Cube iPlay 10, a tablet with a 10-inch Full HD screen

Today, we have a relatively short review of a rather large tablet. Its advertised key features include a 10-inch Full HD screen, GPS, and a 6000 mAh battery. Let’s see whether it really has all of these.
Looks, internals, tests—the usual :)



I’ve reviewed a tablet from this company before (CUBE U27GT), and I also have a really old U9GT4 at home that was retired long ago. I wouldn’t say the models I’ve mentioned are without their flaws, but this company’s tablets are definitely well known, so it’s quite easy to find answers to any questions that come up.

Specifications:
Operating system: Android 6.0
Processor: MTK8163 Quad Core 1.3GHz (SoC based on Cortex-A53)
GPU: IMail-T720
RAM: 2 GB
Internal storage: 32 GB
microSD card slot, up to 128 GB
10.6-inch IPS display
Resolution: 1920 x 1080
Cameras:
Front: 0.3 MP
Rear: 2 MP
Navigation: GPS
Wireless: WiFi: 802.11b/g/n, 2.4 and 5 GHz + Bluetooth
3.5 mm headphone jack
microUSB port with OTG support
micro HDMI port
Power connector
Battery: 6000 mAh
5-point multitouch
Dimensions and weight: length x width x thickness: 267 x 168 x 9.5 mm
Weight: about 600 grams

The tablet comes in a fairly sturdy cardboard box. It looks quite plain, but should protect it well.


The package contents are minimal:
1. Cube iPlay 10 tablet
2. USB-to-microUSB cable
3. Manual and warranty card


The cable is probably the most valuable thing in the box :)


The first thing you notice when you take the tablet out of the box is its size—or, more precisely, its length. That’s what makes it look a little out of proportion. Also, the front camera isn’t quite centered, though I only noticed that later.
There’s a shipping film in addition to the main protective film.


The shipping film lists some basic specifications. The icon next to the storage capacity made me smile. If you didn’t recognize it, that’s an old 5.25-inch floppy disk :) I once read an article about software developers dropping floppy disk icons from their programs. That icon usually means “save.” They’re getting rid of it because more and more people have never even seen a floppy disk—and this one isn’t even 3.5 inches, it’s 5.25.

The front camera has a resolution of 0.3 MP. They might as well have put in a 2.0 MP camera—why keep this relic around? A 5.25-inch floppy icon and a 0.3 MP camera: it all makes sense.


The back cover consists of two parts: plastic around the edges and aluminum in the center. There’s also a shipping film stuck to the back, which eventually peeled off on its own from the heat.


There’s also a rear camera, this time 2.0 MP. You can take photos with it, but the quality will probably disappoint you. There’s no autofocus, but it does have object tracking and panorama mode.


The ports are on the left (or top, depending on how you hold it) edge.
1. microUSB
2. Power connector
3. microSD card slot.
4. micro HDMI
5. 3.5 mm headphone jack.

Overall, the selection of ports is pretty good, and it’s nice to have the option of connecting an external monitor. But I still can’t understand the manufacturer’s logic in adding a power connector and then not including a cable for it. A dedicated power input is great, but where’s the cable? In the end, I charged it either with the included microUSB cable or, more often, with a cable from another tablet.


On the right (or bottom) are the openings for the two speakers. It’s quite unusual to see speakers on the narrow edge of a tablet that’s clearly better suited to watching movies in landscape orientation. So the speakers will end up on your right, and there’s a good chance one of them will be covered by your hand (or whatever you’re holding the tablet with).


Basically, all the ports and controls are grouped together in the usual way, probably because they’re all on the same circuit board. The microphone is next to the ports, but its opening is very narrow.


The store page listed the weight as 608 grams, but in reality it came in at under 600. The tablet is quite comfortable to hold, mainly thanks to two things: its low weight and the wide bezels around the screen.


