Teclast Master T8 Review: How Good Is This Cheap China Tablet?

The Teclast Master T8 is an 8.4-inch Android tablet from China that usually costs just under 200 Dollars. Its highlights are a full metal body, features like a fingerprint reader and, considering the price, pretty nice hardware. At the same time, it offers a very high-resolution display. I’ve had the Teclast T8 for over two months now and this is my review.

Usually, you can’t buy the Teclast Master T8 at your local retailer. Instead, you can import it from China using shops like GearBest. They are the ones who send me this review unit.

Design & Build Quality

Let’s start this review with the design and build quality. The Teclast Master T8 looks quite high-end thanks to its full metal body. And it does feel high-end most of the time. However, after a while, I noticed that it can kind of creak a bit if you hold it a bit harder. So while it is more premium feeling than most plastic tablets, it is not as elegant as an iPad Mini.

With 7.8mm it is just a bit thicker than the new Huawei MediaPad M5 series (review) and the weight of 346g is alright. All the way on the bottom are two speakers. The sound quality is acceptable but not really good either. And it’s a bit disappointing that both speakers are on the same side. So you won’t get any stereo feeling when watching movies.

Between those speakers sits a microSD card slot. Those cards can have a capacity of up to 256GB. On the right side are a power button and volume controls. All the way on the top, we get a USB Type C port and a standard 3.5mm audio jack.

Fingerprint Scanner & Cameras

On the back, we get an 8-megapixel camera and the front-facing camera actually offers a higher resolution of 13 megapixels. And indeed, the front-facing camera is really good for a tablet. However, the main camera could be better.

As I mentioned earlier, the Teclast T8 features a fingerprint reader which sits underneath the screen. The fingerprint scanner works surprisingly well. Not as fast as recent and higher-end smartphones, but still pretty good.

Like with a lot of competitors, the fingerprint scanner supports gestures. For example, if you hold it a bit longer you get back to the home screen. If you tip on it twice, the recent apps overview is opened.

Display: 2560 x 1600

Alright, let’s take a closer look at the screen of the Teclast Master T8. It’s an 8.4-inch IPS display and it offers a very high resolution of 2560 x 1600 pixels. That means that the pixel density is much higher than on most tablets. And texts and icons do indeed look very sharp.

By the way, the Huawei MediaPad M3 (review) and M5 8.4 have the same resolution.

Unlike most cheaper Chinese tablets, the screen is fully laminated. That means that there is no gap between the touchscreen and IPS panel. And yes, its an IPS screen so the viewing angles are very good.

I’ve only had good things to say about the screen so far and that continues with the brightness. It is a relatively bright screen and easier to read outside than a lot of competitors. However, now comes one negative point. In the dark, the screen is too bright. You just can’t turn down the brightness far enough. Because of that, it can be uncomfortable to read in a dark environment – for example at night in bed.

There is another issue. I’ve used the tablet for about a month before noticing that there is something wront with the colors. In fact, there is a noticeable green tint compared to most tablets. You won’t really notice it unless you compare it – or shoot a video where it is really obvious.

So the screen offers a very high resolution and that is awesome. But it also has some color problems. Again, you mainly notice it when you compare it to something else. But sill, that shouldn’t be.

Hardware & Performance

Inside the Teclast Master T8 sits a MediaTek MTK8176 hexa-core processor. That is the same chip we are familiar with already from the ASUS ZenPad 3S 10, Teclast T10 and Xiaomi Mi Pad 3. Other specs include 4GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage. Judging by that it is an upper-middle-class tablet.

And that’s what benchmarks show as well. In Geekbench 4 the Teclast T8 gets 1500 and 3590 points. In the AnTuTu benchmark, it gets 93000 points.

You can see in my benchmark comparison that with these results, it is indeed an upper-middle-class tablet. One of the reasons for that is that in the last couple of years we haven’t seen a lot of high-end Android tablets. In fact, even the Huawei MediaPad M5 and Samsung Galaxy Tab S3 (review) which are both on the top of this comparison, run with at least a year old processors. Well, as you can see as well, compared to most tablets the performance of the Teclast T8 is very good.

During my everyday use, the performance has been good too. I watched a lot of YouTube, surfed the web in Chrome and worked with Microsoft Word. That all worked without any problems. And that includes the multi-window-feature.

