Review: HUU H1001 10.1" tablet

Final Score: ★★☆☆ (2.20 out of 4)

Key Specifications:
  • Price: $86.24 (Provided as a free sample for review)
  • CPU: RK3188T (1.4 GHz quad-core ARM ARM Cortex-A9)
  • GPU: Mali-400 MP4 @ 400 MHz
  • RAM: 1GB
  • Storage: 8 GB
  • Screen: 10.1" TFT, 1024x600 resolution
  • Connectivity: WiFI, Bluetooth



Pros:

  • Good screen-on battery life
  • Good perceived speed during general usage
  • Free of bloat


Cons:

  • Relatively high standby battery consumption
  • Underwhelming screen
  • Buggy USB / charging causes reboots and battery drain
  • Sub-par construction and feel
  • No HDMI
  • No GPS


Introduction

When it comes to cheap Chinese tablets, I tend to prefer the ones that cost less than $90 or so. This seems like the perfect price point to get something with decent quality for significantly less than the prices of the big brands. I came across the HUU H1001, which features an RK3188 processor, which I also wanted to test. So I requested one for review. As usual, first impressions are important, and this one is a bit less than impressive.



The HUU H1001 comes in a rather plain box with fairly ugly packaging, and there were plenty of greasy smudges on the screen. Fortunately it does come with a pre-installed screen protector.


Hardware Quality: ★★☆☆

Design and Build Quality: ★★☆☆

Out of the box, the H1001 gives the strange impression of being hollow. It does not feel solid or heavy, which I personally would prefer. Instead, it feels light and plasticky. During moderate shaking, some component lightly clunks and moves inside. The outer edge of the screen bezel feels sharper than I would like, and one of the edges of the flat that contains the buttons and ports has a poorly molded plastic edge that is rather sharp. However, I'm glad that it has a dedicated hardware volume button, unlike the Cube U25GTC I own :

 

On the back side, there is a checkered alternating crosshatch pattern, which would be fairly pleasant if it wasn't interrupted by two big blank rectangles where the brand should presumably be printed:

 

Additionally, the camera appears to be missing its (plastic) lens (which frankly doesn't affect the unavoidably terrible picture quality):

 

On the front, the border is a bit wide, and the front-facing camera is off-center. I prefer the camera to be centered where my hands aren't covering it. But then again, given the terrible quality of the front-facing camera, the palm of the hand probably won't look very different from the user's face:

 

Apart from that, there is a reset button on the back, which I consider to be an essential feature that not all tablets have. They also placed the speaker grille on the back. I would prefer for them to take advantage of the wide screen bezel to put frontal speaker(s). Speaking of the screen bezel, it is rather wide, but this is pretty common in cheap tablets of this price range, and it gives the user somewhere to hold the tablet without touching the screen.

The tablet has two methods for charging: A micro-USB port, and a round female connector for the included AC charger. There is some weird behavior associated with charging, which I'm not sure is related to the hardware, the software, or both. The tablet randomly turns off and/or reboots when being charged via either of the two ports. Additionally, the battery level actually goes down, and fairly rapidly, when connected via the micro-USB port. I have tried connecting it to my computer's USB ports, and also to dedicated micro-USB AC chargers from cell phones, and despite the tablet indicating that it is in charging mode, the level actually goes down rather than up. So the only way to charge it is pretty much with the included round-connector AC charger.

Battery Life: ★★☆☆

It's hard to rate the battery life for the HUU H1001, because screen-on time is quite good during my battery testing routine, but standby battery consumption is rather high:


  • Screen on time: 8 hours, 34 minutes
  • 480P video loop: 7 hours, 20 minutes
  • Picture slideshow: 6 hours, 42 minutes
  • Browser + WiFI: 7 hours, 55 minutes
  • Standby battery consumption: 1 - 2 % per hour


