HCL me tablet ae7-a1 review

Well 2011 can definitely be called as the year of the tablets. And boy what a defining year it was. BUILD happened, Windows 8 OS for tablets revealed, cheapest tablet in the world Aakash gets launched and what not. Speaking of Aakash, there are a plenty of low-cost devices that happen to make their presence felt in the tablet industry. And among them is the HCL ME AE7-A1. Being an indigenous brand, the HCL ME tablet carries the desi-factor along with panache. Lets take a look at what maketh this device.

The 7-inch resistive screen is a norm when it comes to budget tablets but the HCL ME has got a visibly clean and neat touch surface which may want the user to work on it for long. Powered by an 800MHz ARM11 processor, this device has got 256 MB of RAM memory, which might be a turn-off since it is speculated for quality tablets, the RAM should be a minimum of 512MB.* Sigh*. The HCL ME tablet comes with GB iNAND built-in memory with an option to expand it to 8GB thanks to a MicroSD card slot.

And yes, you can also video-chat with your near and dear ones over Skype etc thanks to a 0.3MP front-facing camera. But akin to the Aakash tablet, this also runs on the Android 2.2 Froyo OS version which means no confirmation whether future upgrades will be rolled or not. Shaky. It’s 2400mAH Li-polymer battery ensure upto 6-8 hours of usage. Neat.

Customer review for HCL ME tablet ae7-a1

A relatively newer entrant in the vast gadgets market, and you would expect some nice products from them, but no, this happens to be HCL – and they simply don’t care.

Bad online shopping experience – Seems they are using a decade old online shopping system, which supports only a specific number of characters per field such as Address etc. Please note that I have used the same address on eBay and other online shops without any issues whatsoever. The worst part is that it does not even show any notification that you have exceeded your character limit. So, after you are done with the shopping and all, the courier agency gets only half the address and keeps searching for my home all around the city. I get a hundred calls, and even the HCL guys don’t have a clue cause they too have only the half address. I think Govt. of India should start issuing an online seller’s permit/ license so that users won’t have to go through such nightmare.

Terrible product – the on-screen QWERTY keyboard is like a puzzle, you press R and what you get on screen is E or T, but rarely R, same with all other alphabets and buttons. There is a screen calibration option, but there was no improvement even after calibrating the screen with all the fancy dots and circles. Pathetic. The only solution is to remember what’s displayed when a certain key is pressed, and try to do the opposite to get the desired result. For example, if you press R and you get T most of the times then you have to press T if you want R. Just keep on trying, and finally you will become an expert at it. Thanks to HCL.

This wasn’t the only issue. Felt like throwing the HCL ME tablet in the gutter when I noticed that you have to remove and re-insert the memory card to make it work. Every time you start the tablet, you need to remove and re-insert the memory card or else it just doesn’t show up on the system. Somebody please shoot Shiv Nadar. The list of bugs is endless, system crash, screen freezes, auto-rotate issues, touch screen issues, limited applications; it just goes on and on…

Worst Customer Service – I called up customer service and asked them about the memory card issue. Here’s what I got as a reply – “Sir, it’s a removable drive, so naturally it will not mount on its own, it is the case with every tablet in the market, you have to remove and re-insert it every time you boot up. Is there anything else we can do for you?”

So that’s it guys, hope you will not be a fool like me and buy HCL products, especially the HCL ME Tablet AE7-A1.

Currently using the HCL ME tablet as a paperweight. Thanks again HCL!!!

customer review source http://www.phototamasha.com/blogs/2011/07/19/hcl-me-tablet-ae7-a1-review/