People often comment on tablet reviews that a high screen resolution isn't always a good thing. This time, I decided to find out how comfortable it really is to use a tablet with an 8-inch, 1280 x 800 screen, and simply see what an inexpensive tablet can do.
And of course, I'll take it apart, modify it, and test it.
I ordered the Windows-only version; it feels more familiar to me, but there's also a
Windows + Android version available for the same price.
At the moment, though, the store is running a promotion and offering the dual-boot version for just
$76.89I actually have another tablet from this company at home: the fairly well-known Cube U9GT4. It's a decent tablet, although it does have a few shortcomings, such as very weak sound.
The tablet was shipped to me via PostNL, and arrived safe and sound about two weeks after dispatch—or 10 days according to the tracking.
First, the tablet's specifications.Operating system: Windows 10
Processor: Intel X5-Z8300
GPU: Intel HD Graphics (eighth generation)
RAM: 2 GB
Internal storage: 32 GB
Slot for a microSD card up to 128 GB.
8-inch IPS display
Resolution: 1280 x 800
Cameras:
Front: 2 MP
Rear: 2 MP
Wireless: Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n and Bluetooth
3.5 mm headphone jack
microUSB port with OTG support
micro HDMI port
Battery: all they say is that it can play video for 3 hours
5-point multitouch
Dimensions (L x W x H): 213 x 127 x 9.8 mm
Weight: about 346 g
A little about the packaging, under the spoiler as usual.
To my surprise, the postal service not only didn't damage the tablet, it didn't even dent the box.
The tablet arrived in its original box, made of sturdy cardboard that's very hard to damage.
The box is covered in all sorts of writing, but none of it is particularly interesting; it's mostly there for show.
Cube iwork8 Ultimate, a compact Windows tablet with an Atom x5-Z8300The tablet is protected around the edges by a foam border. Everything included in the box is underneath it.
Cube iwork8 Ultimate, a compact Windows tablet with an Atom x5-Z8300The package contents are the most basic I've come across.
It includes just:
1. Tablet
2. USB-to-microUSB cable
3. OTG adapter
4. Manual, warranty card, and a few other mysterious bits of paper :)
A power adapter (which also serves as a charger) isn't included. You're expected to charge it slowly from a computer's USB port or use a charger purchased separately.
I understand they're trying to cut costs, and it's better to save on the power adapter than on the device's internals, but as the saying goes, “you have to be economical about your economy.”
Cube iwork8 Ultimate, a compact Windows tablet with an Atom x5-Z8300
Cube iwork8 Ultimate, a compact Windows tablet with an Atom x5-Z8300The cables are decent; no complaints.
Cube iwork8 Ultimate, a compact Windows tablet with an Atom x5-Z8300The tablet screen comes with two films already applied: a shipping film and a screen protector.
Cube iwork8 Ultimate, a compact Windows tablet with an Atom x5-Z8300
Cube iwork8 Ultimate, a compact Windows tablet with an Atom x5-Z8300There’s an advertising sticker on the tablet. Everything on it is clear except the number 70000—I still haven’t figured out what it means.
Cube iwork8 Ultimate, small Windows tablet with an Atom x5-Z8300The tablet looks nice: a white body, a black screen, and a metallic-colored strip between the front and back.
I don’t want to call it “stylish”—I’m not a big fan of that word—but it does look neat.
Cube iwork8 Ultimate, small Windows tablet with an Atom x5-Z8300The tablet is set up for portrait orientation when you turn it on, but I personally prefer landscape.
In this orientation, the buttons are at the top and the ports are on the left. But that’s just a matter of getting used to it.
Cube iwork8 Ultimate, small Windows tablet with an Atom x5-Z8300All the controls and I/O ports are grouped together in one corner of the body.
Cube iwork8 Ultimate, small Windows tablet with an Atom x5-Z8300As I mentioned above, all the controls and peripheral ports are grouped together in one corner.
