HCL Me V1: Ordinary 3G Tablet at a Good Price

The basic expectation of a buyer from a budget tablet is to access mails, type back a reply and browse websites, or video chat with colleagues or friends. In between, he expects some light entertainment in the form of simple games or videos. HCL Me V1 does fulfil the professional requirements very well. Its touch is smooth and responsive; browsing is good and glitch free and so is typing.

It also has a decent front camera for calling and for internet connectivity, it offers a 2G SIM slot. In case you want 3G connectivity, you can connect with a 3G USB dongle. It's compact, robust and weighs 350g and so is very easy to carry and hold, though the looks are pretty ordinary.

Despite the robust build, we liked its lightweight as most other 350g tablets look fragile and plasticky. Most budget tablets fail to handle gaming properly and hang or drag a lot and HCL Me V1 is no different. Video playback is okay, speaker sound is ordinary but in headphones they are really good. It has an adequate 2MP rear camera, a micro SD slot, 3.5mm port and a micro USB port.

In our various performance testing benchmark scores it appears quite ordinary even amongst budget tablets. In Antutu test, with a score of 2768, it is in the same league as Zync Z999 Plus or Micromax Funbook Pro, but in the results of Vellamo browser test (a score of 364), An3D bench (where it scored 4,766), and An3Dbench XL (where it could only manage 10,683) it comes far behind the leading budget tablets.

Its battery lasts a decent 4 hours but it boots up in 1 min 14 sec, which is too long for a tablet.