Originally listed as a $199 product, the idea of an 8 inch Windows tablet was pretty appealing on paper – the question is, is it really any good? And who should consider it? EFTM spent some quality time with the Pendo to find out.
At $200 or less, you’re not going to get the brightest screen, or the fastest processor. What you should get from a $200 tablet promoted by Microsoft is a level of performance that makes Windows worth using.
The Pendo is just that.
With 16GB of on-board storage, and just 1GB of RAM this isn’t going to be worth “benchmarking”. However, once you spend some time with it and learn to work with it, you’ll find some value.
Importantly, the Pendo comes with a 1 year Personal subscription to Microsoft Office 365. That’s $100 in value right there. Consider then the Target asking price today is $179 and you’re basically paying $80 for the device.
The screen struggles to give you much by way of colour and brightness, and when alongside almost any other tablet you’re going to feel disappointed. But remember you’re probably not going to sit this side by side with an iPad outside the Target store.
It’s touch screen is far less responsive than you may also be used to, and given the size and the space the keyboard takes up, a cheap Bluetooth keyboard would be a great investment.
For fun, I tried running Minecraft. It worked, but it was almost impossible to use – but the Pendo isn’t made for that. This is a device for checking Facebook, Twitter and Emails – anything else is a real stretch.
At this price, its worth it just for the Office subscription and to have a tablet for the kitchen for recipes or social.
For the kids, be wary, it’s performance is down, so be sure of the tasks you want it to complete before you jump in and buy.
[schema type=”review” rev_name=”Pendo Pad Windows Tablet” rev_body=”A cheap tablet from Microsoft which ticks some basic boxes but won’t fullfil the majority of your needs” author=”Trevor Long” pubdate=”2014-11-28″ user_review=”2.5″ min_review=”0″ max_review=”5″ ]
