Swipe Telecom partnered with MTV India to launch the Swipe MTV Slash 4X phablet earlier this year at a price tag of Rs. 9,999. We brought you the unboxing recently. It has Dual SIM support, voice calling and runs on Android 4.2 (Jelly Bean). Is the tablet worth the price? Let us find out in the complete review.
Unboxing
We unboxed the tablet recently. Check out the Swipe MTV Slash 4X unboxing.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nl7wrK0gqrw
Box Contents
The box contents include,
- MTV Slash 4X Tablet
- USB Cable
- USB Charger
- USB OTG Cable
- In Ear type headphones
- User guide
Hardware and Design
It has a 7-inch capacitive touch screen display at a resolution of 1024 x 600 pixels with a pixel density of 169 PPI, similar to last year’s iBall Slide 3G 7334i tablet. The display is bright and is based on One Glass Solution (OGS) technology, but the viewing angles are limited. Since the display is glossy, it is a fingerprint magnet. It has huge bezels around the display, making it looks bigger.
It has a 0.3-megapixel (VGA) front-facing camera. The earpiece is present on the top corner. The tablet lacks both proximity and ambient light sensors.
It has on-screen buttons, which is definitely a good thing, since it makes the phone less taller by saving some bezel below this display. There is also a tiny microphone hole on the corner that is hardly visible due to the black bezel.
The 3.5mm audio jack and the micro USB slot slot are present on the top.
The volume rockers and the power / lock button are present on the right side. It also has a RESET button. Since it has a smooth matte plastic rim running on the sides, it doesn’t attract fingerprints. The tablet is 9.6mm thick, which is decent.
The back has metallic finish in the centre and has plastic finish on the top and the bottom. It weighs 267 grams, which is decent in 7-inch tablets. There is a 2-megapixel camera on the top along with LED flash. Since the plastic part on the top and the bottom are slightly raised, compared to the centre part, these areas including the camera lens are prone to scratches easily.
You can easily open the plastic cover on the top that reveals all the slots. There is a microSD card slot next to the camera module that accepts cards up to 32GB. There are two standard SIM card slots on the other side. These slots are placed once over the other so that you can slide in the SIM cards easily.
The loudspeaker grill is present on the bottom corner. Overall, the build quality is decent, compared to other tablets in this range.
Camera
The 2-megapixel fixed-focus rear camera is below average. The camera UI has a similar interface seen on other MediaTek-powered smartphones that offers several features including, color effects, scene modes, exposure, continuous shot, and more. Daylight shots look decent, but it doesn’t offer much details. Low-light shots are poor and the flash is too mild. Check out some camera samples below.
The tablet has option to record videos at 1080p full HD resolution, but the video quality is bad without details.
Software
It runs on Android 4.2.2 (Jelly Bean). Unlike most other tablets, this has a phone UI, so you have only one drop-down menu with Quick settings. Phone UI looks huge on a 7-inch device. You have option launch the camera from the lockscreen directly, supports widgets, option to launch Google Now just by swiping up from the lock screen and lots more features that are available on Android smartphones running on Android 4.2.
Out of 1GB of RAM, about 444MB of RAM is free when the tablet is idle. Out of 4GB of internal storage you get 1.3GB of usable storage for media and just 367MB for apps, since it already comes pre-loaded with several apps and games.
Once you insert an SD card, you can move apps to the card and also set SD card as the default write disk.
Apps
It comes with a range of pre-installed apps and games. Other than the usual set of utility apps and Google apps, it comes with Adobe Reader, BBM, Easy Installer, MTV Funny, Kingsoft Office, My City Guide, Myscreen, Quikr, SuperBeam, Swipe Assist, UC Browser, WhatsApp and Where’s My Droid. It also comes with a couple of games – Beach Buggy Blitz and Subway Surfers.
Since it has a mobile interface, most apps looks stretched out on the large screen. Since it gets detected as a phone on Google Play, you can only download smartphone apps, which is a big drawback.
Music Player and FM Radio
The music player is stock and can play a range of audio formats. The sound effects equalizer settings has different equalizer presets. You can also enable Bass boost and 3D effect features once you connect your earphones. It also has FM Radio with recording, but lacks RDS. Both the loudspeaker and the bundled in-ear earphones are decent.
Dual SIM and Connectivity
It has Dual SIM support and the SIM management is similar to most Android devices . It has 3G, WiFi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth and GPS. Since this has dual SIM support, you can call or text using either SIM cards. You also get an option in the drop-down bar and also a notification when you place a call, if you choose always ask option. It’s the same even with text messages. You also get a USB OTG cable in the box that could be used to connect a pendrive and access the data in it.
Performance and Benchmarks
The tablet is powered by a 1.3 GHz quad-core MediaTek MT6582 processor with Mali 400 GPU. The performance is pretty good compared to most other tablets in this range. It also has 1GB RAM so that multitasking is pretty smooth. Gaming is also pretty decent in the tablet. It is smooth without any lags, but it the graphics are just average. Check out some synthetic benchmark scores.
Quadrant Benchmark
It scored 5841 points the Quadrant benchmark.
AnTuTu Benchmark 4
In the AnTuTu benchmark 4, it scored 15698 points.
Vellamo 2 HTML5
It scored 1890 points in the Vellamo 2 HTML5 browser benchmark.
Vellamo 2 Metal
It managed to score 443 points in Vellamo 2 Metal CPU subsysterm performance test.
NenaMark 2
It clocked 58.2 fps in the NenaMark 2 GPU benchmark.
Battery Life
The tablet has a 3000 mAh battery. Even though it has 3G and Dual SIM support, the battery lasts for a whole day with average use. If you are a heavy user, it lasts for less than a day. Overall the battery life is pretty good. This doesn’t have any power saving modes.
Conclusion
At a price tag of Rs. 9999, the Swipe MTV Slash 4X has decent build and offers good performance. It comes with 3G connectivity and Dual SIM support. The display is not pleasing since it has limited viewing angles, the camera is useless and it looks like a huge phone, due to the UI. These drawbacks makes it hard to recommend this phablet, while these are lots of better voice calling tablets in this price range.
Pros
- Good performance
- Decent build
- Decent battery life
Cons
- Display has limited viewing angles
- Poor camera
- Lacks proximity and ambient light sensors