Onda Tablet V972 Review

When the Onda tablet V972 was first released back then in early 2013 it was a complete disaster, many users were complaining about an unstable OS, bugs, crashes, lag, poor performance and other similar issues. The reason behind it was that the responsible company rushed the development and launching in order to be the first to deliver a tablet featuring a Quad-core CPU. The Onda V972 tablet had great specifications back then, and when you look at the separate components you could only expect perfection, but the result was the whole opposite. A built where the sum of their parts left a lot to be desired due to a poor optimization.

In the first firmware version, 1.20 that came with Android 4.1 the overall performance was pitiful, most benchmark software gave this device average or low scores. Soon after, the manufacturer released the 1.32 firmware, which promised to solve these issues. Although many of them were solved through this update, there were many others issues that were left unsolved. The Onda tablet was meant to compete with the iPad 3 but due to these problems such thing never happened, however in June of 2013, an official update to Android 4.2.2 finally made things right, allowing the Onda V972 to perform like it was originally meant to.

And in retrospective since most problems were fixed and the Onda tablet V972 still delivers attractive features we have decided to bring you a review of this tablet that offers an awesome 9.7 inches screen with a high resolution and is capable of playing 4K videos in it. Currently, the specifications can still be considered good and the price has dropped off in a remarkable way, making this tablet a solid choice even in the current market where people can find smartphones more powerful than this device.

Display:

The Onda V972 has a 9.7 inches retina capacitive touchscreen that supports a resolution of 2048*1536 pixels, this is the best feature that this tablet has, because the quality of the picture is really high, the colors are strong, the brightness is great, and the size is quite generous.  When it comes to video, the Onda V972 is capable of playing 4k videos or movies, also the games can benefit from the high resolution to provide a great gaming experience, although we recommend reducing the resolution a bit while playing the most recent and demanding games to ensure a smoother experience and avoid any kind of frame drops or stuttering.

Design:

The design is clearly inspired by the iPad 3, but without frontal buttons. It has the following size dimensions: 242*187.5*9.8mm and is a little heavy to carry (649g). The disposal of buttons is rather questionable, on the top you can find two buttons: Home and power; no idea what are those two doing there, since you will end up pressing them accidentally more than once while holding the tablet in a horizontal way.

On the inferior side, you can find the following ports: a Jack 3,5mm for earphones, a micro-USB for charging, a Micro-SD slot and two embedded speakers.

The external design can be criticized since the distribution of the buttons could have been better. As we stated before you can accidentally tap the power button or Home key. We haven’t mentioned yet the complete absence of volume keys, which is really annoying. Also, the Onda V972 has a poor sound quality that will force you to wear earphones most of the time.

We can wrap this up by saying that this is one of the worst aspects of the product, and sadly this can’t be fixed.

CPU:

The chipset features a Quad ARM Cortex-A7 architecture with an A31 Quad core processor. This is currently a mid-end CPU commonly featured in smartphones. Nowadays this CPU is pretty standard, but 3 years ago the story was completely different, nevertheless we can still expect a good performance in apps or tasks now that the performance issues are gone.

GPU:

The GPU featured is the PowerVR SGX544 MP2, a powerful onboard graphics card for tablets and smartphones. Even now this is a high-end GPU since it features 8 cores running at 384 MHz and supports DirectX 9_3 and OpenGL ES 2.0. This allows the Onda Tablet V972 to deliver a vivid image, full of details and with a high resolution

When it comes to performance, the GPU had some troubles while browsing the interface and playing 4K videos, but ever since the system started to be shipped with Android 4.2 and the firmware update, the performance has been the expected.

The Onda V972 delivers a great HD experience in movies, videos, images and also games; most games will run at a decent frame rate on medium to high settings and resolution.

Memory:

The memory featured by the Onda tablet is good even now, it has 2 GB of DDR3 memory Ram, which is pretty decent by today´s standards and ideal for multitasking. The internal storage is 32 GB large, to be honest, this is really surprising considering the year in which came out. Also, a micro-SD card can be plugged to expand the limit. The maximum capacity of SD cards that is supported is 32GB.

OS and software:

The current version of the OS is Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean. Which solved most issues for the owners of the Onda Tablet V972. It’s important to point out that the interface was slightly tweaked by the manufacturer, that also included two big widgets and some pre-loaded software that you may want to remove afterward.

Camera:

The Onda Tablet V972 features two cameras, one in the front that has 2.0 Megapixels of resolution and a rear 5.0Mp cam, both cameras support video recording and auto focus function. In this sense, the device is just average.

Battery:

The Onda Tablet V972 is powered by an 8000mAh Li-Poly battery that can last up to 10 hours of use. Also, while playing video at 720p with bright and volume maxed out, the battery has managed to last almost 4 hours of continuous usage. These results are amazing when you take the size and quality of the display into consideration. When it comes to battery, this tablet offers a solid lifespan that won’t disappoint you.

Specifications :

OS:	Android 4.2.2
GPU:	8 Core Power VR SGX544
RAM:	2GB DDR3 1MB L2 Cache
Storage:	32GB
Screen:	10 points Retina Capacitive Touchscreen, 2048*1536 High-resolution Screen
Size:	9.7 inch
Gravity Sensor:	Yes
Visible Angle:	178°
Camera :	Dual Camera OV Camera, Front 2.0 Megapixels, Back 5.0 Megapixels Auto Focus
Video:	4K HD Video Play with formats of MP4/3GP/3G2/RM/RMVB/ASF/FLAC/APE/MOV etc.
Extend Card:	Support TF card up to 32GB extended
OTG:	Supported
WIFI Display:	Supported
WIFI Direct:	Supported
Multi-Touch:	Yes, 10 points touch
Android Market:	Yes
Skype:	Yes
Email and Browser:	Yes, built in
WIFI:	802.11b/g/n
Earphone Interface:	Jack 3.5mm
Music:	MP3/WMA/FLAC/APE/WAV/RA/Ogg/MIDI/3GP etc.
Ebook:	UMD, TXT, PDF, HTML, RTF, FB2…
Work Time:	Up to 8~10 hours
Battery:	Li-Poly 8000mAh
Weight:	649g
Size:	242*187.5*9.8mm

The V972 tablet by Onda has come a long way since it had its bumpy launch 3 years ago, but thanks to the attention of the manufacturer the firmware problems were fixed. Sadly, this tablet never was the star that it was meant to be 3 years ago, but as for today, it offers a solid choice while looking for cheap mid-end tablets with the capacity of 4k video playback. Also, the quality of the display is remarkable and the overall performance is smooth most of the time, for such reasons we consider the Onda tablet v972 a good candidate for mobile entertainment or even as a work assistant.