At the top (or on the right in portrait orientation) are the volume rocker and power button.
You have to hold the power button down for quite a while—about 5 seconds—to turn it on. My Onda starts up noticeably faster.
On the left (or at the top in portrait orientation) is the Windows button, which I didn’t even notice at first. Next come the memory card slot, headphone jack, microHDMI, and microUSB ports.
Unfortunately, it’s missing a full-size USB port. Too bad.
Cube iwork8 Ultimate, small Windows tablet with an Atom x5-Z8300One of the cameras and the speaker are on the bottom, on the same side as the ports.
Since I mentioned the speaker, I should say that the sound could be better. At up to 50% volume, it sounds fine, though it isn’t very loud. Above 50%, unwanted noises start to appear. The sound is definitely much better than on the U9GT4, but it clearly falls short of my other tablets, particularly the
Onda and the
Teclast—though they also cost a bit more than the model reviewed here.
Cube iwork8 Ultimate, small Windows tablet with an Atom x5-Z8300The back has a textured surface that keeps the tablet from slipping out of your hands. The manufacturer and model name are printed at the bottom.
And of course, Intel Inside—what would it be without that? :)
Cube iwork8 Ultimate, small Windows tablet with an Atom x5-Z8300There’s a microphone on the top surface. I only found out it was there, and where exactly, after taking the tablet apart :)
The second camera is also on top. The two cameras are identical: both have a resolution of 2 MP and neither has autofocus.
Cube iwork8 Ultimate, small Windows tablet with an Atom x5-Z8300When I connected the charger, I noticed another component: a charging indicator LED under the front panel. I never noticed it turning off when charging was complete, though, so it probably indicates that the charger is connected.
The LED isn't very bright, which is why I had to take the photo without flash.
One big plus is that, as you can see in the photo, the plug doesn't go all the way into the socket. The connector is only 5 mm deep, so any MicroUSB cable will work, not just the extended versions.
For example, I had to modify the power plug for the Cube U9GT4; otherwise, the connection was poor. I also often saw people in the comments looking for a MicroUSB cable with an extended plug. That's definitely not a problem here.
Cube iwork8 Ultimate, a small Windows tablet with an Atom x5-Z8300Comparison photos alongside some other tablets. I wanted to compare it with the other tablets I have in for repair, but changed my mind.
The Cube U9GT4 (7-inch screen) is on the left, and the review subject is on the right.
Cube iwork8 Ultimate, a small Windows tablet with an Atom x5-Z8300The review subject is at the top left, and the U9GT4 is on the right.
The Teclast X98 Pro (9.7 inches) is at the bottom left, and the ONDA (8.9 inches) is on the right.
Cube iwork8 Ultimate, a small Windows tablet with an Atom x5-Z8300When I turned it on, this was the desktop I was greeted with, complete with shortcuts to video presentations and Windows 10 demos.
The battery was charged (or discharged) to 17%, and a user account named Cube had been set up.
The icons look unusually large after using a 1920x1200 resolution.
Cube iwork8 Ultimate, a small Windows tablet with an Atom x5-Z8300I’ve hidden the performance and temperature tests under a spoiler.
Since the drive has a partition containing a system image, there are only 19.1 GB of free space. Deleting the videos would free up another 550 MB or so.
Cube iwork8 Ultimate, a small Windows tablet with an Atom x5-Z8300Windows 10 Pro is preinstalled, which was a bit of a surprise to me. Activation went smoothly, though, which is always nice.
The operating system is 32-bit. In my opinion, that's actually a good thing for a tablet with 2 GB of RAM and no way to expand it.
Cube iwork8 Ultimate, a small Windows tablet with an Atom x5-Z8300The tablet initially had English enabled, along with about eight other languages (including Russian), so I had to remove the ones I didn't need, leaving only English and Russian.
I won't describe the process, although I originally planned to and even took screenshots, since I've already written it up several times.
