AlldoCube Power M3 4G, a tablet with a 10.1-inch screen

Today I’m reviewing a tablet from the relatively well-known company Cube—or, more precisely, AlldoCube, as it now calls itself.
I’ve reviewed tablets from this company before. I also mentioned that I’d used one of their devices for a while and was generally quite happy with it. Let’s see how they’ve done this time—and whether they’ve done well at all.
Inspection, tests, teardown—as usual.


I’ve already posted two tablet reviews. The first was Cube iwork8 Ultimate, the second Cube iPlay 10, and I also have a U9GT4 at home.
Compared with other Chinese models, I’d say these tablets are about average in terms of both reliability and performance. In general, I prefer Atom-based devices—or, to be more precise, ones running Windows. But that’s mostly habit and down to the kind of work I do, since plenty of users would rather choose an Android device.

But let’s get to the review and start, as always, with the specs.
Operating system: Android 7.0
Processor: MTK MT6753 Octa-core 4G 64-bit (ARM-A53)
GPU: IMail-T720-MP3
RAM: 2 GB
Internal storage: 32 GB
microSD card slot, supports up to 128 GB
Display: 10.1-inch IPS
Resolution: 1920 x 1200 (16:10)
Cameras:
Front: 2.0 MP
Rear: 5.0 MP
Navigation: GPS
Wireless: Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n, 2.4 and 5 GHz + Bluetooth 4.0
Combined SIM card slot, supports two nanoSIM cards
Network types: FDD-LTE, GSM, TD-SCDMA, TDD-LTE, WCDMA
2G: GSM 850/900/1800/1900 MHz
3G: WCDMA 2100 MHz
TD-SCDMA: TD-SCDMA B34/B39
4G: FDD-LTE 1800/2100 MHz, TD-LTE Band 38/39/40/41
3.5 mm headphone jack
USB Type-C port with OTG support
Battery: 8000 mAh
10-point multitouch
Dimensions and weight: length x width x thickness: 240 x 165 x 9.0 mm (checked; sometimes incorrectly listed as 267 x 169 mm)
Weight: 525 g (checked; sometimes incorrectly listed as 400 g)

It’s curious how often I come across incorrect dimensions and weight for this tablet. I don’t know why.

The tablet comes in a fairly large black box. It’s made of thick cardboard, but the lid feels like it’s one size too big and comes off very easily.
There’s little information on the packaging, mostly just the specs for the built-in battery.
The tablet sits in a foam “sleeve,” with a small box of accessories underneath. That’s quite useful, since the cable and charger are often just loose inside the box, and given the box’s size, they end up rattling around all over the place.


The package includes:
1. Power M3 4G tablet
2. Power adapter (charger)
3. USB-to-USB Type-C cable
4. Manual and warranty card.


The manual isn’t particularly useful, and neither is the warranty card.
The cable is reasonably flexible and fairly thick. The power adapter deserves a separate mention: it’s rated for 5 V, 2.5 A. It has a flat-pin plug, and no adapter was included. But that’s not the point: I’ve seen reviews from owners of this tablet who received a power adapter with a European plug, but its output current was only 2 A.
They complained that their charging current was only 1 A, so charging took a very long time.
In this case, the charging current is 2–2.5 A, but with the screen on it reaches 2.68 A—which is even higher than the rated value, and that’s not good. The power adapter gets quite hot, so I wouldn’t recommend charging the tablet while using it if the battery is below 90–95%.


The tablet screen comes with a matte shipping film applied, covered in various promotional text.


Once I removed the shipping film, I found the screen protector underneath. It turned out the tablet’s screen is glossy. It looks nice, of course, but isn’t very practical.


But when I compared it with my Teclast tablet, I’d say the difference isn’t very big. By the way, the photo shows two tablets with the same screen size and resolution. The one under review is slightly smaller overall.


There are just a pair of speakers on the bottom. Unlike the Teclast, this tablet doesn’t support a “hardware” keyboard connection.


The front-facing 2-megapixel camera is at the top. The case has perforations for the speakers.
The sound? Well, it’s there. Not very loud, and mostly midrange.


The left edge of the case has a headset jack, a microSD slot, and a USB Type-C port. Unfortunately, there’s only one USB port, no HDMI, and no separate charging port. Personally, I consider the lack of the familiar microUSB port a downside.


The power and volume buttons are at the top left.


