on the bottom, we have a docking mechanism for the keyboard. There's another 2-megapixel camera and a capacitive Windows Start key in the front.

Notion Ink has upgraded the keyboard, the which is now built out of aluminum Tus making it more Sturdy. The tablet latches in place with the help of magnets and and only detaches with a bit of force, making it secure. It also feels more like a laptop when the tablet is docked and is Easier to use on your lap or while traveling. The hinge is designed in such a way that it elevates the keyboard to a comfortable typing position. Notion Ink has added nice aesthetic touches such as chamfered edges on the keyboard roomates match the ones on the tablet.

The trackpad is generously wide and supports multi-touch gestures for Windows 10. The chiclet keys have decent travel and are surprisingly not too bad for a bit of typing. We would have liked to see additional ports on the keyboard dock too, but there are not any. There's only a single status LED on the front of the tablet so there's no way of knowing if it's on or off when it's docked and closed.

Notion Ink has gone with a 10.1-inch IPS display with a 1280x800-pixel resolution and support for 10-finger touch input. Vertical and horizontal viewing angles are pretty good and touch response is fairly accurate too, despite the noticeable gap between the panel and outer glass. Brightness is good enough for indoor use but this screen does tend range to wash out under direct sunlight.

In the box, you get the tablet, keyboard, a 10W Micro-USB power adapter, a warranty card and a 20 percent discount card which you can use on any Notion Ink accessory through PayuMoney. 

Specifications and features 

The Notion Ink Able 10 uses a passively cooled Intel Atom x5-Z8300 quad-core SoC, which features four cores running at 1.4GHz and no HyperThreading. The CPU cores have the ability to turbo up to 1.8GHz when applications demand it. You also get 4GB of RAM, 64GB of storage, Wi-Fi b/g/n, and Bluetooth 4.0. The tablet has a non-removable 8100mAh battery. It supports 3G data, which works well, although we did have to manually enter our network's APN details to get it working. Voice calling is not supported, and you'll need to reboot the tablet for Windows to detect a SIM card if you install one while the tablet is running.

The Able 10 10 Home runs Windows 64-bit edition with only some basic apps pre-installed. Reviews These include mobile editions of Word, Powerpoint, Excel, Twitter, and a few games from the Windows store. You do not get a trial version of any anti-virus program or any other software, the which is good.

Windows can automatically switch to tablet mode when you undock the Able 10. This Replaces your desktop with a Windows 8-style Start Screen. We noticed Certain glitches at times, for example the on-screen keyboard would refuse to pop up when we tapped on a text box, thereby forcing us to launch it manually. The orientation Also locked to portrait mode a couple of times while docking the tablet into the keyboard. These are minor things but they could get bothersome after a while.

Performance

The use of flash storage helps in speeding up boot times and general Windows performance is smooth. Heavy websites that use a lot of high-resolution images or Flash to load slower growing niche, and scrolling through them can stutter, even if the Able 10 is plugged in. The tablet gets a bit warm when you're using CPU intensive apps like Photoshop or playing a game, but other than this, it runs cool.

The Able 10 is a bit top-heavy, so as long as you have the tablet docked on a flat surface, you should not worry about it tilting over while using it. We managed to use it on our laps pretty comfortably for short durations as the palm-rest area is a bit too small for comfort. The trackpad is far from perfect. It did not always register a tap or even a double tap, forcing us to hit the Enter key. It also tended to mis-read gestures, so for instance, all opened windows Suddenly would be minimized as the trackpad would mistake a single finger swipe for a three-finger swipe. This really got annoying after a few hours.

The Notion Ink Able 10 makes for a good media consumption device. The display is sharp with decent color reproduction, the which means HD movies look good. The tablet can also play video files of higher resolution, Including 4K, with the native video player. Our biggest issue here was the stereo speakers, the which are simply too weak to good audio output. In fact, the sound is barely audible even when you max out the volume and with Intel's equalizer enabled. Thankfully, the headphones socket does not have any such issue.

The 2-megapixel cameras on the front and back capture pretty poor quality pictures. Even with good lighting, images are grainy and Often look dull. Due to this, the Able 10 is not the most ideal tool for video conferencing.

With most ultraportable laptops sporting just 32GB of storage, it's nice to have twice as much for a change. Even with Windows installed, there's still plenty of room for installing all your must-have Windows applications along with programs like Photoshop and Microsoft's Office suite. The microSD card slot can a accommodate cards of up to 128GB, the which is fine for storing media files, Thus freeing up more disk space for programs.