As for the screen, the panel gets about a 4 out of 5. Viewing angles are fine—after all, it’s IPS, although not long ago I came across another tablet model with a TFT display.


The only thing I could find fault with is the backlight bleed on a completely black screen, which is visible in the dark. It looks a little brighter in the photo than it does in real life, but unfortunately it is there.
The screen is quite bright, and even at the lowest brightness setting it’s comfortable to use. The color reproduction is also fine.


At full brightness, everything is clearly visible even with the flash on.


I mentioned above that the screen has slightly unusual proportions. I’m more used to “square” screens, so this one looks very elongated to me. Below is a photo comparing it with the Teclast Tbook 10 S, whose screen has a resolution of 1920x1200 and a diagonal of 10.1 inches (the tablet under review has 1920x1080 and 10.6 inches).
When I first turned it on, I noticed the fonts and interface, which look absolutely huge compared with Windows tablets. I wouldn’t say this is particularly convenient, so you’ll probably want to adjust things to suit yourself.


Next came the usual tests, but first I’ll show you the teardown and a small modification.
The tablet comes apart fairly easily: just run something thin around the perimeter, as usual.


There is one small catch, though: near the buttons there’s a really stubborn clip. I just pressed harder and it popped open, but while I was doing it I thought, “That’s it, I’m going to break it.” Luckily, I didn’t.


As I said, all the controls and connectors are on one large board.


The Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and GPS antenna is at the top, near the cameras. The back cover has a plastic insert in this area—a pretty thoughtful design.


There are a pair of speakers. The back cover has a small rubber rim around them, by the way. The sound is good; I didn’t notice any problems.


Most of the board is covered by a metal shield. The wireless and GPS module is also visible on the left.


A pair of fairly wide ribbon cables run to the display panel and touchscreen. In my opinion, they should have been covered with something.
The battery has a two-wire connection and a voltage of 3.7 V. There’s no temperature sensor, so the middle contact is unused.


I disconnect the battery—especially since I still need to test it—and remove the metal shield.
As you can see in the photo, the processor is sitting “on its own,” with no heat being carried away from it, even though it could easily be transferred to the shielding cover.


In fact, almost all the components are hidden under the cover. Everything looks quite neat.


1. MTK8163 SoC. Incidentally, the U27GT I mentioned at the very beginning uses exactly the same processor.
2. The RAM is a single chip made by Elpida.
3. The eMMC is marked Kingston, so there’s a good chance it will last a long time.
4. The whole setup is powered by an MT6323 multi-channel converter from the same manufacturer as the processor. This is the first time I’ve seen one of their power management ICs.


1. I’m not quite sure what this chip is; I couldn’t find anything based on the marking.
2. Battery charging controller
3. A pair of audio amplifiers
4, 5. Several voltage regulators.
6. Touchscreen controller.


All the connectors are on one side. The microphone is visible at the bottom left.


According to the manufacturer, the tablet has a 6000 mAh battery inside.
Marking: 30123147. The production date appears to be June 2017, but I could be wrong. Voltage: 3.7 V, 22.2 Wh.
For the test, I connect it to an electronic load.


Since capacity is usually measured at a 0.2C current—in this case, 1.2 A—I set the load current to that value and start the discharge mode.
The tablet was initially discharged until it shut down automatically. By the way, it shuts down at 4–5%, not at 1% as is often the case.

So, here's what we need to do:
1. Discharge the battery using the tablet until it shuts down.
2. Load the battery at the current that will be used for the test—in this case, 1200 mA.
3. Wait 10–20 seconds and measure the battery voltage. Mine read 3.59 V, which is rather high.



Now for the capacity test itself.
1. Charge the battery at 2 A; that's the current the tablet draws while charging.
2. Discharge it at 1200 mA down to 3.59 V and note the measured capacity.
3. Continue discharging at 1200 mA down to 2.8 V. This is the capacity the tablet couldn't use.
4. Charge it to some voltage between 3.6 and 4.2 V so the tablet can turn on after the test.