There's not much else to say, so I'll move on to the tests. First up is a check of the WiFi connection.
Some of the testing programs were easier to download from the internet, so I also took the opportunity to check how the wireless connection worked.
To my surprise, the tablet detected quite a lot of access points. I've had devices that detected more, but I think this is a pretty good result for the spot where I tested it.
Cube iwork8 Ultimate, a small Windows tablet with an Atom x5-Z8300I tested it at three locations.
The first was 12 m from the access point, with a bunch of concrete walls in between.
The second was also 12 m away, but with a few fewer walls.
The third was about 8 m away, with two interior concrete walls.
Cube iwork8 Ultimate, a small Windows tablet with an Atom x5-Z8300And here are the actual speeds under these conditions.
Cube iwork8 Ultimate, a small Windows tablet with an Atom x5-Z8300Next, as always, I tested the speed of the internal flash storage.
Let's put it this way: read speed is quite good, but write speed could be a bit faster.
What really surprised and pleased me was the speed of the built-in MicroSD card reader.
85 MB/s read and 23 MB/s write is pretty fast.
I usually complain that mini PCs and tablets have too little flash storage, and adding a memory card doesn't help much because transfer speeds are so low. But I hadn't tested the built-in card reader on devices with Cherry Trail processors.
It turns out that the card readers in all these devices are connected to a fairly fast bus, so expanding the built-in flash storage with an external memory card is a perfectly viable option.
Next up, as always, are tests of the stumbling block for modern devices: heat.
I'll say upfront that practically all tablets and mini PCs with Intel processors get hot.
I can think of at most a couple of devices that didn't overheat straight out of the box.
So if your tablet doesn't get hot, you simply haven't pushed it hard enough :)
First, let's run 3DMark 2006.
Cube iwork8 Ultimate, a small Windows tablet with an Atom x5-Z8300Then we run the same test again and see performance drop, even though the tablet didn't reach the 2,000-point mark the first time around.
Cube iwork8 Ultimate, a small Windows tablet with an Atom x5-Z8300We restart the temperature-monitoring utility and run the LinX test.
Yep, it's getting hot. What can I say?
Cube iwork8 Ultimate, a small Windows tablet with an Atom x5-Z8300In Cinebench, the temperature is literally one degree lower, although I wouldn't say it puts much load on the processor—or rather, it doesn't keep the processor hot for long.
Cube iwork8 Ultimate, a small Windows tablet with an Atom x5-Z8300Since it does get hot, and I also want to see what's inside, I'll take the tablet apart next.
Honestly, I'm not a big fan of taking tablets apart. I've already broken a card slot while disassembling one for a review and had to replace it. But curiosity gets the better of me.
To my surprise, the tablet comes apart very easily—surprisingly easily, in fact.
Insert something sharp into the gap between the two halves of the case, preferably plastic so you don't scratch the device.
It doesn't really matter whether you separate the back cover from the middle section or the screen assembly, since the piece between the front and back is a separate part.
Cube iwork8 Ultimate, a small Windows tablet with an Atom x5-Z8300After opening the tablet, this is what I found inside.
At least at first glance, everything looks great. Externally, anyway.
Almost the entire back cover is covered with what looks like either thick foil or a thin sheet of metal.
The assembly is neat. Just yesterday I was poking around inside an Asus tablet (or rather, a phablet), and I wouldn't say it was much better in there; the differences are mostly cosmetic.
Cube iwork8 Ultimate, a small Windows tablet with an Atom x5-Z8300Everything is built around a single circuit board, which is coated with something black. We'll figure out what it is a little later, but you can already see that, for example, the battery is soldered to the board. The Asus, by comparison, has a connector, with the battery's temperature sensor routed through it as well.
But for the most part, these are minor details. They don't really affect the user; the main thing is that it all works.
Cube iwork8 Ultimate, a small Windows tablet with an Atom x5-Z8300Let's take a quick look at the external components, so to speak.
