General usage & Movies

3D-8 makes use of Android 4.1 aka JellyBean. With 4.4 (KitKat) now being available – the difference between these two Operating Systems is quite noticeable but thankfully the interface still retains the intuitive nation many have come to love.

Using 3D-8 for menial tasks such as checking email, web browsing or watching a movie is the ideal operation due to the hardware limitations of the tablet.

Watching movies is an enjoyable activity. The screen is clear and movements are fluid and the audio is decent – our only criticism comes with the resolution, we’d have liked to see full 1080p support. 3D does indeed work without the need of glasses but it doesn’t feel immersive enough, especially since this is touted as one of the fundamental features. We’d rather see higher specifications internally and higher resolutions for output than 3D technology.



Gaming

Since the advent of the tablet, gaming has become popular on such a platform because the larger screen is much easier to interface with when compared to a smartphone. 3D-8 is bundled with various software apps including Tridef® 3D which offers 3D stereoscopic games. Certain games can be quite demanding on the hardware requirements – 3D-8 handled some games very well, but others not so well. For example, the intensity of Clash of Clans really challenged the 1.5GHz dual core processor and 1GB DRAM, so much so that our Samsung Galaxy S4 handled this game better. By better, we mean no FPS drops, lag or stuttering – unfortunately 3D-8 suffered these characteristics frequently.

Battery Life

In our experience with 3D-8 we managed to squeeze over 5 hours of usage from the 5000mAh Li-Polymer battery. This was from a full charge and included some light gaming and web browsing with the screen set to “bright”. This amount of uptime is actually reasonable and means you can use it to occupy yourself whilst on a long flight. We expect some extra time when the unit is in the energy saving mode.