In the end, I got 4840 mAh of capacity used by the tablet, with 1195 mAh remaining. The battery's total capacity is 4840 + 1195 = 6035 mAh.

On the plus side, the capacity matches the stated figure. On the downside, the tablet uses only 4/5 of the total capacity.


Since I was already inside the tablet, I decided to make a small improvement to the cooling.
I took a 0.7 mm-thick piece of thermal pad and cut away part of the film on the metal shield.


I removed the film, which was very easy to do. The thermal pad was used, salvaged from some computer. I placed it on the processor and put the cover back on.


That's it. The modification was simple and, unfortunately, just as pointless: performance didn't improve by a single point. :(
All this suggests that the cooling is basically fine. If anything is consuming a lot of power, it's not the processor.


And, of course, the software.
When you turn it on, you get the familiar home screen; the manufacturer didn't try to reinvent the wheel. There aren't many apps installed: Play Store, calculator, and a few other basics.
The tablet runs Android 6.0, although many manufacturers moved to version 7.x a long time ago. I wouldn't say that's good or bad; each version has its own advantages and drawbacks.


The tablet won't update over the air, saying that the latest software version is already installed. That said, it works quite reliably, though not without a few quirks.
The tablet has 2 GB of RAM and 32 GB of flash storage. In my opinion, that's a very good balance, especially since the flash storage is practically empty and about 25 GB is available to the user. Add support for flash cards up to 128 GB, and it's excellent.


CPU-Z didn't provide any new information, really. It just confirmed that the tablet has an MT8163, root access, and a screen resolution of 1836x1080. The tablet was in portrait orientation, and the bottom bar took up its share of the 1920 pixels.


Information from Aida64






The standard AnTuTu test surprised me a little, to be honest: version 5.2.0 scored 25,000 instead of the 19,500 scored by the U27GT, which is based on the same processor. I don't know whether this was due to the amount of RAM or the screen resolution.
The results were also noticeably higher in AnTuTu version 6.x: 37,000 versus 27,000 for the U27GT.
So the tablet under review is noticeably faster than its little brother, at least for now.


Next was supposed to be the Geekbench test, but I ran into a small snag. Both versions (3 and 4) told me there was no internet connection and that they couldn't open the browser; without that, they wouldn't show the results. The internet was working, of course. Why Geekbench couldn't see it is anyone's guess.

1. As expected, there's almost nothing in the way of sensors: only the accelerometer and sound level meter work. It's hard to imagine a tablet with fewer sensors, though on the other hand, a tablet often doesn't need any more than that.
2. The specifications claimed a five-point touchscreen, and the test confirmed it.
3. Unfortunately, I didn't test the U27GT's RAM and storage speeds, so I have nothing to compare them with. But based on my experience with other mobile devices, I can say that flash memory read speeds are on the low side, while write speeds are quite decent. RAM performance is very good.


The Epic Citadel test also produced a relatively good result. Since the tablet under review has a 1920x1080 display, while the U27GT has only 1280x800, I expected a noticeable drop in performance. But it turned out that the first test result was actually higher: 57 versus 54.9. The second result was only slightly lower: 24.7 versus 25.9 on the U27GT.


I haven't been using Bonsai Benchmark for very long, so I can't compare it with the U27GT.


Last time, I couldn't get the tablet to complete the 3DMark test—it simply refused to run it. This time, though, it completed both versions without any problems: ES 3.1 and ES 3.0.
The PCMark test also returned a higher score than the U27GT: 3989 versus 3581.


Unlike the U27GT, the model under review has a Wi-Fi module that supports both 2.4 and 5 GHz. Its reception is quite good: the tablet could see my access point from anywhere in the apartment, although it refused to run the tests at the farthest point. It's worth noting, though, that the 5 GHz band works noticeably more reliably and better than 2.4 GHz.

