why you shouldn't buy a kogan agora tablet

Like so many others, I couldn't resist the allure of an Android tablet priced well below $200, as Kogan's new tablet was pre-launch. Its specs looked good, the one review available was favourable, and as an iOS user with various iDevices, I was keen to experience/test/develop for the Alternative Mobile Platform.

Eventually, my pre-ordered Kogan Agora 7" tablet PC arrived. Happily, it was pretty much on schedule (others weren't so lucky, according to Kogan's Facebook wall). Less happily, it wasn't functional enough to keep. Thank goodness for Kogan's 7-day money back guarantee.

For starters, I couldn't get it to start up without using the reset button on the back. At first I thought it was just waiting for its first full charge, but nothing changed when the charging light turned green, so I tried the reset button. I needed to use it EVERY time the tablet went to sleep. (To be fair, Kogan did offer to replace my tablet when I described this to them, but there were other problems too.)

When the tablet wasn't in a deep sleep, it performed reasonably well. It felt good to hold, buttons responded well, apps ran at a respectable pace, and the screen wasn't nearly as nasty as CNET reported. That said, there were a couple of problems that were deal-breakers for me. Obviously a tablet this cheap isn't going to be anywhere near as polished as the iPad, but I was hoping it would be reasonably functional, and it just ... wasn't.

First, and most significantly, the accuracy of the touchscreen near the edges was abysmal, which made it nearly impossible to type anything accurately with the on-screen keyboard. Depending on the orientation of the tablet, it was up to a full centimetre out, and no calibration utility was available. No, I wasn't planning to write any novels on my tablet, but being unable to type so much as a tweet without frustration made it unusable for, well, pretty much everything except media playback.

Second, the orientation sensor was possessed. Slight movements in any direction - well away from the ambiguity of being near-horizontal - would throw the tablet's screen upside down or spin it to the wrong orientation. Again, Android's accelerometer calibration utility was unavailable; the only workaround offered by Kogan was to disable the "Auto-rotate screen" option. This worked, as long as I was content to work in portrait orientation only. I wasn't.

Finally, the camera was utter rubbish. Not only was it located at the bottom of the tablet, forcing you to either aim it up your nose or hold it upside down (pity about that orientation lock!), it drastically underexposed my face in typical indoor light. So, web conferencing with the Kogan tablet was a total no-go.

Build quality? Good. Processing power? Great. User experience? Very very bad. Don't waste your money. In the same price bracket, you can buy an Archos 70 with Android 2.2 and similar specs that ACTUALLY WORKS. Mine arrived today. It's no iPad, but it's a very cheap, very functional Android tablet. Highly recommended.