ocaholic - LG G Pad 8.3 Review - Notebooks / Tablets

LG G Pad 8.3 Review

Published by Marc Büchel on 13.12.13

Page:

« 1 2 (3) 4 5 6 »

Design

A first look at the LG G Pad 8.3 shows that it is rather similar to the LG G2. Overall it could even be the bigger brother of LG’s latest and greatest smartphone, at least when the screen is facing upwards. As soon as you flip the tablet around, you’ll notice, that the back cover has been made from aluminum almost entirely. This gives the tablet a high-end finish and a sense of quality you don’t get with the G2 smartphone. When it comes to the display, LG is using Gorilla Glass, which covers the 8.3 inch panel. Next to the LG Logo, there is a front-facing camera. The usual buttons can be found on the right edge. In this case, there is the volume control, power button, infrared receiver, 3.5 millimeter jack as well as a slot for microSD cards and a micro USB connector. On the back you’ll find the camera and stereo speakers. Regarding build quality LG really did a good job. When you’re holing this device in your hands it feels very sturdy and it also feels like it has been milled from one piece although that’s not the case. In fact, the main chassis is made from plastic and there is a big additional aluminum plate providing the thing with additional stiffness and causing a higher quality feel.

Display

Display size is no surprise, since it measures 8.3 inch, like the name suggests. Thanks to 1920 x 1200 resolution and 273 ppi pixel density everything is very sharp. Especially reading text is therefore a pleasure. Apart from that LG has been using an IPS panel, which offers a very wide viewing angle and life-like colors. They are strong and well also saturation is good. On another note, we had a closer look at brightness and it turns out that this appears to be the Achilles heel of this tablet. The maximum value we measured was at 309 candela per square meter and average brightness was no more than 262 candela per square meter. At least black level was good with 0.24 candela per square meter. This level of brightness makes it hard for read text, when there is sunlight shining directly on the display. This is really a pity, since contrast is well above 1000:1 and therefore by far above average.

Camera

Despite the fact, that tablets are usually not the most sophisticated devices to take pictures, LG decided to equip the LG G Pad 8.3 with two cameras. On the back there is a 5 megapixel model and on the front, there is a 1.3 megapixel camera. The camera on the backside is also able to capture videos with 1920 x 1080 resolution. Like with most other tablets, the camera you get with the G Pad 8.3 is no positive surprise. Unfortunately colors are washed-out and pale. Also sharpness could definitely be better. Nevertheless the camera is sufficient for snapshots. When shooting a video we were actually quite surprised to see, that in this case colors were richer. At 1920 x 1080 resolution and 30 fps the quality was actually decent. Still the quality could be improved and the camera in the G Pad is no match for today’s smartphones.