Advent Vega

With Apple dominating the tablet market, some companies just can't wait to jump in - even when their products are not ready for release. Such is the case with the Advent Vega, which at £250 appears a positive bargain next to Apple's £399 iPad 2.

It takes the same basic form as the iPad, then cheapens it in order to reduce the price tag. The resolution is comparable to the iPad's, but the Vega has a wicescreen 16:9 aspect ratio. Add in its lO.lin screen size specification, and you could be forgiven for thinking you've seen this before - this is a standard-issue
netbook screen with capacitive touch for fingertip control. Flip the Vega over and you'll find a plastic back, gently curved at the edges, and prone to picking up scratches when placed on the desk.

There's a flap on the right of this, which hides some useful-looking connectors. First is a microSD card slot, with Advent throwing in a 2GB card. Next to that there's an unusual full-size {Type A) USB 2.0 port - an included A-to-A USB lead in the box lets you plug the Vega into a PC, although we couldn't get it to charge from it. If you plug the Vega into a PC - Windows, Mac or Linux - you can drag-and-drop music, video and photos into the relevant folders on the tablet.

The third option is HDMI. We tried connecting the Advent Vega to a monitor, and saw a mirrored version of what was on the tablet's own screen. It looked to be at the same limited resolution too, with interface elements looking very pixellated. Worse, the speed of the device slowed so much it became unusable in effect.

In contrast to most Google Android tablets, the Vega does not have the usual fixed Home and Back buttons on the front panel. Instead the Home and Back buttons are embedded within a modified version of the Android user interface, though there's a small silvered-plastic Back button on the top-right edge too.

MIXED PERFORMANCE

Some operations feel quick, like opening the web browser; others very slow and jerky, such as scrolling irp and down a web page. Also, the Advent can't be used in portrait mode, as the user interface doesn't rotate when held upright.

As it's installed with Android 2.2, it has the option for a plugin to give what's called 'Flash compatibility'. In fact, Flash on every mobile device we've tried is, at best, very poor; at worse, useless. Interestingly, the designers must have known that Flash might be a problem, as they included a click-to-enable system (like Flashblock or ClickToFlash), such that  you must finger-click individual Flash boxes in a web page to load content. This didn't help make Flash video any more enjoyable when it was playing, though Also absent is the Android Market app. Without this in place, it becomes very hard to supplement the limited number of apps already installed.

VERDICT

On the whole we have mixed feelings about devices such as the Advent Vega. On the one hand it's nice to see tablets coming down towards the £200 mark, however, too many corners have been cut. The Advent Vega has too many flaws for us to recommend it.