4444 DECEMBER 2019|COMPUTER SHOPPER|ISSUE 382
£90FORA10.1in Android tablet soundstoo
good to be true–and it is. The MatrixPad Z4
is amiserable product that struggledto
completeour benchmarks and, astonishingly,
managesto fe el even cheaper than its
extremely low costof entry.
At aglance,the Vankyo MatrixPad Z4 is a
pretty standard-looking tablet. The bezels are
abit thick, and it’s madeof plastic, but there’s
nothing immediately untoward considering
the price.It’s when you pick it up that the
first signsof doubt appear.The plastic is
smooth, but itfeels insubstantial, as if the
whole thing were hollow.Also,ift here’s one
thing you can usually sayfor plastic-backed
tech, it’s that it doesn’t leave unsightly
fingerprints–but here ,weirdly,itd oes.
Worse is the screen, whichfeels like it has
akind of rubbery resistance when you swipe.
Sometimes this, combined with the extremely
slow internals, makes things so bad that
enteringapattern to unlock the tablet just
doesn’t register the final line.
SHOWOFB LEAKNESS
The MatrixPad Z4 does have one thing going
forit: connectivity.Both a3.5mm headphone
jack andamicroSD card (upto 128GB cards
are supported) are in place,alongside the
power switch, volume rocker and microUSB
charging port. Unusually,the microUSB port is
on the side rather than the bottom, which
makes foraslightly awkward positionforthe
charging cable when used in portrait mode.
The screen, however,has problems
besides its uncomfortable surface.For
starters, its peak brightness isapathetic
162cd/m^2 ,while only 74%of the sRGB colour
gamut is covered and contrast isapoor 592:1.
Besides looking ugly in general, the display’s
low brightness and reflective surface make it
difficultto use in the sunlight.
Even the £50 Amazon Fire7(Shopper379)
has acontrast ratioof 1,205:1, and manages
to hit apeak luminanceof 374cd/m^2 ,sot he
low price isn’tagood enough excuse.
That said,adisplayoft his quality could
be forgiven if performance was upto par.
VANKYO MatrixPadZ4
★★★★★
£90•From http://www.amazon.co.uk
VERDICT
Thisdreadfulslateonlyservesasproofthata
lowpriceandgoodvaluearenotsynonymous
ANDROID9.0 TABLET
Unfortunately,saying
the MatrixPad Z4 isapig
to use would require an
apologyto pigs.
There’s likely a
reason you haven’t
heard of the Rockchip
RK3066 processor
before.Performance is
consistently awful,
slowing things downto a
halt in just about
everything.Tapont he
Google Playicon and it
finally loads after about
six seconds. It takes a
total of three seconds
forthe keyboardto
slowly stutter onto the
screen after pressing the search bar.
RUNNING HOT, LEFT COLD
Even transition screens on the homescreen
leave aghostly trail as you see more frames
of the movement than you should. Things get
marginally better as it warms up,but it’s not
great –and speakingof warming up,watching
YouTube videosforaminutecauses the
plastic back panelto noticeably heat up.
It barely spluttered its waythrough
Geekbench 4, ending up withadire single-
core resultof 402 andamulticoretest score
of 998. Even the Fire7managed 638 and 1,656
respectively,and we hadto dive pretty deep
intothe archivesto find adevice that last
failed to break four figures in the multicore
portion. That would be the Nokia2(Shopper
365), asmartphone that cost £100 when it
launched in 2017.
Not that we’d recommend gaming on
either of them, but the Fire7also beats the
MatrixPad Z4 in the GFXBench Manhattan
benchmark. Amazon’s tablet produced
12fps in the onscreentest, whileVankyo’s
coughed out 7fps.
Battery lifeisa lso adisappointment, with
the MatrixPad Z4 giving up after 7h 32mof
video playback. That’s not the worst battery
lifewe’ve ever seen inatablet but, seeing how
dim the screen is, it’s still disappointing–we
normally run this batterytest at 170cd/m2,
which the displaycan’t even reach.
NOVANKYO
From the unpleasant build qualityto ascreen
so dim that it made us break our own
battery -testing rules, theVankyo MatrixPad
Z4 is atop-to-bottom stinker.The only reason
it avoids the one-starfate is that, despite
everything, it doestechnically work as
advertised, and if you just want something
extremely basicto keep younger kids
occupied, this maybeuptothe job.
Even so,you could saythe sameof the
Fire 7, which is cheaper,and if you can wait
forthe next Amazon sale you’ll more than
likely be ableto get the superior Fire HD 10
forasimilar price.Don ot seriously consider
buying this tablet; if you have anything but
the lowest standards, you might as well be
setting your moneyonfi re.Atl east then
you’d getadecent levelof brightness.
AlanMartin
Batterylife
0% -50 Reference + 50 + 100
Seepage84f orperformancedetails
PROCESSORDual-core1.5GHzRockch ipRK3066•
SCREENSIZE10.1in•SCREENRESOLUTION1,280x800•
REARCAMERA8megapixels•STORAGE32GB•
WIRELESSDATANone•NFCNo•DIMENSI ONS
250x171x90mm•WEIGHT490g•OPER ATINGSYSTEM
Androi d9.0•WARRANTYThreeyearsRTB•DETAILS
http://www.ivankyo.com•PARTCO DEMatrixPadZ4
SPECIFICATIONS
7h32m
From the unpleasantbuild qualitytoascreen so dim
thatitmade us break ourownbattery-testing rules, the
Vankyo MatrixPad Z4 isatop-to-bottomstinker