The back of the case is plastic around the edges and aluminum in the area of the “bottom.” I’ll show you what it looks like inside later, to make this clearer, but in simple terms, the edges are plastic and the rest is metal.


The 5 MP rear camera sticks out on this little “platform,” with an LED “flash” next to it—something you don’t often see on a tablet. The LED isn’t very bright. When I turned it on in flashlight mode (holding the tablet with the screen facing me), I didn’t even realize at first that it was on.


The SIM card slot isn’t very convenient to access, but it’s well hidden in the case.
To access the tray, you need to carefully pry it out with something, using the narrow slot left by the manufacturer. I used a utility knife. The only consolation is that you don’t have to do this often.
You can install two nanoSIM cards. There’s no hot swapping; the tablet only detects a card after a reboot.
When installing the second card, you might think the tray isn’t meant for it, since it’s a little larger than the card. Don’t worry, just put it in—it works :)
Some users have reported that the tray can be difficult to close, but I didn’t have that problem. It may depend on the card.


I took the tablet apart after the main tests, but I’ll show you the teardown now so it won’t interrupt things later.
The tablet is relatively easy and straightforward to open: insert something sharp between the light and dark halves and work your way around the edge. Be careful; it’s better to use something non-metallic, since the case plastic is quite soft.


Here you can see the top of the tablet, as well as the plastic top and side trim. There’s also a piece of copper foil stuck on, though I never figured out why it’s there when the case is aluminum.


The camera modules and the illumination LED.


1. The speakers are very compact, but I couldn’t find the microphone, even though I know for sure it’s there and works.
2–4. There are three antennas installed. One is labeled GSM, another GW (I assume that means Wi-Fi), and the third is marked only with Chinese characters.


The top of the tablet, with the GSM and GW antennas


The bottom, with the third antenna roughly in the center.


Almost the entire circuit board is covered by various shields; only the middle one can be accessed.


Well, of course you can get to anything. It’s just that the middle shield is the only one held in place by contacts; the others are soldered on.
There are several pieces of thermal pad under the metal shield. Unfortunately, I couldn’t properly determine whether this part presses against the back cover, since it’s very difficult to measure anything there. But in my opinion, even if it does make contact, the thermal contact isn’t very good. To improve cooling, it would be better to add a piece of thermal pad about 0.5 mm thick.



1. MT6753V SoC
2. 32 GB eMMC memory chip from Samsung.
3. 2 GB of RAM, also from Samsung
4. MT6328M power management IC made by MediaTek, like the SoC.
5. GSL3680 touchscreen controller.
6. Note that the antenna cables are secured with special clips and connected to the board with connectors. There’s also one unused connector.


One of the most important parts of any mobile device is the battery. This one has an 8000 mAh capacity and a voltage of 3.8 (4.35) V.


I especially liked the picture in the advertising brochure, which says the battery has an 8000 mAh capacity, while the photo shows an 8100 mAh battery :)


Let’s move on to testing the actual capacity. To start, I discharged the tablet until it shut itself off. The indicator was showing 2 or 3% charge.
Then I connected a load to the battery, set to the current I would use to measure capacity—in this case, 1.6 A—and left it running until the sharp voltage drop was over (to eliminate the capacity-recovery effect after resting). Then I noted the voltage.
It turned out that the tablet shuts down at 3.5 V, which is a rather high cutoff voltage.


After that, I charged the tablet using its built-in charging system and started discharging it with an electronic load.
Stage 1 — discharge to 3.5 V. Capacity used by the tablet: 6856 mAh (25.81 Wh).
Stage 2 — discharge to 3 V. Capacity remaining in the battery for safe use: 899 mAh, or 3.026 Wh.
Stage 3 — discharge to 2.8 V. All remaining capacity: 60 mAh, or 0.177 Wh.

So, we have:
capacity used by the tablet — 6856 mAh (25.81 Wh)
total battery capacity — 7815 mAh (29.013 Wh).
rated capacity — 8000 mAh (30.4 Wh).

The battery capacity is a little lower than specified, though not by much. What disappointed me more was that the tablet leaves a fairly large amount of energy "in reserve"—about 12–13%, of which a good 10% could easily have been used.
Of course, this operating mode does extend the battery's life in its own way. But if the goal is to extend its service life, it would also make sense to limit the charge termination voltage. I would shift the "window" a little toward the discharge cutoff voltage, and the battery would last much longer. But what's done is done, and changing it is quite difficult.


