Tesco's second gen tablet is better in almost every way
The Tesco Hudl was undoubtedly one of the surprise stories of 2013. Nobody really expected the supermarket giant's tablet was actually going to be any good. As an affordable, family-friendly alternative to the Nexus 7 and maybe to a lesser extent the iPad Mini, it ticked the most important boxes for first time tablet users. It was easy to use, offered decent specs for the money and it just didn't look cheap as nasty as some sub-£120 Android tablets.
Now that Tesco has shelved plans for a Hudl smartphone, it's focusing on getting the Hudl 2 tablet into shopping baskets leading up to that busy Christmas period. Priced the same as the original and available for £65 for Tesco Clubcard customers, the second generation Tesco tablet makes significant improvements in almost every area and has all the right ingredients to be a big seller again.
The first thing you'll notice about the Hudl 2 is the change in size and weight. Compared to the first Hudl, the new tablet is longer and slightly heavier, especially in one hand. It might not be a problem for an adult but it could be more of an issue for a child to hold it comfortably in portrait mode.
Tesco is still sticking with the same first generation Kindle Fire tablet-inspired matte plastic back, that's soft to touch and it's going to be available in eight different colours. The 'jazzy blue' I had a play with is not as garish as the photos perhaps suggest and while it's not as sleek or stylish as the iPad Mini or the Nexus 7, this is still a good-looking tablet.
For connectivity, there's micro SD card support so you can bump up the 16GB onboard storage to 48GB and a micro HDMI port so you can hook it up to a HD TV to play content or look back at photos.
To improve its video-watching credentials, there's now a set of Dolby-powered speakers around the back. I didn't get precise details about the setup but a quick listen through headphones and out loud and it's a big improvement for clarity and is very similar to the Dolby-powered speakers on Amazon's Kindle Fire tablets.
The change in size is also down to the move from a 7-inch to a larger 8.3-inch screen, giving it similar screen estate to the Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.4 our current portable Android tablet favourite. The change from a 1,400 x 900 resolution screen to a 1,920 x 1,200 display really shows. That's the same set up as the Nexus 7 and similarly the Hudl 2 is so much sharper than the first Hudl. A quick watch of a video trailer shows how much of an improvement it is. Viewing angles look strong and colour accuracy looks impressive as well. For an £120 tablet, this really is a standout feature.
There's more changes in the software and power department where the Hudl 2 runs on Android 4.4 KitKat with Google's suite of apps pre-installed and giving you access to the Google Play store. It now packs a 1.83Ghz Intel quad-core processor and the difference is instantly noticeable. You can swipe through homescreens and launch the app drawer with little signs of the lag I experienced with the first Hudl. a quick play on Ashpalt: Airborne shows its better equipped for gaming as well. There's no details on the capacity of the battery but Tesco claims you can get around the same eight hours. With a more demanding screen, however, I'd be sceptical whether it can deliver similar levels of battery life.
Tesco much like Amazon is a retailer and is in the business of selling things, so it does have some presence in the interface but it doesn't feel overbearing. There's still the Tesco 'T' in the top left hand corner, which opens up to reveal other services like Tesco shopping, Blinkbox, your Clubcard account and now even recommends recipes to try out. The recently ditched ClubCard TV is obviously missing in action but it won't be a great miss.
One area Tesco really made a good impression is making this tablet the entire family can use. While you could set up multiple user profiles in the first Hudl, there was very little in the way of specific software from Tesco to protect younger users, instead suggesting third party apps to make it a safer slate to use. Now it's taking things more seriously with its clearly Kindle Freetime-inspired Child Safety mode where you can set up multiple profiles and adjust the time kids can use the tablet or day or even the time of the day they can use it. When they reach the cut-off, features will be inactive. When web browsing in these child profiles, unsuitable sites are blocked and to access them it has to be verified by an adult user.
The cameras on the Tesco Hudl were pretty terrible and while the Hudl 2 now has a 5-megapixel main camera and a lower resolution 1.2-megapixel front-facing camera my initial play suggests things aren't much better. The camera app certainly has more modes like Panorama photos, the 360-degree Photo Sphere and Lens Blur but after some quick shooting it's still a pretty noisy, grainy place. You still wouldn't want to swap a cheap Android phone camera for them.
Early verdict
The first Tesco Hudl was great value for money, but the Hudl 2 is better in so many ways and it's still costs the same. If you can live without shoddy cameras, and most people surely can, this is a cheap Android tablet that combines great hardware features and really thinks about how to make it easy to use out of the box. It looks like Tesco is onto another winner here.
