Review: TechLife Pad (4GB+128GB)

TechLife Philippines has finally unveiled its first-ever tablet in the country, the TechLife Pad.

With an attractive price of PHP8,999, the TechLife Pad enters the entry-level tablet segment showcasing its sleek design and reliable performance.

Having used the device for almost two weeks, and with the embargo now lifted, we can already share its full specs and features.

Let’s go into the review of the TechLife Pad.

Design

Our review unit arrived in Graphite Grey, a classic color that will still remain as a perfect choice for users who prefer a subtle aesthetic look and avoiding unwanted attention.

It is lightweight and slim with overall dimensions measuring at 246.4 x 156.6 x 7.4 mm with a weight at 453 grams.

The frame is made of metal for added durability while the back panel is constructed from 90% aluminum and ABS plastic.

Checking the back panel of the tablet, it features an attractive design divided into two sections. The right side has a large portion of an elegant matte-finished aluminum with the TechLife logo in the bottom right corner. The left side has a unique long, bar strip-shaped section in a dark bluish-gray color along with the cameras and LED flash vertically positioned at the top of this area.

The rear of the tablet has a dual-camera design, the upper camera is the active one that you’ll use for taking photos or videos. The secondary camera has no lens but we would think that it could contribute to features like depth effects or just partly made for additional aesthetics.

If you hold the TechLife Pad in portrait orientation, the right-side edge holds the power button, volume rockers, and a microphone.

The left side edge is completely clean.

The top edge will have two speaker grille integrating a ventilation hole design, it is claimed to help increase the low bass output of the subwoofer.

Then the bottom edge has another two more-speaker grille along with a USB-C port, audio port, and the SIM card tray.

On the front, the TechLife Pad has slightly thick uniform bezels all around the edges of the screen. The front camera is nicely placed on the horizontal position for the subject to be in the middle of the frame whenever you use it during online meeting or personal video calls.

The design of the TechLife Pad shows off modest aesthetics yet exudes a premium feel with the materials used and without even sacrificing build quality of the tablet.

Display

The TechLife Pad has a 10.36-inch display using an IPS LCD panel with a 2K screen resolution providing sharper and more detailed visuals.

The tablet’s display itself is very nice with decent color reproduction. It also features a resolution of 1200 x 2000 pixels, it can refresh up to a standard 60Hz, a pixel density of 224ppi, and can hit a brightness of 450 nits.

It has an Adaptive Brightness feature to automatically adjust the display’s amount of brightness based on available light in your surroundings. It can even help reduce eye strain and fatigue by decreasing the amount of blue light radiating from the screen and reduce the contrast between the screen.

The TechLife Pad’s slim bezels that measures just 1cm, are just the right size that provides users enough gripping space to comfortably hold the tablet without accidentally triggering touches on the main display.

The tablet has an aspect ratio of 10:6 which is slightly wider that may result in having a thin black bars (top and bottom of the video) when viewing video content on landscape mode. However, this unique size is more an advantage for web browsing, reading e-books, checking your social media apps, and multitasking using the split-screen.

Performance

Diving in to the performance of the TechLife Pad, it is equipped with a Unisoc Tiger T606 octa-core processors with maximum clock speeds at 1.6GHz and paired with an ARM Mali G57 for its GPU.

The built-in storage capacity is at 128GB which is expandable up to 1TB via MicroSD should you need more space. The pre-installed system occupies 9.1GB of space, and the apps take up 147MB, it still leaves you with 119GB of available storage for your other apps, files, and photos.

The tablet’s onboard memory capacity gives you an 8GB RAM, it can be boosted with an additional 2GB or 4GB RAM thru its RAM expansion feature.

The TechLife Pad can handle any activity we can throw on it, such as video calls, browsing the web, watching videos from YouTube or Netflix, as well as playing games.

Speaking of games, the play experience on the tablet was smooth, handling popular titles like Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, PUBG, Call of Duty Mobile, and other casual games with ease. Here’s a screenshot of the available maximum graphics settings and frame rates that you can set on the device.

Mobile Legends: Bang Bang

PUBG

Call of Duty Mobile

As for connectivity, the the tablet has the basic ones, Bluetooth 5.0, GPS, Wi-Fi, and USB Type-C.

It uses a hybrid SIM card slot that can accommodate two Nano SIM card or one Nano SIM card and insert a micro-SD card to expand your phone’s storage capacity. It’s so convenient having a SIM card on the tablet to have access to the internet anytime, anywhere, without relying on a WiFi connection.

The TechLife Pad has security options to safeguard your data and keeping other users from accessing the tablet. You can choose the traditional screen lock (swipe, pattern, PIN, and password) or using the convenient face unlock for a seamless login experience.

Another standout feature of the TechLife Pad is the quad-core speaker system, these speakers are loud and voices sounded clearer. The bass is not that prominent but the overall audio experience is quite pretty decent.  

If you have wired headphones then you’ll be pleased that they provided a 3.5mm headphone jack found at the bottom left corner of the device.

Here’s our benchmark scores on the TechLife Pad.

• GeekBench 6 CPU: 375 Single Core / 1318 Multi-Core
• GeekBench 6 GPU: 444 GPU OpenCL Score
• CPDT: 326.22 MB/s Write, 777.98 MB/s B/s Read
• 3DMark: 423 Average Frame Rate (fps) 2.53
• PCMark: 7263 Work 3.0 Performance Score

Camera and Photo Samples

The TechLife Pad offers an 8MP lens on the rear camera while the front-facing camera is equipped with a 5MP lens.

While these camera specs on the tablet might not match the quality like those of our smartphones, it’s still good enough for capturing documents, snapping quick photos, and do online meetings.

