Teclast Tbook 16 Power 2-in-1 (x7-Z8750, 8 GB) Review

In regards to dimensions the Tbook is right between Microsoft’s Surface 3 and Surface Pro devices. However, due to its 16:9 aspect ratio it resembles the Cube i9 more closely.

Unfortunately, for reasons unknown to us, AS SSD refused to work with our Toshiba Exceria Pro M401 reference card in the slot. However, we were able to copy photos onto and from the card, and the Tbook was on a par with the Core i7 Surface Pro 4 model. That said, notebooks equipped with a full-size SD-card reader will be able to reach upwards of 150 MB/s with a UHS-II SD card.

The Tbook’s Realtek RTL8723BS Wi-Fi 802.11 n module only supports 2.4 GHz networks, which means that data transfer rates are nothing to write home about, and neither is the Tbook’s Wi-Fi range. Average distances to the Wi-Fi router won’t cause any problems but once you get a bit further away or have walls and ceilings in the way it quickly loses its Wi-Fi connection, and much sooner so than other Wi-Fi chips.

There are no accessories that we are aware of. Teclast does not even include a charger with the tablet, only a USB-A to USB-C cable can be found in the box.

As far as we know, Teclast does not offer a warranty on the device. However, Gearbest, who provided us with the review sample, stepped in and offers a one-year limited warranty. Please see our Guarantees, Return policies and Warranties FAQ for country-specific information.

Keyboard

The touch cover’s chiclet keyboard (model TL-T16s) offers decently sized keys (except for the function key row) and a decent layout. It is only available with a US layout, which can be disadvantageous to anyone who would prefer a different layout. Due to its limited height, key travel is very shallow, and unlike its very low noise level the actuation point wasn’t to our liking. Nevertheless, we had absolutely no trouble touch-typing right from the start. 

Touchpad

Quite frankly, the touch cover’s touchpad is pretty bad. It is very narrow and drove us crazy with constant misinterpretations of gestures, specifically the “swiping in from above” gesture that minimized the current window. The ClickPad’s integrated button was very mushy in the center, and we found ourselves using either an external mouse or the device’s touchscreen instead. 

Touchscreen

Speaking of which, the multitouch-capable touchscreen was very good. Input was detected reliably up to the very edges and the latency was decently low. In theory, the touchscreen offers stylus support but we were unable to verify or test this since we didn't have a stylus pen to hand.

The Tbook’s CPU is certainly noteworthy, since Teclast equips its “Power” models with the much less common Cherry Trail generation Atom x7-Z8750. It offers four Airmont cores and is very similar to the Pentium N3710, only much more power-efficient and with a slower GPU. The tablet is also equipped with 64 GB of Samsung eMMC storage (MCG8GA), which is partitioned into two 32 GB slices for each operating system.

As mentioned above, the Atom x7-Z8750 is very similar to the Pentium N3710. Clock speed is identical, and the only notable difference is the CPU’s TDP. Thus, overall performance is rather poor, especially during long periods of high load, since the device is not able to keep running at its full turbo boost speed of 2.56 GHz. The Tbook ranked between the x7-Z8700-equipped Surface 3 and its N3710 and Core m3-equipped competitors in the Cinebench R15 single-thread test, accordingly. It did a bit better in the multithread test, where it clearly outperformed HP’s N3710-equipped Pavilion x360 11t.

However, the 133 points we measured was only achievable when starting the benchmark with a cold device. Over time, performance settled down to around 122 points. With higher ambient temperatures performance fell once again, and the device only scored around 118 points.

For a Z8750-equipped tablet, overall PCMark 8 Home system performance was nothing to brag about. TDP limitations, passive cooling, and the slow eMMC storage all reared their ugly heads at the same time and slowed the device down noticeably compared to N3710-equipped convertibles. Even the slowest N3710 notebook, the aforementioned HP Pavilion x360 11t, is roughly 10% faster. The Acer Switch 1, based on the exact same SoC, is a stunning 41% faster. The Tbook can keep up with tablets built around the Z8300 SoC, and the x7-Z8500-equipped Surface 3 is only slightly faster.

Despite its 8 GB of RAM the tablet stuttered noticeably every now and then. Most of the time we were able to trace this back to the CPU, and a high load caused by unknown background system processes caused a noticeable slowdown as well. Even though the difference between the Tbook and a Core m3-powered device is noticeable the Atom’s performance is good enough for modest use.

Instead of an SSD, the Tbook utilizes a much slower eMMC storage solution (which is actually quite common for Atom-based devices). The eMMC chip is made by Samsung and scored pretty low during our benchmarks. Only the Medion Akoya P2211T - also powered by eMMC storage - performed even worse in AS SSD. The Lenovo IdeaPad MIIX 310 scored three times as high, and the slowest SSD-equipped convertible, the MSI S20-i541, is faster still. The Cube i7 Book's 64 GB Foresee SSD scored 379 points (972%), and both the Surface 3 and the Surface Pro 4 are much faster than the Tbook 16 Power.

The x7-Z8750 is paired with a Braswell generation Intel HD Graphics 405, formerly known as Intel HD Graphics. It runs at between 400 and 600 MHz and thus around 100 MHz slower than the Pentium N3710’s iGPU (400 - 700 MHz), which shows clearly in our 3D Mark 11 scores: its 16% higher clock speed results in 13 to 22% higher scores. On the plus side, the slower Z8300 Atoms are left behind. The Core m3-based models are much faster, and the Aspire ES1’s dedicated GeForce 910M is a whopping 246% faster.

Accordingly, graphics performance is not even close to being able to run current games. Even the rather modest Farming Simulator 17 was unplayable on the device. Even though they’re only 100 MHz apart the HD 405 in the Pentium N3710 performed much better.

Thanks to passive cooling and a total lack of coil whining the Tbook 16 stays dead quiet in all situations.

Despite passive cooling, surface temperatures stayed relatively low. Understandably, only the tablet part heats up during use. When idle the surface stayed nice and cool to the touch, and even during our Furmark (GPU) and Prime95 (CPU) stress test it did not get hotter than 43 °C (110 °F). Since there are no fans inside the tablet the case’s temperature turned out to be a very good indicator for system load.

Internal temperatures remained well within their specified range. The CPU, which is allowed to reach up to 90 °C (194 °F) according to Intel, heated up to a maximum of 83 °C (181 °F). The GPU remained at 73 °C (163 °F).

The device’s stereo speakers are on the bottom side of the tablet, which renders the stereo effect rather pointless, and they also performed rather poorly. They are not particularly loud or clear, especially when compared to the MacBook 12 (our reference when it comes to small form factor devices). While it may be enough for the occasional YouTube video in quiet environments with no ambient noise it is certainly no treat, and we strongly advise you to make use of the built-in audio jack. It worked quite well with a pair of AKG K701 headphones.

Frequency comparison (checkboxes selectable/deselectable!)

Thanks to its power-efficient components, power consumption is comparatively low. It performed similar to other Atom Z8xxx convertibles, and as with most of these standby power draw was a bit too high as well.

During our Wi-Fi test with brightness set to 150 nits, the Tbook performed rather poorly. The average of all convertibles was a tad above 7 hours, with the Asus Transformer Book T302CA at the top of the list with a runtime of almost 13.5 hours.