I've arranged the photos to show where each component sits relative to the first photo.
1. The speaker is at the bottom left. Unfortunately, there's only one, even though there's plenty of room to fit three.
2. The Wi-Fi antenna is at the top left. In my opinion, that's not the best location, since your hand always covers it. You can improve reception a little by turning the tablet upside down.
3. The microphone is at the top right. It's very conveniently placed when the tablet is in landscape orientation, but your right hand covers it in portrait orientation.
4. The rear camera. It's a camera; I can't really say anything about it.
Cube iwork8 Ultimate, a small Windows tablet with an Atom x5-Z8300The connectors are positioned as close to the edge of the board as possible, and they did a good job of it. As I mentioned earlier, the MicroUSB port is very convenient.
There's an unexplained empty spot on the board just above the MicroUSB port.
Cube iwork8 Ultimate, a small Windows tablet with an Atom x5-Z8300A foil shield sits between the board and the display.
At first I thought it acted as a heatsink, but I was wrong: between the board and the foil are only small pieces of foam wrapped in conductive fabric.
Cube iwork8 Ultimate, a small Windows tablet with an Atom x5-Z8300The top coating on the board is also connected in a similar way to the metal on the tablet's back cover.
Cube iwork8 Ultimate, a small Windows tablet with an Atom x5-Z8300Peel off the top layer. It's a kind of sandwich: a Kapton-like film on the bottom, then copper foil that acts as a heatsink, and finally black foil made of some unknown material.
The cooling setup isn't great, of course. We'll figure out how to improve it later.
Now the entire circuit board is visible, and we can take a «census» of its inhabitants.
Cube iwork8 Ultimate, a small Windows tablet with an Atom x5-Z83001. The Intel X5-Z8300 processor is the entry-level model in the X5 lineup, but it is also the one most commonly used in TV boxes and tablets.
2. Kingston RAM, 2 GB, made up of four chips. As they say, a nice little bonus.
3. The flash memory, almost predictably, turned out to be made by Foresee. I've been seeing this memory a lot lately, especially since the New Year. So far, I have no complaints about its reliability, but its write speed is poor.
4. Power management is handled by the well-known AXP288 chip. This is a fully integrated chip that includes converters for all the required voltages, as well as a battery charging controller.
Cube iwork8 Ultimate, a small Windows tablet with an Atom x5-Z8300Moving on. Devices based on Intel processors usually have a lot more auxiliary chips than other devices.
1. Wi-Fi/Bluetooth module based on the RTL8723BS. This module is used in well-known devices such as
PIPO X7,
PIPO X7S,
MeeGoPad T02,
PIPO X9, and
Teclast X98 Pro, where it performed quite well. There were a few misses, though, such as the
MeeGoPad T03 PRO.
2. NAU88L24, an audio subsystem that is essentially a DAC. This is the first time I've come across one.
3. GSL3670, the touchpad controller.
4. Winbond 25Q64, the flash memory that stores the BIOS firmware. To its left, you can see the contacts for debugging the firmware and, most likely, reflashing it.
Cube iwork8 Ultimate, a small Windows tablet with an Atom x5-Z8300And now for the promised cooling upgrade.
I usually say that cooling needs to be improved everywhere, but experience has shown that it's not always easy.
On this tablet, cooling can be improved quite easily.
Unfortunately, this won't solve the problem completely, but it will make a noticeable difference.
I've seen cooling mods online that use copper plates, but I decided to take the simpler route, and I had my reasons.
The thing is, heat can only be transferred to the back cover, and I didn't want it to get too hot. In other words, I wanted to improve the cooling without making the tablet uncomfortable to hold. The amount of work involved was also an important factor.
First, I wanted to eliminate the intermediate layer of copper foil and Kapton film.
All you need is a pencil and a utility knife.
Trace around the power management chip and processor with the pencil.
