14 DAY TRIAL // Given the terminology Ainol used in the press release that revealed its newest tablet, it is clear that the company is advertising the device as an alternative to Apple's iPad. There is more to the slate than that though.
We cannot say for certain how well the Android-loaded tablet (Jelly Bean) will perform sales-wise, compared to Apple's product.
This is because Ainol did not provide the price, not in its press announcements, nor did it say when shipments are expected to begin.
The item is listed on its website though, so we suppose the $230 / €230 tag isn't there just for show. Hopefully, it won't change before availability ramps up.
It did give the specifications though, so at least we know what buyers can look forward to, assuming they don't throw caution into the wind and buy a tablet already on sale.
The name of the new tablet is Ainol NOVO9 FireWire, which is strange because there is no FireWire port on it that we can see.
The hardware is quite decent though, especially for the price. An Allwinner A31 quad-core ARM processors (four Cortex A7 chips) is joined by a Power VR SGX544, which supposedly handled 4K media decoding.
The screen won't help there, since it doesn't support the 4096 x 2304 pixels resolution, or even 3840 x 2160 pixels.
Nevertheless, the LCD is one of the highest-resolution used in tablets, as well as notebooks and monitors for that matter: 2048 x 1536 (Retina).
Moving on, the tablet features 2 GB of DDR3 RAM (random access memory) and 16 GB of storage, plus Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and a couple of cameras (0.3 megapixels front, 5 megapixels back).
All the hardware runs on the energy of a 10,000 mAh battery, for up to 7-10 hours at a time. A memory card slot allows for an extra 32 GB to be added.
Ainol will ship the NOVO9 FireWire in black, white, Karabari purple, blue, orange and green.