By 

A. Whalen “Dad, Husband, Car Buff, Gamer, Rea… (Raleigh, NC, USA) –

  

I just got mine yesterday. I really have to say I am totally impressed with it. I’ve played with iPad and it is definitely cool; I also owned two Kindles (one regular, one DX). My prior experience with “tablets”, as such, other than the Kindle, was a cheap Chinese knock-off called “ePad”, bought from a seller on Amazon maybe 9 months ago and returned promptly. This was with an older version of Android (1.6 I believe). It’s worth recounting a few of the highlights of that unit’s performance for contrast with this Kyros, in 2011, in the <$200 segment. It had a resistive touch screen (ok). The screen’s plastic was wavy and bowed in random, odd places all around. The case for the unit was made of cheap plastic and the silver paint was chipped or just peeling off around the edges. The battery, after charging for a full 24h, lasted for 10 minutes. The battery life on subsequent charges decreased precipitously until a full charge only lasted about 2 minutes (not joking, not exaggerating). No apps could be installed whatsoever. Flash Player could not be installed. No firmware updates available. It would not recognize an SD card. There was no way to organize MP3s other than in one big long single directory. It was, in short, absolute useless garbage, and I believe I paid about $40 more for that than I did for the Coby Kyros. That thing was a proper cheap Chinese knock-off, and was an abysmal failure of the marketplace to provide any kind of meaningful competition to the far more expensive iPad.

Now enter: Coby Kyros MID7024. Just on a lark I checked on tablets last week and saw this one, just released, for the right price – a cool toy. I thought I’d take another swing at the cheap tablets, did a little reading, and this one (more specifically, its predecessor, the MID7015) sounded like a solid buy. I received it, opened it up, and wow – it is COOL! The screen is flat; the frame is high-quality and solid. Everything is very precisely engineered. The little backlights behind the buttons and on the “Home” button are very slick. It has standard mini-USB, headphone jack, micro-SD, mini-HDMI. I started it… and it WORKED. Perfectly. With about 1 hour charge it lasted around 5 hours on wifi last night. Within a few minutes of turning it on, I had it connected to the home network, downloaded a free ePub book from Gutenberg Project and opened it with the pre-installed eBook reader. In a few more minutes I had configured it to check my email in 2 accounts. This morning, in a couple more minutes, I installed Amazon App Marketplace and downloaded the Kindle Reader. It plays flash movies in the web browser. Auto-rotate works very smoothly. Overall, everything seems to “just work”, exactly as you’d expect it to.

To be clear, this isn’t a PC, nor do I expect it to be. It does load up both mobile and ‘full’ websites and looks just fine in both; so you can browse pretty comfortably. On a regular basis I’ll carry it around the house, check email, read e-books, and potentially, load up MP3s and listen to them in the car or at work. Everything else it can do is gravy.

Note that despite the misleading product label “MID7024-4G” here on Amazon, this unit is a “MID7024″, and 4G stands for 4GB (internal drive space), not 4G cellular wireless. It has no 4G modem. It also does not have a GPS receiver and no straightforward way to connect an external antenna. That is one thing I would have really liked it to do. So far I have not been able to get the webcam to connect to any video chat client but I only spent a few minutes working at it with Google Chat. Out of the box, all the webcam does is stares back at you, and the photo/video quality isn’t the best. I’m pretty confident that can be remedied with some kind of app, either on the web or in one of the app stores. It does not have bluetooth. Many options exist in the slightly-more-expensive $250 to $350 range that do include these features; so if you’ll use them (as I suspect many folks will), this isn’t going to meet your needs. But, just to have a fun around-the-house or around-the-office e-reader, email checker, multimedia player, and basic web surfer, this is absolutely right on the money. And, obviously, it’s leaps and bounds better-made (both the hardware and the software) than the stupid “ePad” I bought last year.