Cube iwork8 Ultimate, a small Windows tablet with an Atom x5-Z8300Peel off the foil, cut out the “windows,” and stick the foil back on.
Be careful not to let the foil short the power management chip's contacts. The contacts are quite recessed, though, so it's difficult to do that.
Cube iwork8 Ultimate, a small Windows tablet with an Atom x5-Z8300A few simple measurements showed that the gap between the top of the processor and the back cover is about 1.8 mm.
Take 2 mm-thick thermal pad material and cut it into squares. Make the square for the processor a little larger.
I originally wanted to use a large metal plate, but there's a crystal resonator next to the processor that sits too high and gets in the way, so I used a thermal pad instead.
That's it :)
Actually, not quite. To help the tablet run a little faster when it heats up, you can adjust the temperature control settings in the BIOS. I showed how to do this in
this review; the BIOS on this tablet works exactly the same way.
Cube iwork8 Ultimate, a small Windows tablet with an Atom x5-Z8300Since the battery capacity wasn't listed in the specs, I had to measure it.
To get a more accurate capacity measurement, I decided to do it without any controllers or intermediate chargers in the circuit.
So, we desolder the battery and test it.
Cube iwork8 Ultimate, a small Windows tablet with an Atom x5-Z8300Since tablets often shut down before the battery is fully discharged, I set the discharge cutoff voltage to 3 V.
The charging current was 1 A, and the discharge current was 2 A.
The tester showed a battery capacity of 3321 mAh, but the actual capacity is probably around 3500 mAh if the battery is fully discharged.
I also noticed that the built-in controller fully charges the battery. The tablet was fully charged before I opened it. While taking it apart, I accidentally turned it on, waited for it to boot, and then shut it down.
After that, when I charged it with the tester, it could only put 148 mAh back in.
Cube iwork8 Ultimate, a small Windows tablet with an Atom x5-Z8300We've taken the tablet apart, inspected it, made some modifications, and even measured the battery capacity. Now it's time to move on to the second part of the tests.
But before testing how hot it gets, I'll check how long the tablet runs on a full battery charge.
Set the volume to 50%, screen brightness to 100%, and turn on Wi-Fi. Then start playing a Full HD movie.
Cube iwork8 Ultimate, a small Windows tablet with an Atom x5-Z8300The tablet ran for 2 hours and 44 minutes, just short of the claimed three hours.
The last 7% alone took about 25 minutes to drain.
Cube iwork8 Ultimate, a small Windows tablet with an Atom x5-Z8300Let's run 3DMark again. The result is pleasantly surprising.
Cube iwork8 Ultimate, a small Windows tablet with an Atom x5-Z8300As before, we run 3DMark again. There is a drop, but the result is still pretty good.
Cube iwork8 Ultimate, a small Windows tablet with an Atom x5-Z8300Restart the temperature-monitoring program and run LinX for 10 passes.
Yes, the result is better, but the drop is clearly visible. Still, that's half an hour with the processor running at 100%—something that happens very rarely in real-world use, if at all.
Cube iwork8 Ultimate, a small Windows tablet with an Atom x5-Z8300And the last heat test: Cinebench.
Here, too, there's a clear improvement. The tablet reached the level of performance you'd normally expect from its processor.
Cube iwork8 Ultimate, a small Windows tablet with an Atom x5-Z8300A little about the tablet's screen, its quality, and viewing angles.
First, some comparison photos alongside the tablet
Onda V891W, which was once compared with an Asus.
The photos were taken in near darkness, so the quality may be a little rough.
Still, you can see some difference in the image: the tablet under review has a brighter screen, while the Onda seems to have more saturated colors. Both tablets were set to 100% brightness.
Cube iwork8 Ultimate, a small Windows tablet with an Atom x5-Z8300While I was at it, I ran a fairly well-known monitor testing program. It was developed for CRTs, but that doesn't matter for this test.
The tablet has good viewing angles; the image looks fine from any angle.