Just for the sake of the experiment, I then fully charged the battery using my own charger. The charge termination parameters were roughly the same as the factory settings.
It "took in" 7901 mAh, or 32.5 Wh.

There are often arguments about whether it is valid to test capacity by measuring how much goes "in" during charging. Put simply, it's reasonably accurate if you're testing the battery, not the battery-and-charger combination, since chargers vary and the tablet/phone itself also consumes power. So you can test this way, but you need to be clear about what you're measuring. Also, remember that not all USB testers are "equally useful."

Readers also sometimes wonder how the capacity can be almost the same during charging and discharging—what about efficiency? The answer is simple.
For example, in this tablet the discharge capacity is about 7815 mAh, while the charge capacity is 7901 mAh—a difference of about 1%. But look at the difference in Wh: 29.013 Wh discharged versus 32.5 Wh charged. That's the battery's efficiency—or rather, the energy difference that turns into heat.



After all the tests, I decided to measure capacity by charging, this time connecting a USB tester between the power supply and the tablet.
I fully discharged the tablet, connected the charger, and left it overnight. About 6 hours later, I found the tablet fully charged and the USB tester showing a current of 4 mA and a delivered capacity of 7262 mAh. As a reminder, the proper discharge test showed 6856 mAh.


The tablet has a 10.1-inch IPS display with a resolution of 1920x1200 (16:10). I have no complaints about color reproduction or viewing angles.


I did have some complaints about backlight bleed when viewing it at an angle, although that's not a normal viewing position.
Brightness headroom is limited. The tablet is great for use at home and works well outdoors in overcast weather, but using it on a sunny day will be difficult. The glossy screen makes things worse, so I recommend applying a matte screen protector.

In short, the display is decent and the image looks good, but there's almost no brightness headroom.


When you turn it on for the first time, the tablet starts in the initial setup wizard. Nothing new here; it's pretty much the same as on most smartphones. In fact, this tablet is basically a large smartphone, just without an earpiece and proximity sensor.


The home screen has the standard "cube-like" look. Almost every tablet from this brand that I've had my hands on came with this wallpaper.
One new feature is worth mentioning right away, though: I found it inconvenient. The tablet wakes not only when you press the power button, but also when you tap the screen three times. Some people may find this useful, but personally, it annoys me. And one of the users on the 4PDA forum described how to disable
(the “device is being carried” mode
it’s in Settings under Security > Smart Lock)
but I still couldn’t find that option...


Very few apps are installed, so there won’t be any descriptions of them in today’s review, since most smartphone users already know them anyway.


The tablet runs Android 7.0, with firmware dated November 6, 2017.


Of the 32 GB of flash storage, about 25 GB is available to the user. There’s 1 GB of RAM free initially, but after all the tests I noticed that 1.5 GB was already in use.


An attempt to update over the air failed; the tablet thinks it already has the latest firmware.


CPU-Z shows eight cores running at 1.3 GHz, although I came across some different information stating that some of the cores run at 1.5 GHz.



I usually start testing with AnTuTu, and this time was no exception. I’ll occasionally compare the results with the Cube iPlay 10, which I mentioned at the very beginning.
AnTuTu 5.x scored 31,815 points; the iPlay 10 scored about 25,000 in the same test. But version 6.x produced almost the same result as the iPlay 10, with the difference within the test’s margin of error.


I hadn’t used Geekbench before, so unfortunately I can’t compare the results. I’ll just give the scores for the tablet under review.


Just in case, I also ran all the 3DMark tests. The iPlay 10 results are in parentheses.
1. Sling Shot ES 3.1 (172)
2. Sling Shot ES 3.0 (262)
3. Ice Storm Unlimited
4. Ice Storm Extreme
5. Ice Storm Performance

6. And, of course, PCMark. (3989)

As you can see, the difference isn’t very large, even though the iPlay 10 is based on a quad-core processor.


Bonsai Benchmark scored 1834 points and 26.2 fps, compared with 2094 and 29.9 for the iPlay 10.


The iPlay 10 also scored higher in Epic Citadel at High Quality (57.0), and the same in Ultra mode (24.7).
I also checked the temperature during this test; it reached 72–74 degrees. In general, the temperature changes quite sharply and mostly stays around 60–65 degrees, but there are occasional brief spikes up to 80, which suggests poor thermal contact with the back cover.


The tablet is quite poor when it comes to video format support.


Judging by the AnTuTu Video results, it supports fewer formats than it doesn’t.


