Coby Kyros MID9742

With the release of the stellar, Asus-built Google Nexus 7?($199, 4.5 stars), the Android tablet?market just became that much harder for everyone else. Budget tablets, especially, are going to have a very difficult time matching Google and Asus on price, performance, and overall quality. The Coby Kyros MID9742 is a victim of timing. It's your standard low-end 10-inch Android tablet, and though it can be found at most retailers for under $200, it simply cannot compete with the Nexus 7. If you absolutely must have the larger screen, the MID9742 is one of the least expensive options available. But really, you're better off springing for the Asus Transformer Pad TF300?($379, 4 stars), which offers far more bang for the buck.

Design, Features, and Camera
At 9.6 by 7.4 by 0.44 inches (HWD) and 1.27 pounds with an all plastic build, the Kyros MID9742 isn't going to wow anyone with its design. It's not particularly thick or heavy, and it feels solidly built, but everything about it is simply average. There are Power, Volume, and Back buttons along the top edge, with a DC in, microSD card slot, micro USB port, micro HDMI port, and 3.5mm headphone jack all on the right edge. It's a fairly robust array of connectivity options, and a definite plus for such an inexpensive tablet. Coby includes a microUSB-to-full-sized USB cable and I was able to use it to connect USB flash drives, keyboards, and mice. The MD9742 comes with 8GB of internal storage, and our 64GB SanDisk microSD card worked fine. ?

This is a Wi-Fi only tablet that connects to 802.11b/g/n networks on the 2.4GHz band only. There is no Bluetooth, and I found the Wi-Fi signal dropped out occasionally, even while sitting at my desk.

The 9.7-inch 1024-by-768-pixel display is on the low end for any tablet, 7 or 10-inch. 1280-by-800 is a more standard resolution these days, and next to tablets with sharper screens like the TF300 or Nexus 7, the MID9742's display looks dated. It doesn't get very bright either, but at least the viewing angle is fairly wide. The iPad employs a similar 4:3 aspect ratio, but it's becoming increasingly less common, and there is a lot of wasted screen real estate when watching videos that are shot in the more standard 16:9 aspect ratio.?

There are two cameras, a 2-megapixel rear-facing and 0.3-megapixel front-facing camera. Even by tablet camera standards, these two shooters are pretty awful. It wasn't so much a matter of noisy images in low light, which is where most tablet cameras struggle; the pictures simply looked like pixelated messes. Fine details appear very jagged and color fringing at the edges was a problem. In addition, the soft focus and slow shutter speeds led to some blurry pictures. In bright outdoor lighting, images were overexposed and colors looked washed out. Recorded video was even worse, topping out at 720p resolution and a paltry 9 frames per second both indoors and outdoors.

Software and Performance
One thing the Kyros MID9742 has going for it is its stock Android 4.0 "Ice Cream Sandwich" operating system. However, even that strength is crippled by the tablet's lack of Google apps. There is no Gmail, Google Talk, Maps, or Google Play app store. That last omission is the most glaring, as the included GetJar app market is a joke. Sure you'll find a few popular apps like Angry Birds and Words with Friends, but even those are better suited for smaller phone screens. Luckily, you can install the Amazon App Store and also sideload your own APK's. But any way you slice it, the lack of apps is a huge negative for the MID9742.?

Powering this budget-friendly tablet is a single-core 1GHz Cortex A8 processor, with 1GB RAM. Android itself generally runs smoothly, but I did notice a few hiccups when it came to responsiveness. In the stock browser, for example, there were some delays between tapping the address bar and when the virtual keyboard would appear. Images and video were often slow to populate in the Gallery app. I got used to seeing "App not responding" dialogue boxes, and would routinely have to force close and restart apps.

Media support was fine in my tests. The MID9742 was able to play MP3, AAC, WMA, WAV, and FLAC, but not OGG music files. For video, MPEG-4, H.264, DivX, and AVI files played at resolutions up to 1080p. Using the mini HDMI out, I was able to mirror apps and videos onto HDTVs at 1080p resolution.

In our battery rundown test, which loops a video with Wi-Fi on and screen brightness set to max, the MID9742 lasted 5 hours, 36 minutes. That's a good deal shorter than the Transformer Pad TF300, which lasted 7 hours, 53 minutes in the same test.

Conclusions
Given the current state of Android tablets, and the availability of two extremely affordable, high-quality tablets in the Nexus 7 and Amazon Kindle Fire ($199, 4 stars), the Coby Kyros MID9742 just doesn't make much sense. It has aging components, a subpar (if larger) screen, and no access to the Google Play store. There are some nice features, like USB host mode and mini HDMI out, and the inclusion of Android 4.0 makes it at least a serviceable Android tablet for light Web browsing and media consumption. All told, the MID9742 is one of the most affordable large-screen tablets, but you'd be much better off with the smaller-screened, but much more feature-rich Google Nexus 7.

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