Teclast P10 Review: Is It The Best 100 Dollar Android Tablet?

The Teclast P10 is a very inexpensive tablet out of China. Its highlights are a 10.1-inch full HD screen, a pretty solid Rockchip processor, Android Nougat, and a full metal body. Considering the price of around 100 dollars, the specs are quite impressive on paper. But how good is it in real life? That’s what you’ll find out in this review.

Design & Build Quality

While most cheap tablets are made out of plastic, the Teclast P10 offers a full metal body. There’s only a small plastic part on the top for the antennas, the rest is metal. Because of that, it feels surprisingly high-end. Especially when you consider the price. It’s not as high-end as an iPad Pro but feels nicer than the pricier Amazon Fire HD 10 (review).

It is not the thinnest tablet though – in fact, it’s quite thick at 9.9 millimeters. And it weighs 524 grams, so it’s not that light either.

Ports, Cameras, Speakers

Like most cheaper competitors, the Teclast P10 does not offer a USB Type C port. Instead, it’s charged using a standard micro USB connector. There’s another port for an optional power plug – you can just ignore it.

On the side, there’s a micro SD card slot so that you can expand the storage. There’s a standard 3.5-millimeter audio jack as well.

As you might expect at this price, the cameras are not great. The 5-megapixel camera on the back and the 2-megapixel camera on the front are just usable. But not very good – I wouldn’t use it for any Instagram selfies.

Sadly, the same kind of goes for the speakers. There are two speakers on the side and they are just usable. The quality is not great. It’s fine for watching some YouTube occasionally, but for movies and music, I’d suggest connecting a headset or external speakers.

Display: A Full HD Screen

The 10.1-inch screen is one major highlight of the Teclast P10. While much pricier tablets like the Huawei MediaPad T3 10 or Lenovo Tab4 10 offer an HD resolution only, the Teclast P10 offers a full HD screen at 1920 x 1200 pixel. That’s awesome.

As is usually the case with cheap tablets like these, the screen is not fully laminated. There is a gap of about 2 millimeters between the touchscreen and IPS panel. That’s the case with a lot of cheaper tablets – and even the 2017 iPad. Still, because of that gap, it’s easier to see reflections. So the screen is not awesome for working outside.

The brightness is not great but alright. With a white background, it is just usable outside in direct sunlight. But because of easy reflections, it’s much nicer to read while sitting in the shadows. Other aspects of the display are pretty good, especially at this price. As I said, it has a full HD resolution, colors look nice and the contrast is good too.

Considering the price, the screen is great overall. I enjoyed using it and watch Netflix and YouTube.

Hardware & Performance

Inside the Teclast P10 runs a Rockchip RK3368 octa-core processor with all eight cores clocked at 1.5GHz. In addition to that, we’re getting 2GB of RAM and a 32GB internal storage.

The performance of the Rockchip processor is not bad at all – again, especially if you consider the price. It’s certainly fast enough to watch movies, surf the web in Chrome and work with Microsoft Word. But it is not the best multitasking tablet. If you switch between apps fast, it usually has to think a bit. You might see some stuttering in Chrome too if you’ve got a lot of tabs open.

So, it is not the fastest tablet but certainly usable. That’s what the benchmarks say as well. In Geekbench 4 it gets 550 and 1800 points which are just under a Snapdragon 425 tablet like the Huawei MediaPad T3 series. In AnTuTu it gets just over 44.000 points which actually is a bit better.

Teclast P10 Gaming Test

Obviously, it is not a perfect gaming tablet. But I’ve been surprised that I could play Modern Combat 5 quite nicely. The graphics are turned down all the way and you might see some stutters – but only occasionally. I think it is certainly playable which is not the case with Snapdragon 425 tablets like the much, much more expensive Samsung Galaxy Tab A 8.0.

Other games like Asphalt 8 Airborne run great as well. But again, the graphics are turned down all the way. Actually, this game looks nicer on the Galaxy Tab A 8.0 – for example, water effects are not shown here. That’s probably due to the higher resolution screen.

