RCA Pro10 Tablet with Keyboard Folio – Initial Impression

My mother announced a few days before Thanksgiving that she would like to give my daughter and I tablets for Christmas. With a budget of $100 each, we browsed the deals online and at our local small-town WalMart. We ended up ordering the RCA Pro10 Tablet with Keyboard Folio from WalMart.com . It is a nice tablet for the price ($100 + warranty and taxes).

Walmart’s website has this tablet listed as:

RCA 10.1″ Tablet 16GB Quad Core Bonus Keyboard/Case

I was a little worried since the website did not call it a “Pro 10”. But the specs were the same and the box says “RCA Pro10 Edition Tablet with Keyboard Folio”.

So here are my initial thoughts:

Looks The folio looks kind of cheap (one of the pictures online made me expect more of a soft fake leather.) But I like the addition of magnets to keep the movable pieces from flopping around while you carry it.

Screen The screen quality is decent, but definitely not what we got used to with my daughter’s Nexus 7 or my mother’s ___. Then again, we are talking a $100 RCA vs a $200 Nexus and a $400 ___. The 1024 x 600 resolution should be enough for people who are not spoiled to high resolution screens, but there is a low range of angles you can sit at before the colors are too out of whack. If you plan on watching movies with this device, you should only expect one or two people to have a good view. Maybe three if they sit real close.

Camera The rear facing camera’s image quality is disappointingly low. I cannot even scan QR codes. I will contact RCA to see if I could have a defective unit. … Front facing camera is also low quality, but this is to be expected.

Keyboard The keyboard part of the included folio is undersized but not as bad as I thought it would be. I would prefer a different configuration of keys to the far-right. And I have to hit the space bar right in the center for it to do anything. Still – I was able to type comfortably enough to skype some answers to my co-workers and update my Facebook status.

Games So far our favorite game apps are running smoothly. Only exception is that MySingingMonsters thinks the keyboard is a game controller, which results in a big green arrow (think mouse cursor) in the middle of the screen. This goes away when you turn off the keyboard.

Movies I had to tap several times to get Hulu to pause last night. And the keyboard’s built in movie controls do not work for Hulu or Netflix. (Nor does the space bar act as a pause / play button) Still, the actual movies play well and the sound is good. A few minutes in to a good movie I do not even notice the lower screen resolution. Just make sure you don’t have many people watching because the picture quality quickly declines when you aren’t sitting at the perfect angle.

Setup This is an android device. (Running Android KitKat) You will need a Google account. There is an option to bring over settings that you saved on the cloud. Since this is my first Android, I did not have anything to transfer over. But my daughter’s tablet loaded itself up with wifi passwords and most of the apps she had saved to her Nexus 7.

Color My daughter couldn’t decide between pink and purple, so those were the two colors we ordered online. Once it got here we were happy with the colors. We like the purple a little better. I would love to see the blue in person. But I do think with the kind of material the case is made out of, the colors do add to the “cheap” feel. I would probably choose black if I ever had to replace it.

Can I use this for work?

Although it is nowhere near powerful enough to replace my PC, I do think the RCA Pro10 will be a nice solution for handling small tasks while on the go. If I can do it through skype, email, or my browser – I can probably do it on my Pro10.

I will likely end up looking into full size Bluetooth keyboard options for when I use it to type from home. And take it as-is for trips where I don’t expect to need my laptop, but want something handy just in case.