iBall CompBook i360 Review

The year 2017 was for affordable devices, from smartphones to laptops, we have seen various products ranging low budget to high. In the laptop category, first Micromax and then iBall began its journey. Though, Lenovo, Dell and Acer already competing with each other to grab the affordable laptop market, iBall also registered its name with two devices in the CompBook series last year. In the new Year, iBall recently announced a new member - CompBook i360, which has several similar components to other available devices, yet looks promising.

The budget device with four different modes

The laptop is built with durable plastic with a glossy finish on the top but has average build quality. The compact laptop is available in an in-vogue soft gold color. In the first glance, you may not notice any flex but while using the keyboard in full swing, you can notice crecks. the screen is also suffering from the same, even pressing the screen gently, a lot of wrapping can be seen easily.

With 17mm thickness, it carries about 1.35 kg weight and offers four different modes: Laptop, Tablet, Stand Mode and Tent Mode with the dual hinge.  The 360° mechanism, holds the screen in place at every angle. It comes with several connectivity features as well including USB 3.0 port, one USB 2.0 port, Mini-HDMI, a 3.5mm headphone and microphone combo port, and a microSD card slot supporting up to 64GB. On the right side, there is a button alongside the power button to disable and enable keyboard while switching to tablet mode. Though, I have seen automatic keyboard lock, while this is another manual solution.

The 11.6-innch HD screen 

In the golden shell, a 1.6-inch TFT LCD screen with a 1366x768 resolution. The multi-touch display produces decent colors and has wide viewing angles. However, it disappointed with low resolution, but considering the price, I think this can be ignored. You can enjoy watching movies and videos on it, but the lower resolution will surely trouble you.

i360 has a wide trackpad with smooth buttons and multi-touch feature to enable smooth operation. But quite often, I minimized the windows while moving the cursor. These are interesting gestures to control the PC but requires a lot of practice still you can repeat the same mistake often. The machine has the island-style keyboard with good key travel but keys are too mushy, meaning not very comfortable in typing experience.

Average performance

It looks good and offers four mode operation, but ultimately you need performance and you can't forget that this is an entry level device. The machine combined decent hardware which lets you manage the day to day tasks easily. I operated it for my daily office tasks like internet surfing and used productivity apps such as MS-office. It was able to handle them easily. As I already mentioned that it is an entry level device so you can't expect much. I loaded a few light games like car racing etc. still, the performance was average.

The screen supports up to 10 fingers and the touch response is quite decent and useful when converted into the tablet mode.

The CompBook is packed with 10000 mAh battery that lets you operate the device for more than a day. In our loop test, it lasted for 6 hours and 12 minutes while playing video over Wi-Fi with full brightness and volume.