Reviews Alldocube X Neo review: media playback king on a budget

System & UI



The X Neo ships with stock Android 9 Pie, not the latest Android 10, and there’s customization on top. As much as we love the clean feel of stock Android, it is not optimized for a tablet screen, especially a big, 10.5-inch one.

You won’t find anything similar to Samsung tablets’ DeX mode. The stock screen-split function works fine with most applications, but it doesn’t really give you that kind of computing experience the DeX mode offers when there are serious productivity tasks at hand.

Unfortunately, the Android ecosystem is going towards a direction which is less and less tablet-friendly. Many of the customized tablet applications in Play Store were released years ago and haven’t been updated for a long time. As a result, most of the apps we tried on the X Neo were just phone apps blown up to fill the 10.5-inch screen, with the majority of them only supporting vertical mode. The ideal solution would be something like the Phoenix OS, which turns Android OS into a multi-window desktop style user interface, but Alldocube doesn’t seem too keen on shipping their tablets with that operating system.


Decent performance



The Alldocube X Neo is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 AIE processor, which has an octa-core CPU (4 Cores of Cortex-A72 clocked at 2.2GHz and 4 cores of Cortex-A53 clocked at 1.8GHz) and an Adreno 512 GPU. This chipset was actually released way back in 2017 and built on 14nm process, so it is relatively old, and doesn’t match the performance of the Snapdragon 675 or Kirin 810 found in many entry-level Android smartphones. But compared to the 28nm MediaTek 8176 processor in last year’s Alldocube X, it is still a solid upgrade.









The X Neo notched typical “Snapdragon 660” scores in many benchmark tests I threw at it, but it even bettered the Snapdragon 670 powered Samsung Galaxy S5e in some of those tests, which came as a pleasant surprise.



The built-in storage is eMMc 5.1, which is not comparable to UFS storages in top smartphones, but the X did manage to get a result similar to the readings of more expensive midrange tablets such as the Samsung Galaxy Tab S5e in terms of Sequential Read and Write speeds in the Androbench test.



In the real-world use, the Snapdragon 660 processor and 4GB RAM are actually enough to drive the tablet for the tasks it is intended for. The X Neo is smooth and responsive most of the time, I had no issues watching 4K YouTube videos in Chrome, and scrolling through my best friends’ Instagram posts at the same time. With that said, there will be some noticeable hiccups when you open too many image-heavy webpages, or have several big applications running in the background.



Gaming should not be your main reason to buy a Snapdragon 660 powered tablet. With that said, the tablet can run most games installed from Play Store without issues, but in order to have a smooth visual experience, you need to use moderate settings in big titles such as Asphalt 9 and PUBG. If you insist on going for the highest level of animation and 3D effects, you should expect frameskip and serious delays.


Superb connectivity



The X Neo supports dual-band Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 5.0 and 4G, you can even use it to make phone calls, but you need to hear voices either through headphones or the built-in speakers, since the tablet doesn’t have an earpiece.

With such an amazing display, more users will be tempted to store a lot of media files in their X Neo, thus the 64GB built-in storage might not suffice. Fortunately, this tablet supports storage expansion, you can insert a MicroSD card up to 512GB. Even better, the type-C port can also mount most mobile SSD drives.


Basic cameras



There are two cameras on the X Neo, a front-facing 5MP camera and an 8MP main camera. Those cameras can be useful for video-chatting, and scanning QR code, but you won’t want to “archive your life” with them. Even in perfectly-lit conditions, most photos I took with the main camera were either over-exposed or under-exposed, and there wasn’t much life to them. In low light, the photos were simply horrible. In an era when most entry-level smartphones come with triple or quad camera setups, there is really no place for tablet photography.



Selfie camera shot



Main camera shot


Subpar battery life, decent charging speed



The Alldocube X Neo houses a 7700mAh Li-Po battery, smaller than the X’s 8000mAh. But with a much more efficient processor, the X Neo can give me around 7-8 hours’ screen time on a full charge, while the X could only last around 6 hours.



With display brightness and speaker volume both set at 50%, the X Neo scored 7 hours and 25 minutes in the PCMark 8 Work 2.0 Battery test, which was really not impressive compared to other midrange tablets.





This X Neo supports Qualcomm’s 18W QC3.0 quick charge. With the stock wall charger, you can fully charge the tablet’s 7700mAh battery in around 3 hours, not bad considering how big the battery is. In comparison, the 2020 Apple iPad Pro also supports 18W charging, but Samsung’s Galaxy Tab S6 and S5e only support 15W charging. The MatePad Pro is the reigning king in terms of charging speed, as it supports Huawei’s very own 40W SuperCharge, but the cheaper MatePad 10.4 doesn’t have that feature, as it also ships with an 18W charger.


Verdict

The Alldocube X Neo isn’t designed to break any new grounds, but it is an Android tablet which gets a lot of essential things right. It has a sharp and colorful display, which makes it perfect for video streaming, web-browsing and even light gaming. The Snapdragon 660 AIE processor is old, but still offers decent performance for basic everyday tasks. 4G connectivity means the tablet won’t be limited to places with connectable Wi-Fi hotspot.

However, the removal of the fingerprint reader is not really a smart move. Also, the Chinese brand doesn’t have the best track record when it comes to after-sale support, most of their tablets stop receiving firmware upgrades a few months after the release. The X Neo will probably never be upgraded to Android 10, let alone Android R, something you need to bear in mind before making a purchase.

To sum it up, if media playback is your main focus, the X Neo is really an easy recommendation, in fact you won’t find anything that’s visually on par with this slate in the same price range. But if you use your tablet for more mixed purposes, there are a few other offerings you should look at before reaching into your pocket to get the X Neo.