Performance
The Jide REMIX Ultra is powered by a 1.8GHZ Nvidia Tegra 4 processor and 2GB RAM. The Tegra 4 processor harnesses four mighty ARM Cortex-A15 CPU cores, plus a second-generation battery-saver core, to deliver both performance and battery life. The reason why Jide has chosen a more dated version of Tegra processor over the latest Tegra K1 may be to keep the tablet from getting over-heated. As the Tegra K1 powered tablets such as the Xiaomi Mi Pad and the Nexus 9 are both reported to get extremely hot handling heavy tasks.
General performance of the Jide REMIX Ultra tablet is strong, if nothing especially impressive. Navigating through the home screens is smooth, opening applications is fast, browsing pics in the gallery app is also extremely snappy, every picture slides in and appears instantaneously or close to it. Videos look good, too, and, like photos, playback begins just as you tap the play button. Graphics-intensive websites load fast, almost on par with the Apple iPad Air2. Working on an office program while playing an HD video in the foreground, the Jide REMIX Ultra tablet still remains perfectly responsive.
If benchmarks are more convincing to you, we’ve listed the benchmark scores of the Jide REMIX Ultra tablet above, along with the scores of other tablets for comparison. It is clear that the Jide REMIX Ultra fares pretty well against other high-end Android tablets.
I do have detected some stutters and pauses when there are several big applications running in the foreground in phone mode, but it can be expected as tablets and smartphones with even the most cutting-edge specs also struggle with heavy multi-tasking.
Connectivity
The Jide REMIX Ultra tablet offers lots of connectivity options. It features Wi-Fi a/b/g/n support, with 2.4GHz and 5GHz band compatibility. Wi-Fi Direct and DLNA support are also available. Bluetooth 4.0 is on board to take care of local data transfer.
There is a micro SD card slot as well, on top of the 64GB of internal storage. The micro USB port on the side supports USB on the go, and can host all kinds of input and storage devices, including my 500GB mobile hard drive.
Unfortunately, the Jide REMIX Ultra doesn’t have an HDMI port, nor does it support MHL, which is quite a disappointment.
Battery life
The REMIX Ultra packs an 8,100mAh Lithium polymer battery, which isn’t really big for a tablet this size. Even with the help of the efficient power management of the Nvidia Tegra 4 processor, the battery life of the REMIX Ultra is underwhelming.
In our standard cngadget battery rundown test, we loop a 1080P video on the REMIX Ultra with 50% of screen brightness and 50% of volume through the built-in speakers, the tablet lasted 7 hours and 37 minutes until automatic shutdown. This is no match for the 12 hours and 11 hours we got respectively from the iPad Air and the Samsung Galaxy Tab S 10.5, and puts the Jide REMIX Ultra in the middle of our rankings.
In the real world use, the Jide REMIX Ultra didn’t live up to our expectations, either, especially as we tended to do more multi-tasking on the REMIX Ultra than we did with average Android tablet. With some Youtube feeds, some social internet, some typing with the keyboard attached, some gaming and internet browsing, we were constantly left with 30% – 40% of battery life at the end of the day. So for moderate to heavy users, charging on a daily basis is needed.
Cameras
Like all tablets nowadays, the REMIX Ultra has dual cameras, a 5MP front-facing camera and a 5MP main camera on the back. While the front-facing camera is nice enough for video-chatting on Skype and Wechat, you won’t want to use it for selfies. The rear-facing camera can take Okay photos when there is decent lighting, but who would use such a gigantic device to take pictures?
Photo taken by the front-facing camera
Photos taken by the rear-facing camera
Conclusion
Just when we begin to lose interest in Android OS on tablets, the Jide REMIX Ultra arrives with flying colors. It’s amazing that Jide has managed to build such a premium looking and wonderfully versatile tablet out of the REMIX Ultra, we have never seen an Android tablet more solid, more productive, or more laptop-like. This is truly hands-down one of the best tablets out there.
However, Like many products that try to be two things at once, the REMIX Ultra does neither as well as those designed for one function, and we really have a hard time trying to figure out what kind of users the device is marketing towards. It may have surpassed most of the Android tablets and iPads in terms of performance and productivity, but it is still nowhere near what high-end Windows tablets when it comes to handling business tasks. It does have access to all the applications in Google Play, but its size and weight become a real burden when we try to use it as a media-consuming device.
The REMIX OS is not perfect, either. Running several applications in windows is indeed very cool, but whenever you want to switch a running application from phone mode to full screen, or the other way around, the app has to go through being closed and then reopened, instead of just zooming in and out like it is accomplished on the LG Optimus UI.
Besides their very own REMIX Ultra tablet, Jide has also been releasing REMIX OS ROMs for popular tablets such as the Nexus 10, Nexus 9 and Xiaomi Mi Pad. They are also working closely with major Chinese tablet brands like Cube and Onda to release tablets shipped with REMIX OS.
Final verdict
The Jide REMIX Ultra is nicely designed, well-built and provides users with arguably the best Android experience on a tablet, it could easily replace your chrome book, iPad or Galaxy Tab. However, if you want it to offer as much productivity as the ultrabooks and tablets with full Windows system, you will be disappointed.
Also, at $439, the REMIX Ultra tablet is certainly priced much higher than average Android tablets from China: the Cube i7 REMIX, which runs the same REMIX OS, is priced at $225 with a keyboard base included; the Teclast T98 4G, which features a beefier processor and 4G support, is also priced at only $225. Even compared to some Core-M powered Windows tablets such as the Cube i7 Stylus ($338) and the ONDA V919 3G Core M ($322), the REMIX Ultra doesn’t have an edge in the price department.
Even if Jide fails to sell the REMIX Ultra tablet, REMIX OS is here to stay. With Jide furthering its partnership with other tablet manufacturers, we will certainly see more tablets running this amazing Android skin in the coming months.