I’m going to be 100% transparent about this.
I was contacted and asked if I would like to try out the Dragon Touch NotePad. Of course I agreed. But it then stayed in the box unused, sat in my spare room for two months. The team didn’t follow up reminding me to use it – explaining why it took so long for me to do anything with it.
I finally got around to using it and wasn’t really excited. With 32GB storage, and a 10.1-inch 1280×00 display, it’s all you would expect a budget tablet to be. With metal-backed, it has a plastic face and very light, so easy to carry around.
It’s the sort of device you would be happy to leave in the hands of a child, which is exactly what I did. My 2-year-old used it as his go-to for YouTube Kids. It finally meant that he didn’t have to use mine or my wife’s phone to get to his favourite shows like Blippi or Peppa Pig.
The NotePad comes with Android 9.0 and cannot be updated, which makes sense considering its cheap price tag. However it means that it is meant to be used as a throwaway for the short-term, rather than an investment device to keep for a while.
I would say that apps load fairly quickly, even when multitasking, but it won’t blow you away. This is a nice backup tablet to have in the house, but it serves little more purpose than that.
My 2-year-old used it once a day and its battery seemed to last a couple of days without the need to charge it up further. It has a camera but at 8 megapixels, again it’s not anything to get excited about.
Unfortunately the story doesn’t end well: last week I got out of bed, placed my foot on the ground, felt a crack, and soon realised I had smashed the screen. To be fair, I wouldn’t expect many tablets to survive being stood on 200lbs, but it felt like the most dignified way to end our relationship.