Sep 26, 2015 12:50 PM
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Micromax is one of the vendors to join the mix with its decently priced Ice Cream Sandwich sporting Funbook. Although Funbook sounds like a great deal on paper, is it worth it? We will find out in this review.
Hardware
Like other low-cost tablets available in the market, Micromax Funbook comes with all plastic body with faux aluminium coated back. The tablet has been put together well, but the hardware Android buttons seem unecessary, considering the on-screen virtual buttons introduced in Ice Cream Sandwich.
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Among other hardware characteristics, Funbook comes with a volume rocker and power button on the right side, while all the ports including 3.5mm headset jack, TF card slot, HDMI, Mini-USB and charging port are placed on the bottom. The Mini-USB port can be used to plug-in the data card(available for free with the tablet) or even the flash drives with the help of the bundled adapter. The tablet is light and feels nice in hand and even the overall build quality is decent.
Software/ Performance
Thanks to Google's decision to make Android 4.0 open-source(unlike Honeycomb), the budget tablet makers no longer have to install FroYo or Gingebread on their tablets. So, Micromax Funbook comes with Android 4.0.3. The presence of ICS itself improves one's perception of the tablet but in reality the performance is sub-par. During our brief usage, the tablet hung frequently and we saw several'force closes'.
Funbook takes 3-5 seconds to wake up from sleep, which made us believe many a times that the device had run out of charge, only for the screen to come up. While Android 4.0 provides great user interface, the crippled hardware dampens the whole user experience on Micromax Funbook. We even performed factory reset to try the tablet from scratch but there was little-to-no improvement in the lag or sluggishness that we had been facing.
If you are one of the patient ones and don't care about the hiccups, Funbook has a lot to offer - it gives a versatile multimedia playback support and even the browsing experience is decent. Company has also attempted to target students with the pre-loaded educational content, which is certainly an added advantage.