A quick question while we're at it: on the right is a screenshot from my phone. I happened to spot an access point with pictures instead of a name. I'm curious—how is that done?



As usual, I ran the tests at several locations around the apartment. The results improved as I got closer to the router.

2. Distance: almost 12 m
3. A couple of concrete walls, no direct line of sight, distance around 6–7 m
4. Room next to the router, with a partial line of sight.
5. Two meters from the router, with a clear line of sight.

2.4 GHz speed test.


5 GHz speed test.


Since this is a mobile device, and the specs listed a 6000 mAh battery capacity (confirmed by testing), which is quite good, I went on to test battery life.
1. PCMark. The test drains the tablet to 20%, so the total runtime will be a little longer. I set the screen brightness to 70–75%, which I found most comfortable.
2. Geekbench. Maximum brightness
3. Geekbench. Minimum brightness.

The last test shows that battery life at maximum brightness is about one and a half times shorter than at minimum brightness. To be honest, though, I expected better results. Part of the reason is the rather high automatic shutdown threshold of 3.59 V, whereas this threshold is often around 3.15–3.20 V.


Playing a Full HD movie at 75% screen brightness lasted about 3 hours 50 minutes. The problem here is probably the poor optimization for video playback in this format.


And, of course, navigation. In my opinion, one use for tablets like this is as a car navigation device. I'm not a driver and could be mistaken, but a large screen seems pretty convenient to me.
Unfortunately, this tablet doesn't support GLONASS and works only with GPS. GLONASS support was listed for the U27GT, although I didn't test it. This is a drawback, since the more satellites a GPS receiver can see, the more precise and accurate it can be.
In urban areas, the tablet could see 11–12 satellites and connected to 8–9.


For the test, I decided to use relatively challenging conditions: the tablet was in a bag with other things, and I simply went for a walk. In other words, it was about 60 cm from the road, and I was blocking part of its "view."
I walked for about a kilometer. Overall, the difference from reality wasn't very large—I'd say +/- 3 m.


The only place where the navigation struggled was between buildings: a nine-story apartment block on the left and a supermarket on the right. I was walking about 6–7 m from the building. The positioning accuracy dropped noticeably here, although the connection remained good.


So, what can I say in summary?
Advantages
Large screen
Relatively light
5 GHz band support
Can connect to a monitor
Dedicated power jack
Works quite well as a navigation device
32 GB of flash storage.

Disadvantages
Although the tablet has a 6000 mAh battery, it doesn't use its full capacity. This is a plus for reliability, but a minus for battery life.
The wide bezels around the display spoil its appearance.
You’ll have to buy a power cable separately or use up the microUSB port.
The cameras are more or less “just for show.”

Overall, the manufacturer has noticeably improved performance compared with the U27GT, which is built around the same SoC. In my opinion, the amount of RAM and flash storage is just right: more than 2 GB of RAM doesn’t really make sense, while 32 GB of flash storage certainly won’t go to waste. It uses Kingston flash memory, which is a small plus for reliability.
Wi-Fi performance is average; I’ve seen worse and better. The 5 GHz band maintains a more stable connection and delivers higher speeds than 2.4 GHz. I have no complaints about GPS navigation. The lack of GLONASS is disappointing; that option certainly wouldn’t have been redundant, so this is average too, although it works pretty well overall.

I was disappointed by the short battery life. With a capacity of 6000 mAh, I expected somewhat better results. It’s also odd that the manufacturer included only a microUSB cable, even though the tablet has a separate power jack that lets you keep the only microUSB port free.
As I mentioned above, the wide bezels make it look a little cheaper, but given the tablet’s fairly large size, they can sometimes be useful: it’s more comfortable to hold.

There was a flash sale on this tablet not long ago, and it cost around $99, but I didn’t quite manage to finish the review in time. Today I asked for a discount and got the iPlay10 coupon; with it, the price comes to $97.99.

That’s all for now. I’ve shown what I could; the rest is easier to explain in the comments.