Alcatel OneTouch Pop 8 Review

Introduction

The Alcatel OneTouch Pop 8 is an affordable 8-inch tablet with modest but not dirt cheap specifications. It’s aimed at budget buyers looking for a tablet with the option for mobile data connectivity (we tested a model with 4G HSPA, but there might be a Wi-Fi-only version as well) at a low price. The OneTouch Pop 8 delivers just that, and it does so in a very compact footprint, boasting a display with very tiny bezels and a thin, elegant body.

Under the hood, there is a quad-core MediaTek system chip that powers a simple and likable custom Android user interface with full access to the Google Play store. Also, you can customize the Pop 8 with interchangeable back covers that add some lively colors to it.

On paper, this looks like a fairly well-balanced package - it does not stand out with anything, nor does it suggest any obvious glaring omissions, but how does it all perform in real life, and - ultimately - is this tablet worth buying? Read on to find out.

In the box:

• USB Cable
• Wall Charger
• User Manual

Design

The Alcatel OneTouch Pop 8 feels airy, with its narrow and thin body, and you can easily grab it with a single hand.

The Alcatel OneTouch Pop 8 feels airy, with its narrow and thin, 0.31-inch (7.9mm) profile and light weight of 0.72lbs (325 g). In fact, it’s features such a narrow screen bezel that you can easily hold with just one hand, and it even fits in some jacket pockets, which is a plus for an 8-inch tablet.

It’s not made of any fancy materials - rather the opposite, it looks fairly cheap with (not so) good old glossy plastic used throughout. It’s the kind of plastic material that catches a lot of fingerprints easily as well. On a positive note, though, the device is fairly well put together with the exception for a slightly hollow spot right in the center of its back cover.

Up front, there is just the screen and no physical buttons - Alcatel is using on-screen navigation keys for this tablet. There is no earpiece either, so you cannot use this for phone calls. As strange as it may sound to some of you, some tablets actually ship with an earpiece that you can use for voice calls.

Looking at the periphery of the Pop 8, you see its only two physical buttons on its right side: there is a volume rocker and a power key above it. We found their position closer to the back of the tablet a bit weird and hard to reach, plus they are a bit on the shallow side. Finally, switching to the left side, you’d see a lid-protected microSD and microSIM card slots.

Display

The 8-inch IPS LCD display is decent, but not great. It has okay colors, but it is not as sharp as notable competitors like the Nexus 7 2013, and it’s noticeably dim.

The OneTouch Pop 8 sports an 8-inch IPS LCD display with a resolution of 1280 x 800 pixels. At such a resolution, it’s hard to read smaller fonts (you’d need to zoom in for better legibility) and you can notice slight pixelization all across - it’s not a deal-breaker, but it’s one area the tablet could have done better.

In comparison, its most notable competitors – devices like the LG G Pad 8.3 and the 2013 Nexus 7 – both ship with a resolution of 1920 x 1200 pixels. Speaking in numbers, pixel density on the Pop 8 comes in at 189ppi, while the aforementioned G Pad 8.3 and Nexus 7 have pixel mass of 273ppi and 323ppi, respectively.

In terms of colors, the Pop 8 – funnily enough – lacks a bit of pop, as its colors appear a bit muted, subdued, and they are not perfectly accurate either. Thing is, the color gamut on the tablet does not quite match the standard sRGB gamut coverage - it’s a bit narrower.

It’s also hard to use the OneTouch Pop 8 outdoors since its low brightness makes it harder to read the display. Alcatel’s tablet is in fact nearly 20% dimmer than most other tablets.

One final detail that you should know about the screen is that - unlike other popular tablets - it does not feature oleophobic coating, which means that it collects a lot more fingerprints, and can get quite messy (you’d need to get a cloth to clean it up often).

Interface and Functionality

It’s disappointing to see the dated 4.2 Jelly Bean version of Android on a new device. Alcatel’s skin, however, is minimalist ang good looking, and that’s a plus.

The OneTouch Pop 8 runs on Android 4.2 Jelly Bean with a light and minimalist custom skin on top. Having such a dated version of Google’s operating on a new device is definitely a disappointment. What’s not so disappointing is Alcatel’s custom user interface that adorns stock Android with colorful, flat, rectangular icons and quirky buttons that look vastly different than popular skins from companies like, say, Samsung. If we had to compare the skin to something else, we’d say that it actually looks much like user interfaces tailor-made for China where such quirky looks are often adopted.

The interface itself is snappy, and it comes with both the traditional suite of Google applications, and Alcatel’s own custom apps (including a built-in weather app, which is nice).

We ought to once again warn you that while this tablet does come with a SIM card slot, it does not support voice calls. You can use the SIM card for mobile data, though, and there’s even a SMS text messaging app. The OneTouch Pop 8 ships with Google’s keyboard on board, and typing on it is effortless as buttons are large enough and well spaced.

Processor and Memory

The quad-core MediaTek chip under the hood does a good job in running basic tasks smoothly, but it’s not made for the hardcore gamer.

The OneTouch Pop 8 is powered by a 1.2GHz quad-core MediaTek system chip, and it has 1GB of RAM on board. In daily use, just navigating around the interface and running basic apps like browser and email, it runs fairly smoothly, almost without a stutter.

