Tablet Grudge Match - Zync Z990 vs Ainol Novo 7 Paladin

The last year saw a sudden rise in the number of tablets that were priced between 10K and 15K. This year saw the price bracket slipping down further with there being newer launches of tablets hitting markets at a sub-10k price. With the prices of tablets falling by the day, manufacturers have learnt how to cash in on the price sensitive Indian market. Last week we received not one, but two ICS-based tablets that fell in the same bracket with their 7-inch displays, the latest flavour of the Android OS, and incidentally they were closely priced, too. 

We are talking about the Zync Z990, which was officially launched as the first ICS running tablet to be launched in India and the Ainol Novo 7 Paladin. So, we decided to lead them to the ring and let them fight it out. Read on to know who takes away the winner’s title. 

Good connectivity

Zync Z990 – Rs. 8,990

The Zync Z990 was launched as the first ICS tablet in India, a week ago. Zync has done a commendable job at maintaining a sub-10K price, while packing in some nifty attributes, like support for a standard USB 2.0 port (that allows copy-pasting and watching content directly from the a flash drive), Wi-Fi, 1080p videos and a touch friendly capacitive screen. The Zync tablet won't disappoint you on the connectivity front and it delivers a decent performance while web surfing and navigating. Though a primary camera has been given a miss, a VGA front facing one has been included to enable video conferencing. 

Keeping the above attributes in mind, it appears to be quite decent at the price tag attached to it. 

Sleek and sturdy

Ainol Novo 7 Paladin – Rs. 7990

Many may not be familiar with Ainol, but the company, just like Zync managed to bring in an ICS-based tablet, priced under Rs. 8,000. The Ainol Novo Paladin 7 is sleek with a sturdy build quality, fueled by 1 GHz single core, MIPS-based XBurst CPU with a Vivante GC860 GPU. It has a slick user interface and it could run 1080p videos smoothly, continuously for 9 hours and 20 minutes with its 4000 mAh battery. There’s Gmail, Maps, Places, the Play Store and a media player (besides the stock one) with the device and you can get your free copy of Spiderman (although we didn’t get ours in the review unit). Though its MIPS-based processor doesn’t allow you to download all apps, one can easily work their way out as mentioned in the review with the Magic Code.  

Sleek and sturdy design fused with the Ice Cream Sandwich operating system makes the device all worth the price tag it is carrying. 

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Verdict

The scores clearly show that the Ainol Novo 7 Paladin emerges as the winner with two additional points. The Zync Z990 has better connectivity options, a touch-friendy and responsive capacitive screen and a decent performance. Now even though the scores are in favour of the Ainol Novo, we must mention that the Zync Z990 was a good attempt by the company with a pretty decent performance, looking at the previous model we had got our hands on. The company could have worked at optimizing the screen which has chopped off a part of the icon, a sturdy build and better battery.

On the other hand, Ainol has served a well thought of, sleek, sturdy ICS tablet that delivers swifter performance, more onboard storage and drops the price by Rs.1,000, compared to the Zync Z990. Well, this could just be the beginning of the ICS entrants and as the year unfolds, we wouldn’t be surprised to see a thick gush of such affordable Android ICS tablets arriving.