Review of the Cube iPlay 9, a budget friendly Android Tablet from Cube

Hello guys,

This is Convictech and in this review i' m gonna present you a budget friendly tablet from Cube

It is called the Cube iPlay 9 and let's get to it

In The Box
The tablet comes in a medium sized brown box with the ALLDOCUBE logo written on it and inside we find

• The tablet itself
• A MicroUSB data and charging cable
• A User's Manual in Chinese and English Languages
• A Warranty Card written in Chinese and a Quality Control Pass Card which means that the tablet has succesfully passed the Quality Control tests and is ready to hit the market

That is a very good move from Cube and i hope that all Chinese companies will start to include these cards in their products, offering piece of mind to the consumer and letting him know that the product they bought is not on the Chinese "hit or miss" list

The package contents are on the poor side but considering the price which is currently at 89,99$ or 75,4€ we shouldn't be complaining

Looks, Ports & Build Quality

The Cube iPlay 9 is a beautiful and well built tablet for the price made by aluminum and plastic

It feels great and solid in the hand giving us the impression that we are holding a much more expensive piece of hardware

It is white and the front part is mostly covered by the non laminated 9,6" ips lcd screen which despite it's somewhat low resolution of 1280 x 800 pixels, delivers great colours and contrast

The 0.3 mpx front facing camera found on the top part of the screen provides below average performance though

The back of the tablet is silver and made by aluminum with the Cube HD logo written in the middle in Chinese and the top part houses the 5 mpx camera as well as the MicroSD and normal sized dual sim card slots covered and protected by a white plastic cap

On the left side we have nothing

On the right side we have the 3.5 mm headphone jack, the power on/off button, the volume rocker and the microphone

On the top we have the MicroUSB charging port

And on the bottom we find the dual stereo speakers as well as the second microphone

Specs

The Cube iplay 9 has some very impressive specs for the price which are

• CPU: Quad Core MediaTek MTK6580 running at 1.3GHz
• GPU: Mali-400 MP
• OS: Android 4.4.2 but can be upgraded to Android 5.1
• RAM 2GB
• ROM 32GB
• Screen: 9.6" IPS LCD Capacitive Touch Screen 
• Resolution: 1280 x 800 pixels 
• Front Camera 0.3MP
• Main Camera: 5.0 megapixel with Auto Focus

Screen Quality

As i mentioned earlier, the screen is a 9.6" IPS LCD Capacitive Touch Screen with a resolution of 1280 x 800 pixels

As we can see, despite it's low resolution it offers very good viewing angles, clarity and colour reproduction

The touch response is not very sensitive though and i found myself having to press twice on the same spot to register the touch

This might very well be a software issue that can be solved by upgrading to Android 5.1

I don't know what kind of glass Cube uses but it will be protected because the tablet comes with a preinstalled screen protector

Camera Quality

The Cube iPlay 9 despite being a very good tablet, it's worst part by far are it's cameras

Both of the cameras give very bad results and to my eyes are totally unusable

We can understand that Cube wanted to lower the tablet's cost but they could at least include a better main camera

Battery life

Battery life is average giving me about 3.5 hours of screen time with moderate usage and two active sims

I am sure that updating the tablet will give you more juice because as we all know Android 5.1 has a much better power management than Android 4.4.2

Keep in mind that this is a dual sim tablet and having two active sims will kill your battery faster

GPS Performance

The GPS performance is excellent giving me a 3D fix and locking position in just a few seconds providing a great driving companion when you don't know your way

Benchmarks

I ran some benchmarks to see how the device performs and the results were not so good
You can expect that by a such a low budget tablet but it gets the job done

Real World Performance
Real world performance is ok although i expected more from a Quad Core CPU and browsing through the Web is great despite the minor lag present

Watching youtube videos on this screen is great though without any lag at all

Gaming Performance
The gaming performance is average but in some games like Asphalt Extreme: Rally Racing the pixels are more than obvious due to the low res screen

Modern Combat 5 though, runs perfectly fine without graphic or frame rate problems

Conclusion
The Cube iPlay9 starts to show its age but that is expected due to its very low price point

Is will be more that enough for regular usage but don't expect it to be comparable with other high end tablets

If you are on a budget and want a tablet with great screen, phone capabilities, dual sim function and very good gps then go for it, but if you want something more powerful to play games or run very heavy tasks then i don't recommend it

Pros

• Screen size, quality and color reproduction
• Price
• Dul Sim
• MicroSD Card Slot
• Build Quality
• Very good and accurate GPS
• Good Sound Quality

Cons

• Screen resolution
• Camera Quality
• Average Performance
• Battery Life

For more information visit the Official Cube Webpage and find other great gadgets as well

You can find it available from these sellers

Watch my Video Review
Review English
Review Greek

I hope you liked my review, stay tuned for more and as always for more unboxings, reviews and tutorials subscribe, share and follow me:

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