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Teclast P20HD hands-on: Not perfect, but certainly a great Android 10 tablet for its price

Teclast P20HD 10.1-inch Android 10 tablet with UNISOC SC9863A processor, 4 GB RAM, 64 GB storage (Source: Own)
Teclast P20HD 10.1-inch Android tablet (Source: Own)
Near-stock Android 10, 4 GB of memory, a great look and feel thanks to a premium metallic build, a surprisingly good IPS display, but combined with below-average sound, a slow processor and storage. "How good is the Teclast P20HD considering all the above?" — This is the question we will try to answer today.

At first sight, the current Android tablet market doesn't have much to offer. Sadly, there are just a few major brands that own noticeable — more than 10 percent — slices of the pie: Samsung, Huawei, Amazon, and Lenovo. On the bright side, there is always room for pleasant surprises coming from smaller brands. Today we are facing such a surprise, namely the 10-inch Teclast P20HD. 

The retail package of this tablet doesn't come with too many accessories, but I must highlight the fact that my package arrived severely beaten up but — thanks to the solid box used by Teclast — the tablet itself was in perfect condition. Inside the box, I found the tablet, the usual papers — user manual, warranty card, as well as a "Useful Reminder" leaflet with a few potential problems and quick solutions for each of them, a charger and a USB-C cable, as well as a tool for pushing out the SIM/microSD tray. 

The tablet itself comes with pre-applied protective film on both sides and — at least in my case — fully charged. If your unit does not power up, just connect the charger for an hour or two because it is very likely that the battery is depleted. The build quality is very good and the tablet feels solid, although I think it's a bit heavy at 1.17 pounds, mostly if we take into account its sub-0.4 inch thickness. 

Announced back in July, the Teclast P20HD has an octa-core UNISOC SC9863A processor, 4 GB of memory, 64 GB of internal storage, an excellent 10.1-inch Full HD IPS display with 1,920 x 1,200 pixels, dual-band Wi-Fi and a SIM slot with support for 4G, 3G, and 2G networks. The cameras are nothing to brag about since we are talking about a 2 MP selfie shooter and a 5 MP main camera. On the bright side, the Teclast P20HD runs Android 10 out-of-the-box and has a 6,000-mAh battery that can deliver up to 7 hours of autonomy. 

Before we leave all tests aside and focus on my own experience with this slate, I need to describe the entire context. After taking the slate out of the box and powering it up for the first time, I chose the easy way and I simply used my main Google account to install all the apps that I had on my phone (still using the venerable Xiaomi Mi A1) and sync everything that could be synced. 

At the end of the entire process, I discovered that a few apps failed to install. One of these apps was AnTuTu, most likely due to its lack of support for the UNISOC SC9863A processor. However, I ran the UL Procyon AI Inference Benchmark and achieved a score of 2,679 points, which might not be that bad since the Samsung Galaxy S10+ got 4,317 points and the Huawei Mate 20 Pro managed 4,610. To conclude this part about benchmarking, I also have to mention that the highest-scoring device listed in the aforementioned benchmark is the Google Pixel 4 loaded with Android 11, a device that amassed 10,923 points. 

Thankfully, I was also able to run Geekbench 5 on this tablet, so here you have the scores: 155 single-core and 785 multi-core points. In both cases, we are talking about very poor scores. 

Now, about my experience (and my daughter's) with the Teclast P20HD: With a few minor exceptions, this slate proved to be impressive, especially for media consumption, online schooling via Zoom, and even for games. However, I found games loaded painfully slowly when compared to my phone. The games I played myself on the Teclast P20HD were CSR Racing 2, Asphalt 9, and my all-time favorite, EA's Real Racing 3. I can easily conclude that all these titles take took at least twice as much time to load. However, in-game performance is decent. My daughter played Among Us, Roblox, and Toca Life: World. According to her, everything worked like a charm, but loading times seemed too long to me and I am sure that everything would work better if Teclast decided to upgrade the P20HD with faster storage. 

Although I am quite picky when it comes to sound and I've seen reviews and user comments complaining about the Teclast P20HD's audio jack output quality, I must say that I found no issues here. On the other hand, the stereo speakers have excellent volume and perform well when used in audio chatting apps, but they fail to deliver anything decent when it comes to music or movies. Using USB-C headphones like the excellent Creative SXFI TRIO helped me enjoy the Teclast P20HD as a media consumption platform, and even affordable Bluetooth TWS like the UGREEN HiTune and 1MORE omthing AirFree performed above my expectations. 

In most real-world scenarios, battery life leaves nothing to be desired and a SoT of over 6 hours is something rather common. After 4 hours of Zoom streaming and at least one or two hours of YouTube videos and gaming — with a few breaks in-between, of course — the Teclast P20HD goes down from 100% to around 30% battery load. 

Before drawing to a conclusion, I should mention the painfully slow charging when using the provided cable and charger: It took me over 3 hours and 30 minutes to go from 1% to 100%. This is most likely a limitation of the charging circuitry because it didn't get any faster with the help of a 65 W charger and a cable with 25 W charging support.

 
 

The good, the bad, and the truth

The Teclast P20HD has quite a few things going for it, but for me its main highlights are the solid build and clean yet premium looks, the surprisingly good display quality, the fact that it runs Android 10, and the generous amount of memory.

Sadly, the built-in stereo speakers perform below expectations in most scenarios, and the cameras... let's just forget about the cameras. The cameras are a corner that had to be cut to deliver so much of a tablet for so little cash. As of November 12, the latest software update for the Teclast P20HD is apparently dated July 31, so more frequent updates can't hurt.

The best value Android 10-powered 10-inch tablet of the year? Maybe, but I cannot say that for sure because I haven't tried them all. However, one thing is certain: The Teclast P20HD is one of the best deals you can find these days as it has now hit an all-time low price of just US$121.06 on AliExpress.

Disclaimer: The author of this review received the Teclast P20HD from Teclast free of charge for the purpose of testing.

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> Expert Reviews and News on Laptops, Smartphones and Tech Innovations > News > News Archive > Newsarchive 2020 11 > Teclast P20HD hands-on: Not perfect, but certainly a great Android 10 tablet for its price
Codrut Nistor, 2020-11-12 (Update: 2020-11-12)