Pandigital Novel 7" Android Tablet & eReader Review
Performance Benchmarks
As mentioned, the Novel 7-inch Tablet doesn't come with the Android Marketplace. Because we couldn't install many of our standard benchmark applications without the Android Marketplace, we searched and found a hack for the tablet that would enable this functionality. After a short install process, we were in business.
Even after installing the hack with the Android Marketplace, not all of our benchmarks were available/would run on the Novel 7-inch Tablet, likely because we were running an older version of Android. Still, we were able to run BenchmarkPi and SunSpider.
As you can see from the charts above, the Novel 7-inch Tablet comes in significantly behind any other device in our reference database in both tests. Keep in mind that most of the devices in our reference bank have 1GHz processors and that the Novel 7-inch Tablet has a slower processor. Although Pandigital doesn't publish the processor details, other reports claim it’s a 533Mhz Samsung ARM 11 processor. Also, keep in mind that the Novel 7-inch Tablet was designed as an eReader first, so it wasn't designed to perform as a multimedia consumption type device.
A Note On Battery Life: Pandigital rates the Novel's battery life at 6 hours in reading mode. Overall, we felt this rating was pretty accurate, though the battery life will definitely vary depending on how you use the tablet and what features are enabled. Often, we were able to make it through a day of use (at least 8 hours) without needing to charge.
