ISSUE389|COMPUTER SHOPPER|JULY2020 93
NEXTTOTHE£399 Apple iPad Mini andd
the£629SamsungGalaxyTabS6,the
prospectofhavingtopayonly£90foraa
10.1inAndroidtabletsoundstoogoodtoo
betrue.Unfortunately,asisoftenthecaase,
itishere.TheVankyoMatrixPadZ4isa
miserable product that struggled to
completeour benchmarksand,
astonishingly,manages to feel cheaper
than its very low cost of entry.
At aglance,the MatrixPad Z4 is a
pretty standard-looking tablet. The bezeels
areabitthick,andit’smostlymadeofpplastic,
butthere’snothingimmediatelyuntoward
considering the price.It’s when you pick it up
that the first signs of doubt appear.
The plastic is smooth, but it feels
insubstantial, as if the whole thing were
hollow.Also,ifthere’s one thing you cann
usuallysayforplastic-backedtech,it’sthhat
it doesn’t attract unsightly fingerprints aas
muchasglassbackplatesdo–buthere,
weirdly,it’s just as prone to oily smudges.
DISTRESSED SURFACE
Worse is the screen, which feels like it has a
kind of rubbery resistance when you swipe a
finger over it. Sometimes this, combined with
the extremely slow internals, makes the
simple process of registering inputs so bad
that entering apattern to unlock the tablet
just doesn’t register the final line.
The MatrixPad Z4 does have one thing
going forit: connectivity.Botha3.5mm
headphone jack and amicroSD card (up to
128GB cards are supported) are in place
alongside the usual power switch, volume
rocker and Micro USB charging port. All of
these are along the side when held in portrait
perspective,for some reason, although this
doesn’t present any real issues in practice.
The screen, however,has problems besides
its uncomfortable surface.For starters, its
peak brightness is apathetic 162cd/m^2 ,
while only 74% of the sRGB colour gamut
is covered and contrast is apoor 592:1.
Besides looking ugly in general, the display’s
low brightness and reflective surface make
it difficult to use in the sunlight.
Never mind the £300-plus tablets that join
the MatrixPad Z4 in this round-up; even the
£50 Amazon Fire 7(Shopper379) has a
contrast ratio of 1,205:1, and manages to hit a
peak luminance of 374cd/m^2 ,sothe low price
isn’t agood enough excuse.
That said, even adisplayofthisquality
could be forgiven if performance was up to
VANKYO
MatrixPad Z4
★★★★★
£90•From http://www.amazon.co.uk
VERDICT
Thisdreadfulslateonlyservesasproofthata
lowpriceandgoodvaluearenotsynonyymous
ppaarr..SSaaddllyy,,ssaayyiinnggtthheeMMaattrriixxPPaaddZZ 44 iissaappiiggttoo
usewouldrequireanapologytopigs.
There’s likely areason you haven’t heard
of the Rockchip RK3066 processor before.
Performance is consistently awful, slowing
things down to ahaltinjust about everything
it does. Taponthe Google Playicon and it
finally loads after about six seconds. It takes
atotal of three seconds forthe keyboard
to slowly stutter on to the screen after
pressing the search bar.STRAIN CHECK
Even transition screens on the homescreen
leave aslowghostly trail as you see more
frames of the movement than you should.
These things get marginally better as the
tablet warms up,but it’s not great –and
speaking of warming up,watching YouTube
videos foraminutecauses the plastic back
panel to noticeably heat up.
It barely spluttered its waythrough
Geekbench 4, ending up with adire single-
core result of 402 and amulticore test
score of 998. Even the Fire 7managed 638
and 1,656 respectively,and we had to delve
pretty deep intothe archives to find a
device that last failed to break four figures
in themulticore portion. That would be the
Nokia 2smartphone (Shopper365), which
cost £100 when it launched in 2017.
Not that we’d recommend gaming on
either device,but the Fire 7also beats
the MatrixPad Z4 in the GFXBenchMMaannhhaattttaannbbeenncchhhmmaarrkk..AAmmaazzoonn’ssttaabblleett
produced12fpsintheonscreentest,while
Vankyo’scoughedout7fps.
Batterylifeprovidesonelast
disappointment, with the MatrixPad Z4
giving up after 7h 32m of video playback.
That’s not the worst battery lifewe’ve ever
seen in atablet but, considering how dim
that screen is, it’s still disappointing. We
normally run this battery test at 170cd/m^2 ,
which the displaycan’t even reach, so it
manages to underwhelm even when given
what should be favourable testing conditions.ZLIST
From the unpleasant build quality to a
screen so dim that it made us break
our own battery-testing rules, the Vankyo
MatrixPad Z4 is atop-to-bottom stinker.
The only reason it avoids the one-star fate is
that, despiteeverything, it does technically
work as advertised, and if you just want
something extremely basic to keep younger
(and ideally less tech-conscious) kids
occupied, this maybeuptothe job.
Even so,you could saythe same of the
Fire 7, which is cheaper,and if youcan wait
forthe next Amazon sale you’ll more than
likely be able to get the superior Fire HD 10
forasimilar price.Donot seriouslyconsider
buying this tablet; if you have any but the
lowest standards, you might as well be
setting your moneyonfire.Atleast then
you’d get adecent level of brightness.