How do you rate the Vizio Tablet?

[SEMIJim]

I decided to keep my VTAB (just before the 90 days at Costco were up), and I don't necessarily regret having done so, but I've rather fallen out of love with it. Ever since the last update from Vizio, or perhaps the one before, I regularly experience the following annoyances:

• Device almost randomly shuts all the way down, rather than just sleeps. Sometimes even while on the charger. The time it takes it to decide to do that is also random.
• Sometimes, when it is merely napping, a longer-than-normal button-press is needed to wake it up
• WiFi connecting has become highly erratic. At times it will connect right off, other times it jerks around forever-in-a-day to connect, other times it decides to disable the locally-available wireless network--necessitating going into wireless management and telling it "Connect, for God's sake, you idiot thing!"
• Touch screen response has become quite erratic. Sometimes it responds to touch like it used to, but, often, it's quite unresponsive.
• The above behaviour is exacerbated by the fact that app load/startup/response time has become randomly lethargic, so I can't always tell if the reason it's not doing anything right off is because it didn't see the tap, or it's just pondering what to do about it.
• One new behaviour it started exhibiting, after the last update (I think), is that sometimes, when you hit an icon in the main menu a 2nd time, after the tablet (apparently) not having responded, it comes up with the menu asking you what you want to do with the app. (It's a good thing "Delete tablet" isn't an option, is all I can say!)

All of these things make the thing exceedingly annoying to use. (At times I've had the urge to Frisbee the thing.) I wish I could get back the tablet I bought

Coupled with the almost universally underwhelming (IMO) behaviour/utility of the apps on it (which has also caused me to more-or-less lose interest in a 'droid-based phone), it's increasingly tended to just sit on the desk, on the charger. I expect that eventually I'll get tired of seeing it sitting there, taking up space, doing nothing, and store it away somewhere. Or maybe wipe and eBay it.

Knowing what I now know, and given my experiences, I would not be inclined to buy one again. I'm no longer likely to recommend it to anybody.

Jim

 

[marvin02]

SEMIJim,

Sorry to hear about your poor experience, but I think that a warranty exchange is in order, Your VTAB certainly seems to have something wrong with it.

 

[SEMIJim]

SEMIJim,

Sorry to hear about your poor experience, but I think that a warranty exchange is in order, Your VTAB certainly seems to have something wrong with it.

Marvin, TBH, I'm happy that I haven't experienced any of the myriad of other misfeatures people have experienced with their VTABs. So, no thanks. My VTAB may have become annoying as all hell, but it mostly works, mostly right, most of the time.

Jim

 

[Maine_Coon]

So I rooted my VTAB.
Now I am able to use Samba Filesharing. SD mod is next, as soon as I get the card.

Now what I really miss is USB Host and NTFS support.
Maybe custom ROM would give us USB Host feature. One can always hope

 

[gjhuff]

I decided to keep it just before the 30 day return period from Sam's expired. It doesn't appear to be as responsive at the Ipads I've fooled with. The multi-tasking appears hit and miss - maybe I need a better task manager. The lack of ad hoc wifi and bluetooth keyboard support is annoying - you would think Vizio would work to fix these problems. Over the phone, Vizio support indicated that they are considering upgrading to ICS 4 - but I've seen nothing online about it. Still and all, for the money, it is a good buy.

 

[Dhammer01]

I have had my VTAB for about 3 weeks, and so far for the price I paid, 189 at COSTCO, I could not be happier. (Well I could if some of the known issues were fixed). However, with all it's included features and abilities, I believe the price point is excellent. It appears as some of the more advanced users of this device are disappointed or the one's who expect it to do everything are asking a little too much. I suppose if I had paid over $300 for this tablet I too would be a little disappointed in it. However, those of you who are looking for a good tablet to do your daily tasks of checking e-mail. playing music/video's, surfing the web, staying in touch and reading the news, using the built in GPS to get "un-lost", downloading one of the book reading apps or using one of the e-book apps already on it, playing limited games that do work well on this tablet, I believe you should head to COSTCO and get one. Those of you who want to load up hundreds of apps, play games that use high resources or use it in the work environment expecting it to run office intensive software, you might want to steer away from this device and get one with a little more horsepower and memory capabilities.
I believe Vizio will continue to support this tablet and in the future fix some of the issues that have been mentioned in the forums, albeit a little slow. But at this time time, for $189, I believe it is one of the best tablets out there for those who do there homework and understand its capabilities and also the lack thereof.
I give it a solid 9 out of 10.

 

[gjhuff]

You are hitting the nail on the head. I think it is a very good product for the money. For beginners, it is a good intro tablet. For the more experienced and demanding user, a more high end product might be appropriate. Now that I have it rooted and have enabled ad hoc network support (so I can tether my Touch Pro 2's internet connection), it has become much more useful.

 

[HilltopStudios]

I agree this is probably the best bang for the buck out there. So much better than the resistive screen Polariod and Sylvania types being pushed by other stores as bargain tablets. Comparing it to an iPad just isn't fair. For the price of one iPad you could buy 3 VTABs. Kind of like complaining your Kia doesn't have the response or looks of a Lexus.

 

[droid_dude]

I like the car analogy. I agree that it is tough to compare with a device that costs almost 3 times more.

That being said here is a reminder of some features that even the IPAD doesn't have:

GPS
SD Card Expansion
IR Remote Control Capability
and the most obvious one: Android OS (able to customize, great development community, Easy to connect to your PC, no need to be locked into iTunes, etc.)

By the way, I have been playing around with a Acer Iconia A500 10.1 Tablet for the past 3 days. It is really nice but I think I might stick with my Vizio (instead of giving it to my daughter). The Vizio's 8 inch screen is a nice blend of portability and performance (bigger than the Fire, Nook and other 7" screens but not as bulky as the 9.7 or 10.1 screens). My hand gets tired holding up the Acer for a long period of time. This never happens with my Vizio.

Also, believe it or not, I am not that impressed with Honeycomb. I think the Vizio is just fine with Android 2.3. I did not find any "must have apps" that only run on Honeycomb. Also, the Honeycomb OS does not allow apps to be saved to the SD Card.