Advent Vega

Comparing the Advent Vega to most other leading tablets would leave it looking like a rather lacklustre device. However in the growing range of budget tabs, it provides a reasonably powerful option for browsing on the move, playing games and using as a portable media player.

Out of the Box

I was pleasantly surprised with the build quality of the device, although it's plastic everything seems well built and the buttons work well. You will need to have purchased a fairly big SD card with the device as there is only 512mb of internal memory.

To start with, you need to put back half an hour to flash the device with a custom rom (fairly easy) but after that the device opens up into a fully fledged tablet.

As a Portable Media Player

Media playback is smooth both from an SD card and also streaming content. I have found the youtube app works well on the device and iplayer is definitely watchable, but other streaming video is a bit hit and miss (megaupload content works smoothly but seems like quite low quality).

Also, HDMI provides up scaling onto your TV. I have tried this with a 32-inch and found it to work well with only a very slight decrease in frame rate and quality.

As an Ebook Reader

Other than portable media, I also bought the device to use as an ebook/comic reader. With software from the marketplace, this is achieved and is actually quite pleasant. Apart from the small viewing angle of the screen (not that noticeable in landscape but quite a lot in portrait) the screen is crisp and clear and the software I use works smoothly.

I would advise buying the device with a matte-ish screen protector however (I bought the official advent one) as it decreases glare and just seems to improve the look of the screen.

General performance

Gaming on the vega is a pleasant experience, the majority of games work well and there is a tegra zone app in the marketplace to show you some of the games with the best graphics that will play on the device.

One major caveat with this device is that the G-sensor doesn't work for many games including the impressive Galaxy on Fire and most of the various racing games. However, I think this problem lies more within the software than the hardware and so hopefully future updates will sort this out.

Although the device is using Froyo, there is a large and active community providing a Honeycomb based rom (Vegacomb) which is currently in Beta.

Conclusion

If your looking for a tablet and not willing to pay the price for an ipad or galaxy tab etc, this is definitely the tablet for you.