Teardown: Vizio VTAB1008 tablet

There’s just something about the 8in Vizio VTAB1008 Android tablet: You take it out of the box, turn it on, start using it, and immediately get attached to it. I did, and so did my family, to the point that they’re asking for a new one now that this one is shredded. Few designs generate that natural symbiosis of user and system, but all designers know how hard it is to achieve it. In the case of the Vizio, which is not a design house but instead a provider of generic, reasonably priced, midrange consumer devices, it came about through close collaboration between the application engineers at Marvell, whose 1GHz, dual-core ARM version 7 Armada 610 processor is at the heart of the device, and contract manufacturer Foxconn.

The basics: Vizio introduced the VTAB1008 in August 2011 at $329, but the price quickly dropped to $269, and you can now nab one for about $150. For that price, you get a 1024×768-pixel LED display, a 1GHz processor, GPS, 802.11n, and Bluetooth wireless. The device has a capacitive, multitouch panel; a 1.3MP, 30fps front-facing camera; and 4GB of storage, though only 2GB are available to the user. That said, storage is expandable to 32GB through an external memory card.

The device fluidly performs the basics and adds an IR emitter, which, with a universal remote-control application, controls your entire home entertainment system. It also features HDCP compliance, to allow streaming of secured HD content from Netflix, Hulu, or other sources to your TV, and a three-speaker system that allows multiaxis stereo sound using SRS TruMedia. You just know that its designers put some thought into it.