There aren’t too many times we come across a brand of tablet we haven’t tested before. Mostly because there hasn’t been a lot of new players recently (outside of brands that are mostly isolated to specific countries). That made this round a tad exciting since we had mixed expectations like you would with anything you haven’t heard of just yet. This includes brands that have actually been around for a while that you personally just don’t have any experience with. Such as Lenovo, based on a conversation I had with someone just a few weeks ago that had never heard the name until the moment I brought it up.
In this case, we have Vastking. A name we haven’t touched on before, at least until now. With that, we have been testing out their new KingPad SA10, a 10-inch Android 10 (Pie) tablet that is built to impress. My colleague in the below video (after the conclusion) compared the tablet to companies like Lenovo or ASUS, which actually seems to have been a great comparison. If you are familiar with either company, then this tablet is pretty much represented in full when it comes to build quality and performance when it comes to anything that might cross your mind.
Design
The design of the tablet is close to almost everything you’d expect to find. A wide screen with a black border and silver/gray theme throughout the back and edges. The screen delivers a perfect widescreen experience when it comes to ratio, and they haven’t dropped the headphone port from the design (thank you Vastking).
Weight comes in at just 1lb and 2.6oz, which lands it within the realm of the average weight for most tablets of this size.
The top side features a hidden microSD slot that pops out using an included key (a common design in many tablets and phones). No microSD card is provided, so you are on your own for that. You can use up to 128GB with this to expand your space for data and apps.
Internally, it comes with 32GB of storage to get you started.
The left side doesn’t contain anything, but the right side contains your Android buttons for power and volume (up/down toggle). Underneath those is a small hole that the same key that comes with it can be used to slide into to reset the tablet with (factory reset).
The bottom side contains the mentioned headphone port, as well as a USB-C connection for charging and data transfer. Thus far, everything seems to be modern and well-included. We can never stress enough that it bothers us when companies drop the headphone port from their products. Wireless audio has come a long way but still doesn’t beat the low-cost and high-performance of analog sound.
Then you have two speakers at the bottom (each side of the ports) for a stereo experience and a small hole that leads to an internal microphone.
So it matches the design of any major tablet and hasn’t left anything out. Therefore, everything is going well thus far.
Performance
One of the most important parts of a tablet is its screen and this screen looks fantastic! It’s beautiful when you pair it up to 1080p or better content. Given, the screen itself is 1080p, so switching to something 4K isn’t going to give you 4K, but an image that is 4K that is shrunk to 1080p will usually look better than something that natively shot in 1080p (the same method theory applies to photography).
Your finger slides easily enough across the glass when operating the tablet. We have seen a smoother experience between finger and glass, but the effect is still intermediate or better when it comes to the quality of experience. If this is even remotely noticed by the user, they could slap a screen protector on there from a brand they are familiar with to adjust this effect with.
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Again, the width from top to bottom is great when rotated to watch a widescreen video (left to right). Mixed with the quality of the image, you can easily find yourself getting lost in your favorite streaming content. Everything is large and in charge compared to smaller tablets and it is priced perfectly for what it is.
This is where comparing it to companies like Lenovo and ASUS comes into play. When you compare performance and price, it falls in line with similar products made by these other companies. So this gives a great side by side visual for your mind to roll around and get an idea of what we experience (or what you can expect to experience if you bought into this).
When it comes to the Android OS experience and the speed of menus, everything falls right into place as expected. Everything is snappy and apps open immediately when tapped. The response time feels modern and competitive with known brands and models within this price range. This is mostly thanks to the 1.6GHz octa-core processor inside and 3GB RAM.
Video performance is grand when streaming anything online from your favorite sources, like Netflix or YouTube. Via these methods, we pulled up videos of various resolutions to see how well it performed and it took it all just fine. Given, YouTube wouldn’t allow us to choose any quality beyond 1080p via the mobile app since it limits the selection based on the available screen. Plex, however, made a good attempt at 4K and the resulting 1080p image looked great. It all looked great depending on the original source video.
The built-in speakers can get loud! In fact, one of the first things you will likely do is turn down “notification volume” within settings. This is because the speakers are so small and tinny sounding (like most tablets). Some can pull off some noticeable emulated lows in various ways, but this model sticks to the normal highs and that’s it. When the source audio playing focuses on the highs, you can expect a piercing experience when it comes to how high you can take the volume (which is great for alarms if you don’t wake up well in the mornings).
If you plan on watching a lot of videos and movies, we always recommend using headphones (wired or wireless) when it comes to any tablet. Anything else and the sound experience just doesn’t cut it. No tablet or phone does. Of course, I probably don’t have to explain this as you likely already know that.
Battery performance is pretty good. This is where many tablet models make it or break it with us. Even a budget tablet should last a decent amount of time. It seems Apple is one of the few companies that insist on providing a long battery experience with all of their models. All other companies seem to vary (a lot). This includes companies like the before mentioned Lenovo and ASUS. We have benchmarked a number of their models and some of them only deliver a few hours of experience before having to put them back on the charger. Although the KingPad SA10 doesn’t compare to the battery life of an iPad, it does beat out some of these others. The battery performance is pretty good, and that blew us away. This tablet should easily be able to at least get you through a day or more before having to put it on the charger. That made for a big win when it comes to the score.
With all of that covered, there is only one last thing to wait for. the availability of a cover that fits this specific tablet model. The average consumer almost always protects their tablet with some form of cover. That that will be interesting to see how long it takes for one to hit the market.
Our Conclusion
A “first experience” with a brand that led to a near-perfect score. That doesn’t happen too often. Our final score is based on a number of things. In the case of a tablet, everything begins with the price since you don’t want to compare and contrast anything with something outside of its competitive bubble. This trickles down to screen quality, OS/UI speed, wireless performance, graphic stress tests, and then finally, battery life. This did quite well with all of this, landing it a 9 out of 10. We had to double-check our results, but sure enough, we have a good catch here.
A brand that balances performance with the right speed. It is absolutely priced right for what you get. So what makes it so good? The lack of bloatware! Some of these other companies bog the OS down with unnecessary apps and branding, many of which are running in the background and dragging the system down. Some may look “cool” like Samsung’s UI experience, but then you have to consider what you are losing to get that. We felt this tablet was a great empty slate with all the right performance and the right price.
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Specifications:
- OS: Android 10
- Display: 10″ (with Blue Light Filter)
- Resolution: 1920×1200
- CPU: Octa-Core, 1.6GHz
- Storage: 32GB (expandable up to 128GB via microSD)
- RAM: 3GB
- Battery: 6000 mAh
- Audio: Dual speakers
- Ports: USB Type-C, headphone port, microSD Slot
- WIFI: 5Ghz and 2.4Ghz
Are you a manufacturer or distributor that would like us to test something out for review? Contact us and we can let you know where to send the product and we will try it out.
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