14 DAY TRIAL // Tablets are slowly starting to lose their steam, as sales aren’t what they used to be. The problem is that customers tend to hold on to a tablet product longer than expected, so refresh cycles are stretched out and investments in new tablets aren't made anymore.
Therefore, tablet manufacturers have to think of ways to attract customers onboard and one way to do that is to choose a particular niche and try to specialize on it.
Gaming tablets get another addition
At the moment, the gaming tablet ecosystem is not very crowded and the NVIDIA Shield Tablet tends to pop up first in your mind when you think of this particular category.
The slate is offered with a dedicated gaming controller and promises desktop-level performance while playing your favorite games.
Anyway, French store chain Boulanger is tempting customers with a tablet that has been designed to be a competitor for the Shield Tablet, with its own Dark Tab.
It’s a little bit larger than the Shield coming in at 10.1 inches and with 1920 x 1200 pixel resolution plastered on top. By contrast, the NVIDIA device has only 8-inches but offers the same resolution.
The machine takes advantage of a Tegra 4 quad-core chip clocked at 1.6GHz fitted with 2GB of RAM. The product allows you to access the TegraZone in order to find optimized games for the Tegra platform.
The Dark Tab also has 16GB of internal storage (expandable to 32GB), Bluetooth 4.0 so you can connect a joystick and two cameras (5MP on the back and 2MP up in front).
Sadly, the tablet comes devoid of an HDMI out so you won’t be able to stream your content on a TV screen. On the bright side of things, the slate is powered by a 7800 mAh battery, which should sustain a decent life cycle.
The slate runs Android 4.4 KitKat, but word on the street says you shouldn’t get your hopes up about receiving the Android 5.0 Lollipop update because this will never happen.
The Dark Tab seems to be a generation prior to the NVIDIA Shield
If you really want that, you’ll need to turn your attention to the NVIDIA Shield Tablet, which has just recently been updated to the new build. It also runs on the Tegra K1 platform, thus performance should be a lot smoother.
The tablet is available for purchase for €299 / $369, but let’s face it, you’re probably better off paying the same price for the NVIDIA Shield Tablet. Yeah, it has a smaller screen, but the processing power is way more advanced, not to mention it runs Android 5.0 Lollipop and comes packed with a bunch of goodies.
