By Jamshed Avari | Updated: 8 August 2014 03:20 IST
Milagrow rose to prominence a few years ago for selling tablets it
called "TabTops" with crossover features such as USB host connectivity,
but has since then been better known for its pioneering line of domestic
and commercial robots. The company currently sells an impressive
variety of vacuum cleaners (including one that doubles as a
cloud-connected home security device), window washers, massagers, air
purifiers and much more.
The tablet vision is still alive
alongside, and we have with us today the Milagrow M2Pro, a compact
7.9-inch tablet with features that the company hopes will give it an
advantage over bigger brands including Apple, Dell and Samsung. It isn't
aimed at the very lowest end of the market, which makes it all the more
interesting.
Domestic brands haven't made inroads into the tablet
market in the way that they've taken over the low-end and mid-range
smartphone space, so it will be interesting to see whether Milagrow can
counter its competition with abundant features and low prices.
Look and feel The
M2Pro looks pretty ordinary. It has the rough outline of an iPad mini
but you wouldn't mistake one for the other. It's made of white plastic
but most of the back is covered with a thin sheet of aluminium. The
front face is pretty blank since the tablet uses on-screen buttons. Only
the earpiece, front camera, notification LED and sensor array are
visible above the screen.
The headset socket, Micro-USB port and
Mini-HDMI ports are all located in a cluster on the top edge, while the
bottom is blank. The power and volume buttons are in a strange place -
the bottom right corner. The buttons are a bit mushy and the volume
rocker is especially inconvenient because of its tiny size. There's also
a pinhole reset button in one corner of the rear panel.
There's a
plastic flap on the upper right edge which is flush with the curve of
the M2Pro's back and conceals the SIM card and microSD card slots. The
camera and flash are close to the top edge of the rear, and there's a
narrow speaker cutout on the bottom.
Most Android tablets have
16:9 or 16:10 screens, so the M2Pro's uncommon 4:3 aspect ratio gives it
squarer proportions than we're used to seeing. That isn't any problem,
and the M2Pro is still relatively light and easy to hold.
We have
to make a special mention of the M2Pro's built-in vibrator. It's meant
to provide feedback when you tap anything on screen, but it's so loud
and powerful that it makes the tablet's entire body rattle. Typing text
became a somewhat amusing experience thanks to the constant buzzing.
Specifications and software The
M2Pro 3G is listed in some places online as "M2Pro 8.4". This refers to
its 7.9-inch screen and 4:3 aspect ratio, not the screen size itself in
the way that some other companies label their products. The screen is
probably the most disappointing aspect of this tablet - it's large
enough and the proportions are great for reading text and browsing the
Web, but the resolution is just way too low.
The 768x1024
resolution is the same as that of the first-generation iPad mini, but
somehow text appears more torn and lines are more jagged. Maybe we're
just too used to high-dpi screens now. Viewing angles are actually quite
good. Colours are vivid but the screen gets completely washed out in
sunlight.
The processor is a quad-core Rockchip 3188 which runs
at 1.6GHz and has an integrated Mali-400 GPU. This isn't by any means a
speed demon but it's relatively modern and should be powerful enough for
HD video and a bit of gaming. There's also 2GB of RAM, which is a
healthy amount.
The M2Pro is available with either 16GB or 32GB of
internal storage - we have the 32GB model with us for review. In
addition to microSD cards up to 64GB in capacity, the M2Pro supports USB
on-the-go and can mount hard drives of up to 2TB. Wi-Fi b/g/n and
Bluetooth 4.0 are also supported.
The M2Pro runs Android 4.2.2
which is now considerably out of date. Milagrow seems to have tweaked it
a bit, but not necessarily for the better. For some reason there are no
icons on the homescreen - not even the basic camera and browser
shortcuts - though you can pin these manually. Instead, an odd widget
runs above the app drawer shortcut on each homescreen offering text
links labelled Contacts, Telephone and Internet. It looks very strange,
partly due to the aforementioned screen issues.
