Lady Geek's Doodad of the Day: Cruz T410 Tablet

Velocity Micro’s Cruz T410 Tablet

Tales of the Lady Geek:

Happy New Year dear readers! As of this writing, I have just returned from a lovely little party with a few of my dear friends. Oh it was a delicious night, full of mystery, music and joy along with silver mini dresses and watermelon martinis flowing like the shiny confetti over Times Square. A beautiful new beginning under the bright lights of New York my friends!

Speaking of new beginnings dear readers, I find myself at an awkward place with you today. Events occurred yesterday afternoon that forces me to revisit a topic that I'd shared with you just last week, the necessity of Tablets in this Geek Girl's tech bag.  Its funny how life takes serendipitous twists and turns just when you thought you knew where you were headed. Last night, I was surprised with a lovely little gift just as I was getting ready for my night on the town. A Velocity Micro Cruz T210 tablet! .

It seems that while I was doing the research that spurred my last article concerning tablets my smallest girl saw me looking at pictures and specifications of different tablets and promptly decided that since Santa never visits mommy,  she would enlist her daddy and older siblings in project, “Make mama happy”.  Well, she did her magic and her daddy did his own research and the next thing I know, I’m being presented with a cute little shiny tablet that I’m going to review right now. 

The Lady Geek’s Favorite Doodad of the Day:

Velocity Micro’s Cruz T410 Tablet:

Okay upon receiving this funky little tablet, I was skeptical but, having been a mom for a long time, I kept that to myself as I praised her thoughtful and wonderful surprise. As soon as I was out of my house, the first thing I did was use my new little doodad to sniff out all the "dirt" on the Cruz.  Let me tell you, I was seriously impressed.

The Basics:

First let’s get the practicalities of this lovely little 10.1 inch tablet out of the way.  Velocity Micro’s Cruz T410 Tablet is a sharp little doodad with an ultra responsive touch screen, comes preloaded with 4GB of onboard storage and is expandable all the way up to 32GB through the microSD memory expansion.  It gets a solid fist pump on speed, sporting a 1GHz processor and a nifty 512MB of RAM onboard. With it's front facing camera, this tablet is Skype ready. As is expected from an Android tablet, it has WI-Fi and comes preloaded with Android's Gingerbread (2.3) platform.  Physically, it's beautiful - all sleek and shiny - as well as sturdy.

For the App junkies among us, the Cruz T410 comes preinstalled with the Amazon Appstore and offers content from Amazon's Kindle for Android.  For all of my little bird addicted productivity software fiends - er - friends, it also comes preinstalled with full versions of Angry Birds Rio and QuickOffice, allowing you the ability to be productive while playing Angry Birds Rio all while looking very sleek and sophisticated while you do it.  

The Bad:

As is my preferred method, before I go further into what I like about my tablet, let me tell you about some of the let downs that, while expected, were still disappointing. As you may remember, this Lady Geek loves taking pictures on the fly, and the only pictures I could feasibly take on this front facing, unlighted camera would be of me, who I see quite often enough during the course of my day what with the invention and availability of the mirror and all.

The other bad thing and it’s only slightly bad, is that while the T410  is quite adequate on scrolling through menus and opening apps, it experiences some lag when I scroll through my home screens which, sadly enough are not customizable enough for those of us who like the GO series of themes.  

The audiophiles among us won't be surprised by this, but the single rear speaker isn't very loud, although I would wager that anyone who would expect a tablet's speaker to be superbly awesome wouldn't  be reading this article.

Also, as I mentioned in my earlier article, "Why I Don't Need a Tablet", it's not a laptop replacement, so, typing is limited, gaming is casual, and the blue tooth peripherals  and docks are still limited right now.

The Good:

Well, first of all, as an extremely thoughtful gift from a lovely, sweet hearted six year old girl, this is an excellent present.  As the recipient of the Cruz T410, I have to say that this is an excellent starter tablet for others on the fence like me.  The price point of $299.99 is considerably lower than the IPad which satisfies my frugality.

Another beautiful thing about the Velocity Micro Cruz T410 Tablet, is it's usability.  I love the crystal clear 16:9, 1024x600 full color touchscreen, it's great for reading my ebooks, displays my pictures wonderfully and gives me a lovely view of my movies.

Compared to the newer tablets, like the IPad 2 and the Samsung Galaxy Tab, it's slower, but not slow enough to hinder the quality, it delivers steady performance which is just right for those just testing the tablet waters.  I love that it's expandable to 32GB and  that I was able to clear up some room on my hard drive by utilizing it as a light media storage device for all of my current passions and writings.  Of course I can't emphasize this enough, as a geek girl, I'm into sharing the love I have for  my new Velocity Micro’s Cruz T410 Tablet. It’s easy to use,  it's cute, ultra portable, and it feels good in my hands. Finally, the Cruz T410 gives me options for quick notes and voice recording emergencies fresh out of the box, which is awesome.

Final Thoughts:

Velocity Micro's Cruz T410 showcases a beautiful design, delivers solid performance and meshes well with my busy technological life. Overall, the Velocity Micro's Cruz T410 is one of the best tablets I’ve played with. It's easy to use, easy to navigate and fun to learn on. So far, it's replaced my current e-reader and it's allowed me to see my websites and movies with ease while also allowing me to display my pictures in glaring beautiful clarity. All that with the side benefit of being pocketbook friendly! That being said, while this tablet will never be my 'Sysco Special', this is definitely in the top ten of cool gadgets and I must give it my highest of recommendations to one searching for an entry into the tablet world. 

Written by MaryAnn Paris

Velocity Micro's Cruz T1410