Teclast T8 Gaming Test

Thanks to the pretty fast hardware, the Teclast T8 should be a pretty good gaming tablet. And I did try a lot of games on here. Simple ones like Day of the Viking run very nicely. And that goes for Asphalt 8: Airborne too. If you turn the graphics settings up all the way, you will see some lagging. But it runs fine on medium settings.

And that’s the case with Into the Dead 2 as well. It runs great but you have to turn down the graphics settings a bit. Modern Combat 5 is very smooth too and the game looks nice. By the way, similarly priced tablets like the Samsung Galaxy Tab A 2017 (review) have huge problems with this game.

I noticed one negative point when gaming on the T8. Under heavy load, it can get very hot in the upper left corner. Not just a bit, but uncomfortably hot. I don’t think you’ll burn yourself. But as I said, it can get quite hot.

Software: Android 7.0 Nougat

Teclast is shipping the T8 with Android 7.0 Nougat. So no Oreo yet and I don’t think it will ever get a major update in the future. However, I really like that there are not a lot of apps pre-installed. Just a couple of standard ones.

Like most manufacturers, Teclast customized the interface a bit. For example, there is no app drawer anymore. Instead, all apps are installed onto the home screen. And you can’t change that in the settings. There are a couple of other customizations. For example, you can adjust the screen contrast, activate a blue light filter and a reading mode which turns the screen to black and white. But that’s it. Besides that, it is pretty much vanilla Android.

I don’t think I ever reviewed a Chinese tablet that supported Googles SafetyNet and DRM standards. Well, the Teclast T8 does not either. That means that there are a couple of apps that you cannot install from the Play Store. Among those is Netflix. However, you can install the APK from the official support site and then it runs fine.

As I mentioned earlier, I don’t think it will ever get a major software update. But Teclast is releasing minor updates for their tablets occasionally using their own update app. So we don’t have to live without updates completely.

According to some owners of the bigger Teclast T10 in the XDA Developer Forum, there have been some problems with updates for that one. Some users talk about problems with touchscreens and updates from Teclast which were helpful for some but not for all.

Well, I couldn’t find negative reports about the T8 in that forum. But I think it’s a good idea with all China tablets to check XDA Developers before buying. There are a lot of users trying different things and its great for support. By the way, you can learn how to root the T8 there too.

Battery Life

Let’s take a look at the battery life. That is a huge problem with a lot of cheaper tablets and it’s not different here. In my battery test, the Teclast T8 got a runtime for 7.5 hours only. For my battery test, I’m always looping an HD video at 50 percent brightness and activated WiFi.

During real-life use, the battery life is not much better. It obviously depends on what you are doing. But while gaming, the battery might last you a couple of hours only. However, it will last you about a day when using it for emails, surfing the web and so on.

By the way, the tablet uses almost no charge while the display is turned off. That’s almost comparable to an iPad. One of the reasons for that is that WiFi is turned off automatically if you turn off the screen. If you want to change that, you can do so in the settings.

Teclast Master T8 Review: Final Verdict

So, can I recommend the Teclast Master T8? The build quality is pretty good and the performance is excellent for around 200 dollars. While the screen has some weaknesses, it offers a great resolution in this price range. I also like that we get a fingerprint reader and enough storage.

However, the battery life is pretty bad. And its also unlikely that we will ever get a major software update. And you should keep in mind that you have to import it from China and support and warranties might not be as good as when you buy something locally.

But if you want as much performance as possible for as little money as possible, the Teclast T8 might be a great tablet for you. Well, let’s look at possible alternatives.

Obviously, prices vary by country. But usually, you can get a Huawei MediaPad T3 8 (review) or Samsung Galaxy Tab A 2017 for around or a bit under 200 dollars. Compared to those, the T8 offers a much better performance and a much higher resolution screen. However, the Lenovo Tab4 8 Plus might be a nice alternative. The performance is still not as good but at least we get a full HD screen.

If you are looking for something noticeably better, you can check out the Huawei MediaPad M3 and the new M5 8.4. Actually, both have the same resolution screen as the Teclast but there is not green tint. The performance is noticeably better, especially on the M5. That will costs you though, it will be almost twice as much.