Gadgetory

what's up guys it's aloof from unbox therapy and today we're taking a look at the Kobo Vox ereader and this is a lot more than an e-reader it's a budget Android tablet at $1.99 it's a real competitor going up against the likes of the Kindle Fire for sure and what you're gonna get is a Android device so it's not locked down to any sort of ereader characteristics it has ereader functionality but it's also got Android 2.3 so you can do all kinds of stuff with it obviously browse the web email well anything you can do with Android right and there's and as you guys notice right away 7-inch device is kind of a really convenient size it's about the size of a paperback novel really easy to use with one hand and I sort of think a nice stopgap from you know in between your phone and your standard 10-inch tablet they pulled a little bit of an apple ESCA move here you're getting three or maybe a little better you're getting three Kobo stickers telling you to read more often you can throw those around the house to try and motivate yourself and a little bit more paperwork as well we've got our power brick which has micro USB on one side which is nice because you don't have some proprietary connector which can be annoying and then you get your little power adapter portion that fits on the front and this will obviously vary by region so you know that you know you'll probably be able to pick up some other tips if need be if you're gonna be travelling I kind of don't mind those power adapters or you just take it off - to help it fit in certain bags or whatever and you're also gonna get a micro USB cable obviously that's for hooking up to your computer if you choose to do that so what else is in here we get a few books to get us started that's included we've also got a chance at a trip to Europe I believe so yeah I mean that's cool I don't mind going to Europe how about you and then we've got a super straightforward user manual which you're not even gonna have to look at because it's basically pull it out turn it on you know I mean there's really not much else to it and after you peel away the protective screen you can notice these capacitive touch buttons down along the bottom that control your menu back home and you've also got your volume rocker on the left hand side there's a better look at those capacitive touch touch buttons the back of the unit is a real nice matte finish so it ain't a fingerprint magnet is it a nice grip you got a microSD expansion port so eight gigabytes internally and then microSD the volume rocker micro USB on the bottom as I mentioned earlier on the power button and an LED on top the speaker in the top right corner and it's better look at that power button so anyways that's a look around the device and let's go ahead and get it set up this is a very straightforward process but Kobo has skinned it and I'm not saying I mind the skin in this case sometimes Android skins come off as you know hokey-pokey if you know what I'm saying this one actually has kind of a cool vibe to it a nice simplicity to it but what that means is that when you get in the OS when you finally get it all booted up everything is very reader centric so the way it's set up to begin with is as a reading device from a software assembler because you can change that experience if you if you want to so as you guys notice I love typing on devices this size it's a real nice stopgap so I'm typing in portrait mode holding the device in portrait mode since it's only about the length of your hand means that you there's very little fatigue in using a device like this for a long long period of time definitely less fatigue than a 10-inch device which you know is where the market place has really been going for the longest time now as you guys noticed there's a lot of Facebook editions here already oh comes pre-installed I'm not gonna hate on that if you guys know I love to use audio and but you might argue that there's a little bit too much bloatware pre-installed here there's a lot of extras but you know I guess we've all gotten used to that over the years and another thing to mention is that there's no YouTube app pre-installed instead when you search here for YouTube it brings you to the mobile web page and I don't know why that is maybe there's a YouTube available in the app store I'll take a look before the review but that's okay because you know the mobile page works just like an app more or less we'll go ahead and launch the most recent episode of the Beast feed what's the V speed oh that's my other channel here's a little shameless promotion if you guys haven't checked out my news channel it's called the beast feed that youtube.com slash PHP go and check that stuff out I think you might like it as well anyways back to what we're talking about here this is not the quickest device it's about eight hundred megahertz but but hey you're paying $1.99 for it so I think it's a real good value I've placed a couple of devices out here on the table the Galaxy Tab 10 one the Kobo Vox and my Nexus S I mean the Nexus S form factor we all know it we all know phones form factor it's in your pocket all the time you know really easy to operate an obvious to operate and then on the far end of the spectrum we've got where tablets have basically gone more than more or less and in portrait mode this thing is a really unwieldy I mean it sort of it's top-heavy it feels strange using it that way you don't have that issue in landscape mode but it's still a heavy device and you don't really want to operate it you know with one hand that's just the way it is it's the size you can get a nice split keyboard and you know get away with it but there is going to be some fatigue just because of you know the physical layout now it's a very very thin it's much thinner than the Kobo box you can see here and there's a look at the form factor from the top side so let's go ahead and take a look at the Vox and as I mentioned earlier nice matte finish on the back feels really good in your hand in one hand much like a paperback novel of course and you know you've had paperback novels at this form factor for a long long time and that's not by accident it's really the perfect size for one-handed reading one-handed usage so you know it really lends itself to usability it's not the lightest device in fact I think that the tab 10:1 might actually be a little bit lighter it's hard to tell because of the weight distribution but like I said you've got to kind of curb your expectations you know because of the price of the device it's a really good entry level tablet can do everything an Android tablet can do which I really appreciate and it can do it for them $1.99 now we're going to wait and see the Amazon Kindle Fire because that's probably going to be its closest competitor again it's eReader centric and the exact same form factor I do have one of those coming in you know mid-month so we'll throw those ones up against each other there's a better look at the thickness I think I mean it might actually be twice as thick but that doesn't seem much because the Galaxy Tab 10 1 is ridiculously thin I mean you could you could slice fruit with that baby I might be exaggerating so some other specs to mention this thing has got you know a 7-inch 1024 by 600 screen I believe I said 8 gigabytes of internal storage earlier I'll say it again expandable microSD memory which is always welcome and it supposedly got 6 hours of battery life I'll figure it out out if that's the case and let you know in the review anyway guys if you found this content to be helpful exciting in any way then hopefully you can like and favorite this content as it does help me out a bunch I've mentioned it before other than that hopefully you can check out my new channel at once again that's my news channel and it's youtube.com slash beast feed and other than that I want to thank you for your viewership you guys make this stuff possible I love making it I hope you love watching it alright guys until next time and as always thanks for watching later