[Device Reviews and Information] Jupit3r:
The good:

1. Great build quality.

2. Clear and sharp display.

3. Quad speakers.

4. Solid performance.

5. MicroSD card support.

6. 4G and Phone functions.

The bad:

1. No fingerprint reader.

2. Sub-par battery life and charging speed

3. Slow storage.

After many years of market shrinking, we’ve finally seen a solid 26% increase in shipment of tablets in 2020. Alldocube, a Chinese company well-known for making affordable Android slates, has released quite a number of models last year. The Alldocube iPlay 40 is the latest addition to their lineup, and may very well be the best yet.

Main Specs

Operating system: Android 10.0

Screen: 10.4-inch In-Cell IPS display @2000*1200px

Processor: Unisoc T618

CPU: Octa-Core (4*Cortex A75@2.0GHZ + 6*Cortex A55@2.0GHz), 12nm process

GPU: Mali-G52MP

RAM: 8GB LPDDR4

ROM: 128GB eMMc 5.1 (supports expansion up to 2TB)

Battery: 3.8V/6000mAh Li-Po battery

Cameras: 5MP front / 8MP main

Speakers: Quad speakers

Wi-Fi: 802.11a/b/g/n, 5GHz/2.4GHz dual-band

Mobile networks: 4G (FDD-LTE/TDD-LTE), 3G (TD-SCDMA/WCDMA), 2G (GSM)

Bluetooth: Bluetooth 5.0

Ports: USB-C port, MicroSD card slot, SIM card slot

Buttons: Power/standby key, volume rocker

Size: 248.1*157.86*8.2mm, Weight: 475g

Nice-looking design and great build quality

The Alldocube iPlay 40 looks neat and elegant. The curved sides give the slate an air of luxury. The bezels around the screen are quite small, but enough for us to avoid accidental touches while gripping and holding the tablet. No, it won’t match the amazing designs of the Apple iPad Pro or the Samsung Galaxy Tab S7+, but for a budget tablet, it is still very nice. A front-facing camera can be found above the display (in vertical mode), the rest of the front looks clean, and you won’t even find any branding.

The tablet has a back side made of glass fiber, which looks like metal, but feels much smoother in hand.

Apart from the model name, the camera and LED flash besides it are the only distraction. The entire backside of the tablet looks clean, simple and stylish, and gives the tablet a much more premium look than the price tag suggests.

Quad speakers are no longer a luxury only high-end tablets can afford to have. When holding the iPlay 40 horizontally, the left and right side are each home to two speakers. There’s also a Type-C port on the left side of the slate.

The tablet supports 4G, as well as storage expansion. The SIM card tray is able to carry 2 nano SIM cards or the combination of 1 nano SIM card and a MicroSD card.

There are two physical buttons on the top side of the slate: a power/standby key and a volume rocker.

The iPlay 40 measures 2248.1*157.86*8.2mm, and weighs 475g. It does not fit in our hands as well as those 8-inchers do, and you can basically forget about one-handed use, but the device didn’t burden our hands too much, either, thanks to the slim and lightweight build. As thin as it is, the iPlay 40 still feels quite robust, even physically twisting the tablet doesn’t reveal excess movement. The overall build quality of this slate is as good as that of the Lenovo Tab P11, which many consider to be the best budget tablet to date.

One thing that does bother me is the absence of a fingerprint reader, which could have made unlocking the screen a lot easier. Fortunately, the iPlay 40 supports 2D face unlock, which isn’t as secure as fingerprint, but almost as convenient.

Decent screen and sound

The Alldocube iPlay 40 sports a gorgeous 10.4-inch IPS display. Resolution clocks in at 2,000 by 1,200, for 225 pixels per inch. With deep blacks and rich colors, the display is really a joy to look at. Color accuracy is also good, and the screen is bright enough to use in any scenario.

The iPlay 40’s display uses the standard sRGBW matrix, sharpness is good and, while I don’t think color calibration or the screen architecture match the AMOLED display found on Alldocube’s X Neo, or the OLED panel on Lenovo’s Tab P11 Pro, this is still one of the better screens you’ll find on a budget tablet. When compared to the Lenovo Tab P11’s 11-inch LCD panel, the iPlay 40’s screen is much brighter.

The UI also allows users to adjust color temperature of the display to get the best visual experience.

Not just videos and photos look nice. The lightweight nature means it’s also an excellent ebook reader alternative, I changed the background color to a paper-like tone, it didn’t tire my eyes.

As mentioned earlier, the Alldocube iPlay 40 offers 4 side-firing speakers, which can go very loud. Although these built-in speakers can sound a little harsh at the highest volume, and lacks the bass and soundstage produced by the Quad JBL tuned speakers found on the Lenovo Tab P11 Pro. Still, they are much better than similarly priced Android slates and are definitely good enough for YouTube and Tik Tok.

Unfortunately, the iPlay 40 doesn’t come with 3.5mm audio jack like Alldocube’s previous models. You will need to use a USB-C to 3.5mm adapter if you want wired headphones, but who doesn’t own a pair of wireless headphones in this era?

Improved UI

The iPlay 40 runs on Alldocube’s new customized skin on top of Android 10.

Although Alldocube made a huge deal about this new UI in their ads, I personally haven’t found any significant improvement over stock Android besides features such as better-looking icons, gesture controls and smart motions, features we have seen on mainstream tablets for years. With that said, I still think it’s an important step in the right direction.

Unfortunately, the Android ecosystem is going towards a direction which is less and less tablet-friendly. Many of the customized tablet applications in Play Store were released years ago and haven’t been updated for a long time. As a result, most of the apps we tried on the iPlay 40 were just phone apps blown up to fill the 10.4-inch screen, with the majority of them only supporting vertical mode. The ideal solution would be something like Samsung’s Dex Mode or Lenovo’s productivity mode, but Alldocube, as expected, doesn’t offer similar features in their slates.