Teclast P30T review – A very affordable tablet with good specs but weak performance

We recently took a look at the Teclast P26T, a tablet that aimed to attract consumers with a plastic chassis and a very low price. The Teclast P30T featured in this review is slightly more expensive. It already comes with Android 14 and a metal chassis, but uses the same SoC as the P26T. 

The chassis is fairly sturdy, but you probably shouldn’t press too firmly on it. The seams between materials are clean and neat. And the Teclast P30T is a really light 10.1-inch tablet weighing 444 g (about 1 lb). The display bezel is wide, which makes the tablet’s design feel somewhat outdated. On the other hand, the bezel lets you hold the tablet easily and not worry about accidental inputs on the touchscreen. The only colourway available is Space Grey.

Teclast claims the devices has up to 10 GB of RAM, but don't get misled by this information. The P30T only has 4 GB of physical memory at its disposal, but instead allows you to create a file of up to 6 GB in the internal storage for use as virtual RAM. This is much slower than the dedicated memory and thus should only be considered a makeshift solution. Given the tablet’s relatively low performance, it probably also wouldn’t provide much benefit anyway.

The device has 128 GB of storage – a pretty good amount for the price. You can also expand the total storage capacity using the microSD card reader, which, in fact, is also relatively speedy. Unfortunately, we are unable to show you any relevant results because CPDT Benchmark refused to work on the tablet.

There is a 3.5 mm audio jack located on the top left corner of the tablet.

You can only use Wi-Fi to access the Internet because the tablet doesn’t have cellular connectivity. The manufacturer claims the product has Wi-Fi 6, something which the SoC reported to our hardware analysis app as well. However, this isn’t reflected in the results of our tests conducted with our reference router (Asus ROG Rapture AXE11000). The Teclast P30T reach data transfer speeds of around 280 to 370 Mbit/s, which correspond exactly to what we usually see on tablets with Wi-Fi 5. 

The company says the P30T supports the very latest Bluetooth 5.4. But we have doubts about this as well and think it’s more likely that the device actually uses Bluetooth 5.2 instead.

The tablet isn’t able to identify location using a satellite network, but can approximate it with the help of Google Location Services, which use a database of Wi-Fi networks to achieve this.

The software is based on Android 14. Thankfully, Teclast has also decided to deliver a stock Android system and not preload any third-party apps. Another good thing is that the tablet supports Widevine L1, meaning you can watch contents from major streaming services in HD. The company hasn’t given any update promise. Users can only hope to get security and software patches. At the time of writing, the last security update was dated November 2023 and thus already somewhat older.

The touchscreen has a maximum touch sampling rate of 120Hz. It is reliable to use, but there are definitely tablets that are more responsive to inputs. There isn’t a fingerprint scanner on board. For biometric authentication, you can only use 2D face recognition via the front camera. This works accurately and reliably in good lighting conditions, though the system already start struggling when there is a bit of shadow. 

The display has a resolution of 1,280 x 800. As a result, given its relatively large 10.1-inch size, you’ll be able to see obvious differences in image quality between this panel and higher-resolution screens: images appear less sharp, and diagonal edges look visibly jagged upon closer inspection.

The display also looks somewhat dull and thus doesn’t offer good contrast already at first glance. This is something we confirmed in our tests performed using a spectrophotometer and the CalMAN software. The results show that grey shades carry a noticeable green tint and intense colour hues look too washed out.

That said, at least the screen has decent brightness for a tablet in this price bracket: we measured an average peak brightness of 310 cd/m². This is roughly on par with other devices and much better than on the Teclast P26T. Nonetheless, the screen is probably still too dark to be used outdoors on a bright day.

We didn’t detect any PWM at minimum brightness setting.

As far as performance goes, you shouldn't expect too much from the budget tablet. It uses the same Allwinner A523 SoC found in the Teclast P26T. This chip needs to get by with eight Cortex-A55 cores, which are usually used in the energy-efficient section of a processor. In addition, the SoC is manufactured using the dated 22 nm process, meaning it has low power efficiency.

It's thus not uncommon to experience occasional pauses, even when you’re just doing everyday tasks or using the menus. What’s more, the device’s benchmark results are markedly worse than those from similarly priced tablets made by other companies. Graphics performance is also very poor. The storage components (with the already slow eMMC flash) are evidently held back even more by the SoC’s memory controller. Consequently, users end up with a fairly slow-responding system with long load times.

In view of the SoC’s low performance, it comes as a surprise that chassis temperatures reached as high as 40.5°C (104.9°F) during our testing. Though this is not a critical level, you can still feel it. At least the SoC can maintain its performance under prolonged load: the 3DMark stress tests revealed only minor performance losses after 20 runs of the benchmark.

The tablet is equipped with two speakers, meaning it is able to offer slight stereo effect. They can get quite loud, but sound very shrill – great for voices and vocals, but bad for the fullness of the sound due to a lack of bass. Therefore, the sound system is intended more to let you give music tracks a quick listen. To enjoy music to the fullest, you should connect speakers or a pair of headphones to the device via Bluetooth or the 3.5 mm audio jack. A whole host of codecs are available for wireless audio, including standard ones like SBC and AAC as well as hi-res options like LDAC and the open-source Opus.

The battery is a good size at 6,000 mAh. But the SoC causes problems related to battery life because of its outdated manufacturing process: we only managed to get 7h 33min of runtime from the tablet in our Wi-Fi test. This is nearly just half as long as what the Lenovo Tab M10 Gen 3 or Samsung Galaxy Tab A7 LTE 2022 is capable of.

Those who mainly use the P30T at home will probably have a power outlet around them at all times, but the tablet needs to be charged more often than other devices. Furthermore, it takes a really long time to recharge the battery: you should set aside more than four hours for a full charge.

Visit the Teclast P30T's product page for more information on availability and pricing. You can also find the tablet for as low as US$80 from retailers like Walmart.