Milagrow TabTop 7.4 Review

It’s easy to say that there is no shortage of Android tablets to choose from in the market today. They’re spread across the price range and they’re designed with different users in mind. The category is so popular that there really are a couple of new models being launched every week or so. It’s getting difficult to keep track of the number of tablets in the market. Milagrow is one of the brands that has its presence in the tablet market in a small way, and they have a new tablet called the TabTop 7.4.

The latest in Milagrow`s arsenal

Design and Build Quality

The TabTop 7.4’s unique feature is its design and build. It’s thinner than most tablets; Milagrow even claims it to be India’s thinnest 7-inch tablet. The entire tablet feel like one big solid block. This also makes it a little heavy, but nowhere close to say, the iPad. The screen isn’t set into the frame of the body but the finish and attention to detail is certainly a lot better than most of the tablets in the market in that price range. Even though the tablet runs Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS), which happens to have on-screen controls, the TabTop 7.4 also includes three physical buttons. The quality of the buttons is good; they’re very flat but they’re sturdy. 

Smooth, clean solid back on the TabTop 7.4

The screen itself shows no flex as such and it’s especially easy to carry around with the bundled pouch that the company packs with the tablet. Not everything is perfectly designed. For example, the black tablet and pouch come with a black charger and a white cable. These are but minor complaints - things we noticed, but it’s the tablet that we’re clearly most interested in. 

Features

Interface

The TabTop 7.4 is pretty well spec’d as far as hardware is concerned. It’s powered by a rather quick, 1.2GHz ARM Cortex A8 processor bundled with 512MB of DDR3 RAM, which should be sufficient for most applications. Graphics are handled by a Mali-400 MP graphics solution, which should hopefully boost performance even further. The tablet runs Android 4.0.3 Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) and there’s a Jelly Bean upgrade expected. In terms of the interface, there’s very little to differentiate it from most of the other ICS powered tablets in the market, except for the Milagrow wallpaper. The tablet also comes with a few bundled apps designed for different kind of users. These are set up in neatly assorted folders on the home screen.

Built like a tank

There are no touch-sensitive buttons along the screen, but there are three physical buttons - one for home, power and back. We find this is a little awkward, considering that the OS running it is ICS, and it has on-screen controls for the same. The power button on the tablet doesn’t allow you to power off  the screen either. In most of the benchmarks, it matches the recently reviewed BSNL Penta T-Pad WS802C in graphics intensive benchmarks. 

Media

The TabTop 7.4 has a 7-inch screen which has a slightly different aspect ratio of 4:3, unlike most of the widescreen tablets sold in the market today. The aspect ratio is more like the iPad but this tablet has a screen resolution of 800 x 600. The aspect ratio makes the tablet a little wider, so it’s a little uncomfortable at times while typing because of its wider form factor. 

4GB of overall, internal storage

As for playback, the TabTop 7.4 is easily able to handle most popular video and audio formats using a Super-HD app. We tried running AVI files using the regular Xvid and DivX codecs, as well as 720p and 1080p files stored in the MKV format. The performance was good and there were no signs of framing. We also tried a 60fps HD 1080p clip and that worked perfectly fine as well. The frame rate, however, felt like 30fps and not 60, but there was no stuttering whatsoever. The tablet is capable of rendering even higher resolution content than full 1080p, if required. 

The quality of the speakers on the tablet is average, and nothing spectacular. The screen, on the other hand, is average when you look at it straight up. But, if you move the screen sideways, you notice the poor viewing angles. The screen also attracts smudges and it’s visible clearly when you have bright lights around.