Cube iwork8 Ultimate, a small Windows tablet with an Atom x5-Z8300Only when viewed diagonally does the black start to fade noticeably, but more on that later.
Cube iwork8 Ultimate, a small Windows tablet with an Atom x5-Z8300No problems with the colors; everything looks good.
Cube iwork8 Ultimate, a small Windows tablet with an Atom x5-Z8300Contrast is fine too. I can easily see the difference starting at 2-3%, which is a good result.
Cube iwork8 Ultimate, a small Windows tablet with an Atom x5-Z8300But the tablet would fail the backlight uniformity test. I already knew about this, though; I’d seen reports on the 4pda forum about earlier versions of this tablet.
You can't see the light bleed during the day in normal lighting, but it's noticeable in the dark.
On the other hand, what can you expect from a tablet in the “under $100” price range?
Cube iwork8 Ultimate, a small Windows tablet with an Atom x5-Z8300Finally, a little about the built-in cameras.
I'll be honest right from the start: the tablet's cameras are just there to tick a box.
Well, no—they're also fine for Skype, but probably not much else.
Since the cameras are identical, I'll show photos from the rear camera only; it's simply more convenient for taking pictures.
Unfortunately, I couldn't get better results. The site does compress the photos, of course, but I doubt the originals would look much better.
The result is a little odd, though: the photos are 600-900 KB, so the compression can't be all that high, given that the cameras take photos at 1600x1200 resolution.
Cube iwork8 Ultimate, a small Windows tablet with an Atom x5-Z8300Same angle, but the next day :)
Cube iwork8 Ultimate, a small Windows tablet with an Atom x5-Z8300
Cube iwork8 Ultimate, a small Windows tablet with an Atom x5-Z8300Colors look washed out in natural light. Under artificial light the picture is a little better, but it needs to be bright.
Cube iwork8 Ultimate, a small Windows tablet with an Atom x5-Z8300
Cube iwork8 Ultimate, a small Windows tablet with an Atom x5-Z8300Now I think that's everything. Let's sum things up briefly.
ProsNeat construction and attractive appearance.
Licensed Windows 10.
Stable performance, and with improved cooling, it's quite fast too.
Fast card reader.
HDMI output.
MicroUSB port that doesn't require an extended plug.
The cooling system is relatively easy to improve, and even someone with no experience can do it.
Sturdy packaging.
ConsThe built-in speaker isn't very good.
The cameras are only suitable for Skype or similar apps.
Battery capacity: 3300–3500 mAh.
Improving the cooling is recommended.
No charger included.
My take: this tablet is a mixed bag. With a little work, you can turn it into a snappy little machine, but the relatively low battery capacity takes some of the shine off. In real-world use or while browsing the internet, battery life will be around 2–4 hours. By the way, the previous tablet (with a Bay Trail processor) came in two versions, with 3200 and 5000 mAh batteries, so perhaps this one will too. It's strange they didn't install at least a 4000 mAh battery; there's room in the case.
The built-in card reader was a pleasant surprise: its maximum read speed is at least 85 MB/s.
The sound is clearly lacking. I was even starting to think it was a “family trait” of this company's tablets. But it's worth noting that this tablet sounds noticeably better than the U9GT4, so there has been some progress :)
Good build quality; nothing is loose or creaks. I remember tablets from about three years ago, when they would creak, the screen would come unstuck, or a flash drive would stick out of the case. Fortunately, that's practically unheard of now.
Overall, the tablet is pretty good, but it does have some shortcomings.
And now back to where I started. Having tried two tablets with different screen resolutions, I can say that I personally find 1920x1200 more comfortable, but it's genuinely easier to use a screen with a lower resolution. But as they say, “every coin has two sides”: the downside of a lower resolution is that you can simply fit less information on the screen, so it's mostly a matter of getting used to it.
I hope this review was useful and informative. If you couldn't find the information you were looking for, just ask—I'll be happy to answer.
The product was provided by the store for review.