Asphalt Xtreme does not run at all, which is kind of weird. It crashes right from the start. That must be some kind of bug on Teclast’s side because the much higher end Teclast Master T10 has problems with this game as well.

The same goes for N.O.V.A. Legacy. While I was able to start this game, it only shows… green. It seems like it does not load any textures. That’s pretty weird. Other games like Into the Dead 2 run great again – but with lowest graphics settings as well and some minor stuttering occasionally.

So, as you can see, you certainly can play games with the Teclast P10. But as is not surprising at this price, not all run great. And some not at all.

WiFi & Bluetooth Problems

The Teclast P10 supports WiFi ac and Bluetooth 4.0. But I noticed some minor problems with both.

While the WiFi reception is solid most of the time, that is not always the case. Especially when the router is a couple of rooms away. Sometimes a page does not load in the Play Store and on YouTube. It’s reloaded easily and then it works. But still, that’s not great.

Once a video is running on YouTube, it ran without interruptions. I didn’t notice any WiFi problems in Chrome. But, if you’re living in a big house and have WiFi problems already, that probably won’t get better with this tablet.

The same goes for Bluetooth. I use all the tablets I review with a Bluetooth keyboard, Bluetooth speaker, and a Bluetooth gamepad. All three accessories do work with the Teclast P10. But sometimes there are dropouts – I’d say at least once an hour. Now, usually, the tablet reconnects automatically. But still, that shouldn’t happen.

Software: Android 7.1.2 Nougat

On the tablet runs Android 7.1.2 Nougat, so a fairly recent version. It’s standard Google Android including the Play Store and all the apps from Google. In fact, it is pretty much vanilla Android without any heavy customizations. There are some apps preinstalled – but that’s it. I don’t think it’ll ever get an update to Android Oreo though.

As I said, it’s pretty much vanilla Android so I don’t have that much to say about the software. All standard features work including the split screen view so you can open two apps side by side.

I noticed one thing though. The Play Store says that Netflix is not supported on this device. That happened to me once before and a likely reason is that Google thinks the tablet is rooted or it’s not supporting Googles DRM guidelines. But Netflix is offering an APK to download in their support section – using that, Netflix works just like on every other tablet.

Battery Life

I’d say the biggest negative point about this tablet is the battery life. It is very cheap so I didn’t expect much. But the battery life is quite low at 6 hours and 30 minutes according to my standard battery test. I’m always looping an HD video at 50 percent brightness and activated WiFi.

During everyday use, the battery life was not great either. I wrote down a battery diary again and got a runtime of 18 hours in total. But, out of those, I used it actively for 4 hours and 20 minutes only. During that time I watched YouTube and surfed the web in Chrome. Brightness varied between 100 and 50 percent and WiFi and Bluetooth were both activated the whole time.

Teclast P10 Review: Final Verdict

So, can I recommend the Teclast P10? The build quality is pretty good thanks to its metal body. And, considering the price, the screen is very good. The performance is pretty solid as well. Again, it costs around 100 dollars so it’s not a gaming tablet. But, as you’ve seen, you can play some games if you want to.

The major disadvantage is the battery life. It won’t last you a long haul flight without charging it in between. At maximum brightness, you can watch YouTube for four hours maximum. The WiFi reception is not perfect either – if you’re living in a big house you’ll probably run into problems.

But again, the price. The Teclast P10 costs around 100 dollars only. So it is one of the cheapest tablets out there. And considering the price, the performance is pretty good and I’d say the display is great. If you need a tablet to surf the web a bit and watch some videos, I think you’ll be happy with the Teclast P10. Especially if you don’t want to spend a lot of money. It’s certainly the best 10-inch tablet I reviewed at around 100 dollars.

Are there alternatives? There are indeed. If you’re looking for a 10-inch tablet with LTE at this price point, you can check out the Onda V10 4G. But I can recommend that one if you need 4G only – otherwise I prefer the Teclast P10.

If you can spend a bit more, you could check out the Amazon Fire HD 10. It offers a fully laminated screen, a much better performance, and a better battery life. A similarly priced alternative out of China is the Teclast Master T10 with even better specs – that one is an upper-middle-class tablet at around 80 dollars more.