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Android tablets just keep getting cheaper, and Storage Options’ latest is one of the least expensive we’ve seen. The Scroll Excel is a follow-up to last year’s £145 Scroll 7in Tablet PC (see What’s New, Shopper 283), and is £15 cheaper. It’s not that much different from its predecessor: it still runs Android 2.3 and has a 1GHz processor, but has twice as much RAM and storage space, weighs much less and supports faster 802.11n Wi-Fi.
The lower weight is due to the rear casing being made of plastic rather than the Scroll 7in Tablet PC’s metal, so as a result the Scroll Excel feels slightly less durable. It’s not unattractive, and reminded us of Samsung’s original 7in Galaxy Tab. You get a good selection of ports, including a USB host port, microSDHC card slot and Mini HDMI output. The host port is Mini USB, but Storage Options includes a Type A adaptor in the box so you’ll be able to plug flash drives straight in.
You charge the tablet with a DC adaptor, and it won’t charge over USB. There are Menu, Home and Back buttons underneath the screen, but strangely, Storage Options has also coded these controls into Android’s notification bar. This forces the notifications themselves into an overflow which you have to drag the screen down to see, which really defeats their purpose. You also can’t use the below-screen buttons to wake the tablet, so have to reach for the top-mounted power button.
Despite a more advanced processor – according to Wikipedia, the ARM v7-based Cortex A8 handles roughly twice as many operations per clock cycle as the ARM v6-based ARM 11 – the Scroll Excel still feels quite sluggish compared to more expensive tablets. It’s faster on the whole than the Scroll 7in Tablet PC, but sometimes it will hang for no apparent reason. These pauses seem random – at one point, iPlayer will sit there loading for ages, and the next time you try it will load immediately.
The tablet has enough grunt to play HD videos, though, and the HDMI output even supports HDMI 1.4, so you can attach the Scroll Excel to a 3D-capable monitor or TV to play 3D content. Sadly, Storage Options hasn’t included a Mini HDMI cable in the box to make this easier. 3D works fine, although our Viewsonic V3D231 test monitor (see What’s New, Shopper 290) didn’t automatically recognise the 3D input so we had to select it manually from the on-screen menu.
When you first plug the Scroll Excel into a Full HD monitor via HDMI, the Scroll Excel’s screen is mirrored on the monitor – you see exactly the same picture. Content from YouTube or iPlayer will also be mirrored, although it’s up-scaled to fit into the monitor’s 1,920×1,080 resolution, which produces quite a blocky image. 1080p video files, on the other hand, are played only on the monitor’s screen, and so are displayed at the monitor’s native Full HD resolution. In our tests, Full HD video ran smoothly as long as nothing else was running on the tablet in the background.
There’s a single, low-resolution, front-facing camera, which is next to useless: we tried using it with Skype, but despite being able to connect, neither our image or our correspondent’s were visible on the Scroll Excel’s screen, and our image didn’t appear on theirs. Shots and video are extremely blocky, with lots of noise.
The inclusion of a USB host port is welcome, as it allows you to attach more external storage. It accepts both FAT32 and NTFS disks, as well as a keyboard or mouse – it’s a shame you can’t attach both at once, even if you use a USB hub. Our only gripe was that the USB port felt wobbly, and its connection sometimes cut off. The battery lasted for five and a half hours in our video test, which is about average for a 7in tablet.
While the screen is bright and colourful, viewing angles aren’t great so contrast suffers if you don’t view it straight-on. It uses a capacitive touch interface which isn’t very consistent – normally it feels quite responsive, but every now and then we found our taps activated an entirely separate part of the screen from the one we intended, which could be frustrating.
At first, we didn’t think the Scroll Excel came with the Android Market pre-installed. In fact, it is there, but there just isn’t an icon for it. If you press and hold on the home screen, choose Shortcuts, then Applications, and select the Market, you can access it as normal, although not all apps are compatible with the Scroll Excel so you may notice a few omissions.
There’s more than just the Market missing, however. There’s no way to access your account details, so while you can add your Google account, you don’t get control over which data is synchronised with the tablet. Despite the inclusion of the standard Android Calendar app, you don’t get access to your Google calendars, and there’s no Contacts app – and none is available via the Market either. Other Google apps work with your account, such as the Music app (if you’ve managed to get into the Beta), but the Calendar will only synchronise with an Exchange server, so there’s little consistency.
Storage Options has pre-installed the Advanced Task Killer app, which you shouldn’t use as Android handles its own memory better – you should stop it from automatically starting via its Options screen, but sadly you can’t uninstall it. We’d also highly recommend installing the ICS keyboard from developer VLLWP – it gives you much larger keys that better suit a tablet screen.
With the Market installed, even though some account options don’t work, you still get a far better choice of software than without it, and it certainly makes the Scroll Excel far more useful than it would be otherwise. However, we can’t overlook the Scroll Excel’s hardware faults – inconsistent performance, an inaccurate touch interface and poor viewing angles can make it frustrating to use.
Despite its low price, the hardware just doesn’t seem reliable enough for us to recommend it wholeheartedly. It has potential, though: with a DLNA client installed, you could plug it into your HDTV and use it as a media streamer, and for casual web browsing or email, it handles itself fairly well.
