Advent Vega review

It’s not perfect, though, and there are some niggles. For starters, the default installation doesn’t come with any of the standard Android Apps, such as Gmail and Google Maps, and there’s no market either. This would be a massive black mark against this tablet, but fortunately, the Android Modding website MoDaCo provides a free mod that you can download. Once you’ve installed it following our simple instructions you get the all of the standard Android applications and access to the Market. It may seem like a bit of a workaround, but until the official Advent update comes next year, it’s an essential add-on. Without it we simply wouldn’t recommend buying the Vega.

A 4GB Micro SD card provides storage space for files, photos and apps which support this kind of installation, otherwise there’s 512MB of memory available internally.

It’s also a little frustrating that of the standard Android buttons (Home, Back, Menu and Search), there’s only a physical Back button on the top of the device. Instead, Advent has widened the status bar at the top of the screen to include the Home, Status and Back buttons. These work pretty well but have three disadvantages. First, they’re not displayed on every screen and some apps, such as the Android Gallery, take up the entire screen; secondly, they take up screen resolution on other apps, making the web browser feel a little more cramped; finally, we couldn’t activate the usual Android task-switcher using the soft-buttons and had to install Task Switcher from the Market instead. We also found that the screen is occasionally too sensitive and typing on the onscreen keyboard would sometimes repeat a character.

Another oddity is how the pull-down menu appears the same width as it would on a smartphone, failing to fit the screen. In fairness, all of these are minor little niggles that don’t particularly spoil the enjoyment of the Vega.

We like the screen rotation lock switch on top of the tablet, so you can choose which way you want to use the tablet (portrait or landscape) and keep it that way. This makes it much easier to use without the screen rotating whenever you move the Vega.

Little has been done to Android, bar adjusting the homescreen to work in landscape-only mode. It’s a shame that the web browser hasn’t been tweaked and that copy-and-paste hasn’t been improved, as on the Galaxy Tab, but it’s not a huge problem.

There’s no 3G, with only 802.11b/g wireless providing a connection to the internet. It’s fair to say that you can’t really expect 3G on a device at this price, though. There’s also no GPS receiver either, although without 3G the Google Maps Navigation app is essentially a little pointless, so you won’t miss having it.

Bizarrely, the Advent Vega connects to a PC via its USB Type A socket (the type on a PC), rather than Micro or Mini USB. It also can’t charge over USB, so you need to plug in the standard power adaptor instead. The dock connector is not currently used, but a dock should be out next year some time.

The minor niggles weren’t enough to spoil our enjoyment of this tablet. It’s not as polished as the Samsung Galaxy Tab, but it’s responsive and excellent value. If you’re looking for an Android tablet on a budget, this is the one to buy, just make sure you install the mod to get the Market working.