The last bullet point about standby battery consumption is probably the weakest point of this tablet, and is a trait that some, but not all, Chinese tablets share. I have tried everything to reduce the standby battery consumption of the H1001. I don't enable a Google account, I even tried rooting it and removing all the Google Services Framework and its related apps (Maps, Gmail, Email, Play Store). Strangely, it reports the "Cell radio" as the main consumer of the battery during standby, when in reality there is no cell radio, and at any rate I tested it in Airplane mode. After removing the Dialer.apk and any other component that appeared to be related to data or phone call functionality, it reports the Android System as the principal consumer of power. With that being said, the consumption isn't so high as to make it impractical to carry the H1001 in standby mode for a day or so. But users that only use it occasionally throughout the week will probably find that they frequently pick it up to find the battery low or dead entirely. On the other hand, users that heavily use the tablet throughout the day will find a very useful amount of screen-on battery capacity. This could be owing to the Rockchip RK3188T processor, which uses a power-efficient 28nm manufacturing process. Additionally, the RK3188T version of the processor used in this tablet is actually slightly underclocked, which undoubtedly improves battery performance. The battery capacity is especially impressive for the browser reload test on WiFI. The battery capacity for the H1001 is listed at 5000mAh, which I have no reason to dispute.

Screen Quality: ★★☆☆

The screen of the HUU H1001 is adequate, but unimpressive. The 1024x600 resolution is barely sufficient when stretched across the rather large 10.1" screen area. Additionally, the TFT display technology used in the H1001 does not have very good viewing angles when compared with the far superior IPS variant. This leads to colors that tend to look either washed-out or inverted, and even more so when viewed at an angle:






 

Screen brightness is adequate on the highest setting, but quite low at the standard 25% level that I run my battery tests at. There is no light sensor. Screen touch sensibility is quite good. The 5-point multitouch works well.

WiFI Performance: ★★★☆

In other online reviews of older Chinese tablets I've read a lot of complaints about poor WiFI performance. But on this Cube U25GT I honestly can't find any fault with the WiFI. It easily sustains my full upload and download bandwidth (which admittedly at 2 Mbps up / 0.6 Mbps down isn't much) on OpenSpeedTest.com. Connected to my NAS with ES File Explorer over my not very fast wireless LAN, it downloaded a 188 MB file at an average speed of 652 kBps, which is a bit slower than normal. My much more expensive laptop does it at 1 MBps. I'm not sure if the mediocre performance was due to transient weather / network conditions, but at any rate it wasn't too bad. In an area of my house where my laptop has a poor but stable signal, the H1001 just barely manages to connect. Incidentally, my Samsung Galaxy S3 smartphone placed directly next to it was unable to connect to WiFI in this area of poor signal. So overall, WiFI performance is pretty decent with the HUU H1001.

Speaker Performance: ★☆☆☆

The speakers are quite poor on this tablet. Sound is tinny with very little bass, and overall volume is low. I ran an Audacity recording test, in which I recorded the first 25 seconds of a John Kilzer songwith Audacity on my laptop, and then did a contrast test that measures the difference in decibels between the background noise and the foreground (tablet speaker) volume. It returned a poor 1.6dB result. So with this tablet you'll want an external speaker. (Hint: Look here for some really nice little Bluetooth speakers for about $10.)

Camera Quality: ★☆☆☆

You really shouldn't be using a tablet as a primary device for taking pictures, but if you do you won't like the HUU H1001. The rear camera is supposed to be 2.0 megapixels, but picture quality is abysmal:



There is another 0.3 megapixel front-facing camera that might be useful for video-conferences, giving the person on the other end a hazy suggestion of the face of the person (s)he is talking with.


Software Experience / Performance: ★★☆☆

Perceived Speed: ★★★★

One of the most important aspects of a nice tablet is the perceived speed. This is essentially a loose term for the overall impression of speed, or lack thereof, while using the tablet for daily tasks. Benchmarks don't tell the whole story; rather, snappy opening of apps and switching between them, fluid transitions, and smooth web browsing all translate into a general feel of speed. The HUU H1001T does very well in this criterion. It never leaves me waiting, and it's enjoyable to use. As a matter of fact, it's notably snappier than a typical Samsung smartphone or tablet running Android, which are usually bogged down by bloatware and modifications to the operating system. Boot time is swift, at 23 seconds from the appearance of the bootsplash until arriving at the lockscreen. I also tried the X-Plane flight simulator, which has rather high quality scenery graphics, and performance was flawless.