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I have searched for a good tablet for days and compare so many with regards to price and capabilities. This one is not cheap, its a steal. One of the most important thing about this tablet is that, its not one of those china cheap brands that I almost bought before finding out all the problem people have to deal with. I committed to buy something that I can call the manufacture and ask for help or return it, in the extremist. The second great thing about it is the 1 GHz processor 512MB RAM 2.2 Android OS and the ability to get flash player on it. What this mean,(for those who don’t care much about computer specs) you can watch almost all YouTube videos, ESPN, play flash player games online, read books, PDF files , word , excel, PowerPoint and many more applications without having delays and what so ever other issues cheap tablets have. Also, there are very few tablets going for this price with 4G internal storage. It comes with wifi, 1080p video output, HMDI port to connect to your HD TV or laptop or whatever. Memory expansion is up to 32 Gigs; I mean, look how much apple Ipad lovers pays to just jump from 16gigs to 32gigs. Since apps and games for Coby KYROS tablets are from the AppsLib(tm) marketplace, which does not have as much apps as goggle android, many people find this a limitation. However, it is possible to use amazon app store that is limitless and you can also root this tablet and use the Google android apps without a problem. Just needs a little do it your self twik found all over Youtube.

Pros:
You can’t find anything comparable to this product in the market right now that goes for this price, I’ve spend days researching this.

Cons:
Still uses the resistive screen technology, its really not a bad thing, but some people find it annoying. You just have to get use to it I guess.
Other than that, I can’t think of any other cons.

And for the price you pay, need I say more?

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By 

Tatyana T. Davidson “Live and learn.” (Noblesville, IN) –

  

I got mine a week ago and almost returned it less than in two days. It did not power up, was absolutely dead. The solution was very simple. Just press RESET with a paper clip for a couple of seconds and everything was fixed. It was my fault in the first place. I drained the battery completely and the unit just was unable to wake up.
Pros: It is small,but big enough to surf the web comfortably, read e-mails,view video. It is light and thin, but feels very solid and well built. It does not look or feel cheap like many gray market tablets from China.Guess where this one was made? It has sensitive resistive screen, but if you have been using your Android phone, equipped with capacitive screen, you will need a little bit of time to get used to different way of touching the screen.It works great with just finger touch (actually, but nail),but for the precise touch without magnifying the screen – stylus is very helpful. The screen is very clear and bright.It has very sensitive buttons which are lit when touched. The battery life is great.The sound is not very loud, but loud enough to listen to the news, etc. You can listen to music, but the sound quality is much better using earphones (included).It has USB (full size) and HDMI ports and expandable memory via microSD, it also has 4GB memory. It comes with basic applications installed, but you can add more from Appslib (also preinstalled) or download directly from the web.Customer service from Adorama, where I got mine, was absolutely fantastic. Coby website has a lot of helpful tips with video, FAQs,etc. Have not tried their customer service due to no need, but read reviews that they are great.

Cons:Very sensitive buttons. Yes, I mentioned it earlier as a positive, but it is a negative as well. The buttons react even to the slightest accidental touch, so you are kicked out of where you were easily. The good thing is the return button will bring you back also easily, but it can be frustrating at times. It comes with a black sleeve, which looks nice, but it is not protective enough. It will definitely protect the unit from scratches,but it does not give enough of protection to the screen if you carry your unit in a purse.It fits the unit like a glove, but due to nice tight fit is activates very sensitive power button. It was the reason why I drained my battery. I turned the unit off and then put the sleeve on and it activated power button and turned the unit on without me knowing it. I am planning to get one of those leather cases, maybe with USB keyboard,from eBay.There is no easy way to root it yet.Forums also do not have a solution yet.

Overall, it is a great gadget. I did a lot of research and looked at many units in different price range. I was looking first for the unlocked unit with 3g-4g capability, but I have already got my Android Dell Venue with this capability.I decided it would be not wise to pay for data for both units, or keep swapping a SIM card between them, when I can just tether my Venue to connect Coby to the Web.There are tons of free hot spots in my area, so did need tethering so far.There are unlocked 3G units (Huawei, Viewsonic), but you pay almost twice you would pay for Coby.You can get Samsung Galaxy or Dell Streak for $199, but then you are stuck with the data plan for two years. I did not even consider iPad. I can not justify to pay 3x (4x -5x more for added storage) for the unit. The Appslib is similar to Android Market, but has mush less choices. I found out that do not need that many choices any way. You are installing only so many applications. I downloaded Adobe Flash 10.1 and Skype Light Beta directly from the web, which was very easy. Googles Flash.apk and Skype.apk on my Coby.I found out that not all the applications which are running on my Dell Venue run the same way or work at all on Coby.But was ready for that knowing that Android 2.2 is not a tablet OS and some limitation should be expected. It did not make my experience less enjoyable.

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