Performance with external and internal storage. Unfortunately, I can’t test USB Type-C because I don’t have a card reader, and when connected by cable, the tablet operates in USB 2.0 mode, so there’s little point in running the test.
The built-in card reader has a relatively decent read speed but a low write speed. I used a microSD card with better speed ratings than the results I got.
The internal eMMC storage, on the other hand, is quite fast: around 100 MB/s read and 75 MB/s write. Not bad at all. This was already noticeable while installing various apps and loading them.


Wi-Fi.
Sensitivity is around average or slightly below average. I don’t see any reason to criticize or praise it. In the 2.4 GHz band, I saw lots of nearby access points. In the 5 GHz band, I could see only mine, or occasionally a neighbor’s, but that was very rare.
The speed in the 2.4 GHz band ranged from 6 to 52 Mbps, and in the 5 GHz band from 21 to 104 Mbps.
Sensitivity was slightly better at 2.4 GHz, and I was able to connect from the far room, but the speed was 250 Kbps. This test didn’t work at all in the 5 GHz band.
All tests were conducted in a three-room apartment with reinforced concrete walls. The router is at the farthest point in the apartment.


There are actually only three sensors, although four are shown: an accelerometer, a light sensor, and a sound sensor. The proximity sensor is listed, but it isn’t actually present.
The touchscreen really does support up to 10 touches, no complaints there.


The tablet supports GPS and GLONASS navigation, and AGPS works as well.
But startup is quite slow; I had to wait a long time for it to find enough satellites.


The satellite signal was fairly stable, but positioning accuracy was poor.
Below is a screenshot of the test track. The actual route is marked in red, and the tablet’s version of it in green. The tablet was in my bag, which may have affected the result somewhat, but I’ve had other devices perform better in similar tests. What’s more, before I put the tablet in my bag, the track was fine (the far-right section); the deviations started afterward.
The huge interface elements were a bit annoying, especially in Navitel. On the other hand, some people might actually find them convenient.


I ran three tests to assess battery life: two Geekbench tests at minimum and maximum brightness, and PCMark at maximum brightness.
The difference between the results at maximum brightness (screenshots 1 and 2) may seem too large, especially considering that Geekbench drains the tablet to zero, while PCMark only runs it down to 20%. It’s simple: below 15–20%, the voltage drops sharply, so in practice both tests ran under almost identical conditions.
At minimum screen brightness, the tablet lasted more than 10 hours, which is pretty good.


The video playback test was a little easier to interpret, even though I took the last screenshot at 24% charge, after almost 6 hours of use. I can say that total runtime was about 6.5 hours at 75% screen brightness, which is the most comfortable level for indoor use.


Android’s report after the video playback test. You can see the sharp drop at the end, which is quite annoying: one moment it’s at 15% charge, then suddenly it’s down to 5%.
Other users report 9–10 hours of battery life while browsing, reading books, and so on. Those figures seem quite realistic at 60–75% brightness.


The tablet opens the engineering menu without any problems using the standard code: *#*#3646633#*#*. Below is the information on the available bands; they’re the same for both slots.


As stated in the specs, the tablet has a 5 MP rear camera. That may be a lot compared with some other tablets, but in my opinion the camera is useless weak, even though it has autofocus.
The photo was taken on an overcast day, so there isn’t much color, of course—it’s winter, after all—but overall the image looks very “flat.” Click the image to view the full-size photo.


That’s about it. As you’ve probably noticed, this review isn’t very long; I just don’t know what else to say about this tablet.
In short, it’s mostly an average tablet, though it does have a few notable features, such as a fairly large battery and support for two SIM cards. But it has its drawbacks too, including poor GPS performance, limited screen brightness, and modest performance. The camera is probably best suited to “quickly snapping a photo of some notice,” not “artistic” photography.
Speaking of performance, the tests showed that it’s almost identical to that of the Cube iPlay 10, which I reviewed about six months ago. That tablet cost less than $100, though it had noticeably shorter battery life and no GSM module.
I had no complaints about stability. The tablet never rebooted or froze during testing and behaved quite normally.
In my opinion, the manufacturer’s decision to ditch the familiar microUSB connector isn’t very convenient, but it’s more future-proof. I’d have preferred to have both options on board, especially since it probably wouldn’t cost much.
In this case, the new connector type offers only two advantages: it can be plugged in either way, and it’s mechanically more robust.


The store provided a coupon for this review: CubePowerM3, which brings the price down to $139.99. The coupon has been tested.