While it is capable of running those common tasks with ease, the chip under the hood is not a powerhouse. The exact model of the chip is MediaTek MT8382, a quad-core solution with performance roughly on par with Nvidia’s Tegra 3. The four cores in the MT8382 are Cortex A7 based, and the whole chip is manufactured on a 28nm LP node.

In terms of graphics, we’re looking at the ever-popular Mali-400 GPU that has proven itself with time, as capable of running casual games without stuttering. More intense workloads are definitely challenging for it, though, so this tablet is not suitable for more graphical gaming.

One key thing you should know about the Pop 8 is that it comes with an extremely scarce internal storage allotment of just 4GB. Of those, only 2.4GB are actually available to the end user. We definitely advise you to get a microSD card - luckily, the tablet supports expandable storage with cards of up to 64GB.

Internet and Connectivity

The most prominent stand-out feature of the OneTouch Pop 8 is its support for mobile data with 4G HSPA at a very affordable price point.

Surfing the web on the Pop 8 happens via the built-in Android browser, and that is the only browser that’s pre-loaded on the device. It loads and renders pages swiftly, as you’d expect, and scrolling around and zooming in and out happens fairly smoothly, with just the occasional stutter here and there. The 8-inch screen size offers plenty of space for even desktop versions of some websites, but the low resolution makes it hard to read tinier fonts, so you’d still need to zoom in to be able to comfortably read most text.

So far, we have seen no true stand-out features of the Alcatel OneTouch Pop 8, but connectivity might be the one thing that makes it special. That’s because of the fact that this tablet features mobile data connectivity at a price point where most other manufacturers offer Wi-Fi-only solution. Here, we have 4G (HSPA, not LTE) connectivity with download speeds of up to 21Mbps.

Other connectivity options are standard, including Wi-Fi b/g/n Bluetooth 4.0, and GPS, but there is no NFC on board.

Camera

These are not the pictures you’d want to share with your friends.

Let’s make it clear - the Alcatel OneTouch Pop 8 is not a camera-centric device at all. It does feature a barebones 2-megapixel main camera (flash is nowhere to be found), and a 0.3-megapixel (VGA) front camera, but these are better suited for video chats rather than being a camera replacement.

The camera app itself opens quickly and is relatively simple, without any in-depth manual settings. Disappointingly, images captured on the 2-megapixel shooter look lifeless, lacking sorely in saturation, and unsurprisingly, detail is shockingly low. In fact, most of the images we shot appear downright blurry and very noisy even in broad daylight. These are not the pictures you’d want to share with your friends, unless there is some kind of necessity.




Video is captured in the 3GP file format with a maximum resolution of 1920 x 1080-pixels, but don’t be fooled by the resolution - the quality of the recording is terrible, and it’s nothing like the sharp 1080p videos that you’re used to seeing. It has very low amount of detail and is choppy at just 20 frames per second. You can also shoot in 720p (“Fine quality” in the camera settings), and 480p (Normal), and both produce more reasonable framerates, but they also lack in detail, and the quality is sub-par.


The tablet also features a very basic, 0.3-megapixel (VGA) front camera that will come in handy in video chats. The actual quality of the recordings is nothing to write home about, but we appreciate the fact that at least there is a front-facing camera.

Multimedia

With great codec support and a spacious display, the OneTouch Pop 8 offers pleasing video watching experience, but sound from the loudspeaker is too quiet.

The 8-inch screen on the OneTouch Pop 8 is great for watching video on the go. Alcatel has bundled in support for all major codecs, so you’d be able to play most files straight from the built-in video app, without any additional downloads or tweaks. We managed to play 720p files with ease, and some 1080p files ran as well, but playback was stuttery for those higher-res clips. We should also remind you that the tablet features a native 16:10 ratio, so there is just a tiny letterbox for most videos (which are commonly in the 16:9 aspect ratio).

The music app that’s baked in gets the job done nicely - it categorizes all your music by genres, artists, songs, and albums, plus it has really neat full screen album art. You can also fine tune your music with an equalizer and some pre-sets.

Unfortunately, sound output via the single loudspeaker on the back of the tablet is just too quiet, with a disappointing, impure sound quality.

Battery life

The OneTouch Pop 8 comes with a 4100mAh battery that is not user removable. Alcatel says the tablet can withstand up to 8 hours of non-stop browsing, which sounds good on paper. In our experience, though, the battery drained quicker than that, and that results in more regular visits to the charger.

Conclusion

The Alcatel OneTouch Pop 8 is a device that focuses on a budget price rather than specs. The version we tested (with mobile data on board) is competitively priced, and might lure in buyers who absolutely must have a mobile data-enabled tablet on the cheap. The price for that model of the Pop 8 is set at around €200 ($275), but that price may vary across markets. There might also be an even more affordable Wi-Fi-only version of the tablet that we did not test.

With that said, the OneTouch Pop 8 has some serious rivals that offer more advanced features in practically every other aspect. The Nexus 7 is a more powerful tablet with a vastly better 7-inch display and a more capable camera. In the world of 8-inch tablets, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 8.0 outshines it with a more powerful processor and a much better camera (but it does not support mobile data). And if you are specifically looking for a device that supports mobile data, the LG G Pad 8.3 comes to mind - it’s slightly more expensive, but it offers a superior display, a very nice and sturdy aluminum body, zippier internals, and a better camera.

All in all, it's hard to recommend the Alcatel OneTouch Pop 8 for reasons other than price, and if you're looking for advanced features, there seem to be better alternatives out there.