If there is ever an award for WTF Tech Product of the Year, I think Teclast is guaranteed to win it with this one.
As much as I’d like to think this is some twisted April Fools’ joke, it isn’t.
This monster is for real, cooked up in one of Teclast’s labs and set upon an unsuspecting and peaceful populace who expect tech that makes some kind of sense.
Let’s start with the specs, because shit gets weird there first.
Uncharacteristically for Teclast’s web design, the specs are in a non-scrollable popup. To see all the specs, I had to “zoom-out” with Chrome to get a small screensnap that I then had to resize for readability:
Did you catch that? Let me help you: Bluetooth, HDMI, WIDI, a microSD card slot, and USB OnTheGo are all listed as “stand by.” In other words, not all the specs are there! Physical dimensions and weight (not captured in the above screensnap) are just plain missing in the list.
However, on the main site itself, Teclast lists the thickness and weight:
I think they’re comparing it to a Chinese eBook device, not the American Kindle Basic Touch that has a screen resolution of just 800 x 600 at 167 ppi. But does that even matter?
Later on in the site, they state the weight: 318 grams — 11.2 ounces. And that there’s a microSD card slot that can accept a 128GB card. And there’s WIDI. Why not list these in the specs?
Finally, that touted design:
Wow! Look at those slim bezels. Yeah. Forget those. That’s science-fiction. Teclast — along with some other companies — tend to release devices that have bezels far thicker than the ones in their renders.
Teclast has not been pushing this hard. Their entire Weibo output has been this:
Yeah, announced on March 30. I pay so little attention to China now that I’m days late finding out about it.
And inside China, no one has paid attention to it. There’s nothing about it on the tech sites I used to sweep daily. And there aren’t any videos on Youku — and Teclast generally has a promo video for a product. Not this time.
And although their website has Buy Now button for both TMall and Jingdong…
… the links aren’t active. At least one international middleman has listed it for about US$100 (a price I doubt).
As an eBook reader, this is problematic. Under Windows, I’ve yet to see any PDF reader as fast as Android’s SmartQ Reader. And under Android, Intel CPUs tend to be uncompetitive with ARM CPUs — SmartQ Reader’s speed is diminished in all the tests I’ve done.
Anyone with further interest should tune into TECHTablets. They had a post days before I did and will likely get one in to review.
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