LG Optimus Pad

 

The back of the tablet is finished in chocolate coloured rubber (which gives nice grip) and brushed aluminium. It has a nice finish, with no play in the moving parts.



At 630 g, it's not light; you feel it especially when you're holding it vertically. The 16:9 aspect ratio is much better suited to landscape use, with the weight better balanced than in portrait.
We would have liked some kind of tripod-like support on the back of the tablet or a 'Smart Cover' style system to make it easier to hold it at an angle, to enter text or watch a film.


As we said, the finish is pretty good overall, but LG has missed a trick by not including covers for the HDMI out and mini USB and, why not, a brushed aluminium rather than grey plastic edging.


Screen

LG supplies panels to Apple for its iPad and iPad 2. Now that LG has brought out its own tablet it's using these same IPS panels. Are the results the same? Yes. We scored the Optimus Pad with the same readings as the first iPad. The contrast ratio is 760:1, which is very good.
Looking at the colours, the red is pretty accurate but the other primary colours and a good number of colour nuances are off. We scored the Pad with a DeltaE of 6.7 (under 3 and you've got a good screen). This is high when compared to screens overall but not bad for a tablet.



As with all IPS screens, there's a high level of ghosting. We measured a ghosting time of 20 ms, bringing the Optimus Pad neck and neck with the two iPads to share the best score we've seen yet in a touchscreen tablet. The viewing angles are wide and much better than what you get with a TN panel (Hannspree, Archos, Creative and so on).

Interface & Navigation

We've already described what Android 3.0 brings to the world of tablets in detail elsewhere. It's simple to use and has an impressive interface both graphically and in terms of how dynamic flow is handled (widgets, YouTube, Market, news, Gmail and so on), but overall it does seem slightly geekish. It remains to be seen if the consumer market takes to it more widely and is able to adapt to what is an environment that calls for considerable creativity.


Double display of applications such as mailing, with two windows to be managed at the same time, makes Android Froyo tablets seem much more limited than before.
Aiming for a more stylish and minimalist feel, with barely visible shortcuts and no physical buttons, Honeycomb is doubtless going to be less attractive for your average user.
For anyone who already knows their way round the digital environment however, Android 3.0 is a real boon. We can't wait for more dedicated applications to come on stream, something that's lacking right now.


Responsiveness when moving between windows and going in and out of 3D mode is smooth and rapid and the keyboard is also very satisfying to use. It's fast and precise and we didn't find ourselves having to retype words too often. It feels similar to the keyboard in the first iPad. The responsiveness of the screen made us feel we were in good hands with Honeycomb.


Multimedia

Honeycomb web browsing is perfect here. Google has done a good job, using tabs, visually nice handling of favourites in the browser or thumbnails on the desktop and good handling of Flash.


The advantages of the Tegra 2 chip are clear when it comes to loading of pages and legibility is up to the mark, both in landscape and portrait. The zoom, while effective, sometimes sticks a bit.


The 3D mode is obviously an attractive feature, with LG providing a dedicated logo and folder specially for 3D playback and filming (more on the 3D feature in the inset). Note that the HDMI out is a real bonus when you want to transfer the contents of your tablet to a larger display. This can be particularly practical for playing games or surfing the Internet.


There's no dedicated player on the Optimus Pad (either audio or video) but Android recognises mp3s and MPEG4 video no problem. Otherwise you can re-encode your media content or download a third party application, which may not always be stable but can be practical.
The interfaces have been reworked and we like the three-quarters view of the carousel which creates a nice impression of depth.


The stereo speakers (two on the right and one on the left) give a rather mediocre sound. High tone interference often makes it painful to listen through them. The headphones out was however operational, giving a much nicer, cleaner sound. Though not powerful, there was no muddiness and the experience was not unpleasant.


Battery life

Although the Optimus Pad 6400 mAh battery doesn't give the 10 hours promised in the spec, it did manage 8 hours on average for all round use. For the moment, Android Honeycomb is still too young for us to assess the capacities of the system properly. There's still plenty to come in terms of widgets and Internet applications and we'll see if the Optimus Pad still does as well when all these connected features are up to speed. It's a shame that you can't charge the tablet via its USB port though, as you'll need to make sure you take the charger with you if you're taking your Optimus Pad out on a long trip.


As things stand, the Optimus Pab has one of the best screens out there on the current crop of tablets, more than sufficient battery life and comes in an original format (soon to be adopted by the forthcoming Samsung Tab) that sits nicely in landscape, but less well in portrait mode.
There's also a lack of information on screen with respect to 3G (no network coverage icon) and this could well put operators off. It looks as if Google may have pared Honeycomb down too far (the same goes for other Honeycomb tablets we've seen). The Optimus Pad is currently only available with 32 GB of memory (can't be extended) but LG may well pull a 16 GB version out of the hat at some point.