There are five
soft buttons instead of the usual three - Along with the Back, Home and
Recents buttons there are also two to adjust the volume. This is really
odd, considering the hardware volume buttons are right next to them
(when the tablet is held the right way up) and it also means that the
buttons we actually need are all off to the left rather than their usual
positions.
Android 4.2.2 doesn't hide the buttons when they
aren't needed, so there's always a black strip on the bottom of the
screen. It does replace the buttons with dim dots in most full-screen
apps - unfortunately the three dots do not correspond to the new
five-button layout which means you hit the wrong button every time you
need to exit a full-screen app. This is truly annoying and we cannot
understand how Milagrow allowed this behaviour to pass.
The rest
of the interface is stock Android - there aren't any customisations to
the Settings app, notifications shade or app drawer. You don't get many
preloaded apps - other than Google's usual spread, there's only a file
explorer, wireless display control app, Super Video player (which lets
you watch videos in a floating window above other apps), and an e-book
reader simply called E-Book.
Camera The M2Pro's camera app
is just about as bare as it's possible to be. You only have control over
the flash, white balance, exposure compensation, and image size. There
are two scene modes - Auto and Night - and a separate Panorama setting.
The
primary camera is rated at 8 megapixels and the front camera at 2
megapixels which are both above the norm for tablets. One issue we had
is that the placement of the camera on the rear makes it difficult to
hold the tablet without getting a finger in the way of the lens.
(Click to see full size)
Image
quality was just about okay, but a lot depended on lighting conditions.
There was noticeable inaccuracy in colours, loss of detail, and very
poor exposure metering all around, but photos taken in daylight were
especially overblown. Low-light indoor shots actually came out
reasonably well - there was a lot of noise but details were discernible.
The front camera is serviceable for video chats but not much else.
(Click to see full size)
Performance Benchmark
results were a mixed bag - we weren't expecting much from the Rockchip
processor but it did fairly well in AnTuTu and Quadrant, producing
scores of 19,221 and 5,087 respectively. Graphics scores were pretty
weak though - we managed only 5.4fps in GFXbench and 3957 points in
3DMark's low-intensity Ice Storm test.
These scores are slightly
higher than those of the Smartlink Digitab SS1078W, which is based on a
Rockchip RK3066, the immediate predecessor to the 3166. Various other
hardware differences could also account for the disparity.
That
isn't the whole story though. In our time with the Milagrow M2Pro 3G, we
found that it stuttered and there was a bit of lag during screen
transitions. This might be down to software optimisation, so we hope
that things improve with future updates.
The battery lasted only 4
hours, 32 minutes in our video loop test which was rather
disappointing. We didn't test the calling features, but we did find that
Wi-Fi reception was unusually weak.
We couldn't get any of our
1080p test videos to play except the lightest MPEG4 file, and it
stuttered way too much to be watchable. Even 720p video stuttered in
places and skipping around the timeline resulted in very long lags.
Sound from the built-in speaker was very loud, but just too thin and
shrill.
Verdict There are many tablets on the market which
are more polished and user-friendly than the Milagrow M2Pro, but it
still manages to offer decent specifications and features for its price.
Most tablets come with only 16GB of internal storage space and lack 3G
at this price.
In terms of user experience alone, even the
now-ancient first-generation iPad mini is far better, but it only comes
with 16GB of space, has no microSD slot, and sells for around Rs. 27,000
today. A much closer match would be the Dell Venue 8 which is also
highly polished, achieves benchmark results, and matches the 32GB of
space and 3G connectivity. It's ordinarily priced at Rs. 25,000 but is
currently selling for only Rs. 17,000. If you have the budget for it,
the Google Nexus 7 (2013) 32GB with 3G and LTE sells for Rs. 28,000.
It's
really hard to recommend the Milagrow M2Pro 3G except in situations
where price is the most important consideration. Ordinarily, we would
strongly suggest that people set aside a little more money so they can
afford a product which will be much more pleasant to use, or
alternatively reduce their expectations. At this moment, the Dell Venue 8
is a much more attractive proposition and Milagrow will have to adjust
its pricing to live up to its own value proposition again.
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