Hudl 2 Review
It was only a matter of time before someone aside from Google would produce a cheap tablet which offers the full Android experience. But who knew it would be Tesco?
In the past year, the Hudl 2 has grown up, from frumpy 7in device to a funky 8.3in, Full HD tablet and yet the price has barely risen; it's only £99.
Tesco has invested a lot of time in the design. The soft-touch plastic finish feels pleasant under the finger, and it’s comfortable to hold, with rounded corners and no sharp edges, plus it’s available in eight bright colours: orange, blue, black, white, turquoise, red, purple and hot pink. There are two big speakers on both sides of the back of the Hudl 2: They reach high volumes, and are surprisingly clear for such a reasonably priced tablet. The Hudl 2 recently beat the iPad Mini 3 in a serious Speed test.
If a kid receives this tablet, then no parent would need to worry due to the Child Safety app. This app works with Android’s existing profiles system, but provides three extra ways of keeping a lid on your kids' tablet use. The Web safety part provides a category-based website blocker, so children are only able to access safe online content, while adult and other inappropriate pages (such as gambling and shopping sites) are blocked.Parents have control over which categories are blocked, and it's also possible to make exceptions, for those websites that are deemed safe but have been blocked for one reason or another.The second tool at parents' disposal is the Time limits feature. Here, each child gets a time slot during which he or she is allowed to use the tablet. And within each of those time slots, parents can also choose to limit the maximum length of time the tablet can be used. You could, for example, allow usage between 16:00 and 19:00 during the week and all day at the weekend, but only ever allow it to be used for a total of two hours on any of those days. Finally,it's possible to block apps you've installed on the tablet's main account; this comes in handy if you're a fan of first person shooters, but don't want them launching those games by accident.
Hudl 2 vs Hudl
The Hudl 2 is currently priced at £99, £30 more than its predecessor, the Hudl 1. But is the upgrade worth it?
The Hudl 2 has a sleeker design than the original Hudl, with speakers on the back of the Hudl 2 to improve its sound. Also, the Hudl 2 has twice the number of colours available than its predecessor; it is available in 8 different colours rather than the original's 4 different colours. As predicted, the screen size has increased from 7 to 8.3in. Resolution has also jumped from 1440x900 to 1920x1200 so around 30 ppi extra which is good. The screen on the Hudl 2 is probably its best feature because it's not just resolution which has improved – brightness, viewing angles and responsiveness are all better.
Tesco says that the Hudl 2 is three times faster than its predecessor. It uses an Intel Atom quad-core processor clocked at 1.83 GHz while the original uses a 1.5 GHz A9 quad-core chip. Memory has doubled to 2 GB of RAM. Upgrades continue with cameras now at 5Mp compared with 3Mp but strangely the front camera has dropped from 2- to 1.2 Mp.
The Hudl 2 comes pre-loaded with Android 4.4 KitKat and, like its predecessor, Google's operating system is mostly as intended. There are similar bits of additional software though which you can ignore if you like.
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