Gigaset QV830 review

Inside the Gigaset QV830 is a quad-core 1.2GHz Cortex A7 system-on-chip (SoC) paired with 1GB of RAM. This is very much a low-end SoC and this was reflected in its performance benchmarks. The QV830 managed a very poor time of 1,651ms in our SunSpider JavaScript benchmark, showing it is slow to render web pages. When scrolling through image-heavy websites there was a noticeable delay between swiping and scrolling, which was a little disorienting. We also encountered some sluggishness when navigating around the operating system, with the occasional delay when opening apps or the app drawer.

Anyone looking for a cheap Android gaming tablet will be disappointed. The Gigaset GV830 managed some of the lowest scores we’ve seen in our Ice Storm graphics benchmarks. In Ice Storm Extreme it managed just 1,532, and in Unlimited an equally poor 2,560. The Gigaset GV830 will struggle with anything beyond the most casual games, such as Plants vs. Zombies and Candy Crush Saga.

The Gigaset GV830 runs Android 4.2.2 and is essentially a stock Android experience out of the box. Beyond pre-installing online help and system upgrade apps, Gigaset hasn’t changed the operating system much. There’s a custom Camera app with the usual options such as Panorama, HDR images, self-timer and touch-to-focus.

The QV830 has a 1.2-megapixel camera on the front and a 5-megapixel camera on the rear. The rear camera produces middling-quality photos. It produced underexposed images even in our outdoor test shots, with plenty of noise in shadowy areas. The images were also soft and had muted colours.  We weren’t expecting much from the camera and it performed about as well as expected.

It feels harsh to be too critical of the Gigaset QV830, as it’s one of the cheapest tablets we’ve seen. If your budget really is limited to this amount, it’s not a terrible choice for a general web-browsing tablet. Its battery life of 7 hours and 31 minutes is respectable and enough to get you through a few films while on the move. Despite this, we still feel you’d be happier saving up some more for the vastly superior Tesco Hudl2.