The camera app’s interface is very simple, with all the necessary functions well-organized for easy access. At the top of the app, you’ll find quick controls for Google Lens, flash, HDR, beauty filters, color filters, and settings. Just above the shutter button are six shooting modes readily available – Panorama, Portrait, Capture (the standard photo mode), Video, Time Lapse, and Pro. Clicking “More” options reveals two additional shooting modes – Audio Note and QR Code.

The camera also boasts a digital zoom capability of up to 10x, but zooming on the subject is achieved through the familiar pinch-to-zoom gesture on the display.

Photo quality is decent when in good lighting, managing expectations is the key. The rear camera captures photos with good contrast, natural colors, and a fair amount of detail. However, low-light performance will have the presence of noise on the photo. The front camera also performs decently for selfies, retaining natural skin tones.

A quick tip, practice where to look on the front camera lens especially if you’re holding the tablet in portrait mode, the lens is usually found on the right side of the screen’s bezels.

Shooting videos on the tablet can record resolutions at 1080p, 720p, and 480p with a frame rate of 30fps on the rear camera. The front camera can shoot videos at a maximum of 720p only with additional resolutions of 480p, and CIF with a 30fps.

Check out our sample photos captured on the TechLife Pad.

1x Main Camera, Outdoor, Sunny Weather

1x Main Camera, Document, Indoor, Ambient Lighting

Selfie, Capture Mode (left) Portrait Mode (right), Indoor, Ambient Lighting

Software

The TechLife Pad runs on the latest stock version of Android 14 for its OS. It means that it doesn’t come with some pre-installed apps from the moment you power on the device.

You have some of the essential Google tools you needed for work and play such as Gmail, Maps, Meet, Chrome, Play Store etc.

For a more personalized experience, the tablet offers a few customization features by either changing or adding on your display such as your wallpapers, home screen, color palette, themed icons, and widgets.

While the tablet doesn’t have its dedicated photo gallery app, it prefers to utilize the Google Photos app which already offers an additional AI tools for editing. However, there are some users who might prefer a separate gallery app for local photo management. If you ask me, the Google Photos works just fine at the moment, TechLife may introduce its very own gallery app on future updates so let’s wait.

For your kids, you can set up Google Kids Space that they can have access to tons of customizable and age-appropriate content specifically focused on their interests. It features its own dedicated and kid-friendly home screen launcher to easily navigate the apps and content they want. The platform includes recommended apps, e-books, games, and videos with a built-in parental controls that you can manage or approve using Family Link.

There’s also a split screen feature on the Android 14 that can significantly increase productivity by placing two apps side-by-side and start working on the two windows all at once on the display.

In general, the TechLife Pad’s software is simply good with a clear and uncluttered interface. With every interaction feels responsive and lag-free and provides users an enjoyable experience.

Battery

The TechLife Pad boasts a 7000mAh battery with support for 10W fast charging technology, unlike other tablet under its same price range is offering 5W only.

The tablet uses a USB Type-C port for charging, rather than the traditional micro USB port. This is convenient for connecting other accessories or transferring files into the device.

Charging the tablet for 15 minutes gave us an initial 9 percent charge, which increased to 25 percent after 30 minutes. It took us around 2 hours and 57 minutes to fully charge the battery from 0 to 100 percent.

Conclusion

The new TechLife Pad has some good features we liked, starting with the sharp 2K resolution display, expandable storage up to 1TB, RAM expansion technology, quad-speakers, good chipsets, sleek design, clean UI, and large battery capacity.

It does need some few improvements, such as higher faster charging capabilities and upgraded cameras. However, these shortcomings do not hinder from the overall experience on the TechLife Pad.

The TechLife Pad is also a perfect companion for your media consumption from watching videos, web browsing, and surf your social media accounts. The tablet is also great as your working device with the large and sharp 2K screen, split-screen feature, and the essential Google tools pre-installed already. If you want an affordable tablet for your kids with a built-in kid-friendly platform and parental control feature the TechLife Pad is really a great option to consider.

Overall, the TechLife Pad is a solid performing tablet that does well for a reasonable price.

Pricing and Availability

The TechLife Pad is priced at PHP8,999 and you can check out these special online offers starting on June 27:

For the online offers

• Pre-order Freebies: Get a free TechLife 2-in-1 Cable and a TechLife Keyboard for Pad amounting to P1,448 until supplies last.
• June 28-30: Each purchase of TechLife Pad comes with a free TechLife Keyboard for Pad worth P1,099 while supplies last.
• Credit Card: 0% installment for 6 or 12 months for purchases made from June 27 to July 31, 2024 only.
• Home Credit: 0% interest for 6 or 9 months for purchases made from June 27 to July 31, 2024 only.

To know more of the new TechLife Pad you may visit its official Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/TechLifePhilippines

TechLife Pad – Full Specifications

• TLPAD001 (Model Name)
• PHP 8,999
• Graphite Blue, Space Grey
• Metal Design
• 4 x 156.6 x 7.4mm
• 36-inch 2K Display
• Unisoc T606 Processor (Supports LTE & VoLTE)
• 128GB Massive Storage (Expandable Up To 1TB MicroSD)
• 8GB RAM (Up to 4GB RAM Expansion)
• Quad Stereo Speakers
• 7,000mAh Battery
• 10W Charging (Type-C)
• 8MP Rear Camera
• 5MP Front Camera
• Android 14
• Bluetooth 5.0
• GSM: 850/900/1800MHz
• WCDMA: Bands 1/5/8
• LTE FDD: Bands 1/3/5/8/28
• LTE FDD: Bands 38/40/41