Benchmarks: ★★☆☆

Benchmark results for the HUU H1001 under Antutu, GFXBench, and Vellamo are less than flattering. The Rockchip RK3188T SoC combines an underclocked 1.4GHz quad-core processor with a run-of-the-mill Mali-400 processor, which is also reportedly underclocked. But for a typical user that is not a heavy gamer, performance is more than adequate. I'll upload some benchmark screenshots to my Google Drive:
https://drive.google.com/folderview?...Gs&usp=sharing

Stock OS Experience: ★★☆☆

The Cube U25GT runs KitKat 4.4.2. The experience is good, with a some exceptions that mar the overall system. Out of the box, the interface comes in English, which is commendable.


However, after doing a factory reset of the tablet, the interface reverts to Chinese.


This is very confusing for most users who don't speak Chinese. Here is a helpful article that explains how to change the language from Chinese to something else.


The tablet is pleasantly free of bloatware and worthless Chinese apps. This contributes to the fast, snappy user experience.



(ES Explorer and the Superuser app were added by me.)
It is currently at KitKat 4.4.2, which is fairly current at the time of writing. But unfortunately it probably won't be updated in the future, since manufacturers of cheap tablets tend to throw the device out to the market and forget about it.

As mentioned in the hardware review section, there is an issue with battery drain during standby. I suspect this is a problem with the kernel, since the device does enter into deep sleep with no wakelocks. The other major annoyance that could be related to software, also mentioned in the hardware section of this review, is the occasional shutdown / reboot of the system during charging and/or connecting to USB.

Another annoyance of the software is the dropdown controls for common functions such as WiFI and Bluetooth. To me, the controls feel counter-intuitive-- a single tap takes you to the main control panel for that function, whereas a long tap toggles the function on/off. Additionally, the username is in Chinese and I can't find a way to change it.

The HUU H1001 unfortunately does not come rooted out of the box, or at least it doesn't ship with a Superuser app. However, it was pleasantly easy to root using Kingo. Basically, it only requires one click and a reboot.

The HUU H1001 comes with the usual Google Apps, most importantly including the Play Store. However, I don't enable a Google account on my devices, which leads to greatly improved battery life. When I need to install an app from the Play Store, I use a site to download APK files directly from the Play Store.

A concern that frequently comes up relating to Chinese devices is the possibility of the device being shipped with spyware or other types of malware out of the box. I am happy to report that I scanned the HUU H1001 with Malwarebytes and Lookout Security & Antivirus and both reported the device to be clean.

Here's the state of the built-in 8GB storage by default:







Value: ★★☆☆

This review criterion attempts to balance the tablet's ranking in the previous review criteria with its overall ratio of features to price. The HUU H1001 costs abut $86, which seems a bit steep given the aforementioned annoyances and limitations. It also lacks a few features that are marginally important for a tablet.

GPS: Not available. The RK3188T SoC doesn't include onboard GPS, unlike the MTK8127 SoC found in other tablets.
HDMI: Not available. The RK3188T SoC doesn't include onboard HDMI-out, unlike the MTK8127 SoC found in other tablets.
Bluetooth: The HUU H1001 does have Bluetooth (the absolute cheapest Chinese tablets don't), which works well.
The cons already discussed in this review, combined with the device's moderately high $86 price tag make the Cube U25GT a marginal value, earning it only 2 out of 4 stars for value in this category.


Conclusion

The weighted average for the HUU H1001 10.1" tablet computes to 2.20 out of 4 possible stars. So we'll round it down to 2 out of 4 stars overall. The HUU H1001 is a mediocre tablet that will satisfy undemanding users. Strong points include a capable battery capacity for actual tablet usage, and the OS is fairly modern and snappy. But the poor screen and standby battery drain make it less desirable, and its $86 price tag doesn't seem justified.