Review Astak Neos HD 15.6-Inch Touchscreen Smart Display

The Astak Neos is an interesting tablet designed to be used on a desk or table. It is not portable, does not contain a battery and must be powered from AC.

If you want my quick opinion of this tablet without reading the entire review or watching the video, then here it is. I think this is a good but not fantastic tablet for general Internet useage including watching movies, playing music, surfing, email, games (though not the most complex processor intensive games) and running many different types of apps. The reason I don't think it's fantastic is because the screen resolution is lacking and is more along the lines of screen resolution that I would expect to have seen several years ago, but not today. The other issue with the screen is its extremely poor off-axis veiwing. It looks OK when you are straight on, but as soon as you go off to one side or another, up or down, left to right, the screen quickly loses quality. And because of the lower resolution, small text looks jagged. The implications of this are that if two people are trying to view the screen, either both will be somewhat frustrated at the poor screen view because of their off-axis vantage point, or one person will have a great view and the other person will have virtually no view of the screen. It is a real problem.

Othewise this is an interesting table-top tablet. Because of its large physical screen size (not to be confused with high resolution), this is a good tablet for someone who may not have the acute vision necessary to be used with a smaller 7" or even 10" tablet.

This does not run an unadulterated version of Android but has a "skin" that customized the way Android works on this tablet, compared to a Nexus 7 for instance.

On the left side of the screen is a column of pre-determined buttons containing various collections of apps. The column contains the following buttons:

- All Apps
- Recent
- Downloaded
- My Favorites
- Available Apps
- Sync Now
- Education
- Media
- Communication
- Games
- Kitchen Magic
- Fashinon & Style
- Lifestyle

You can add to or delete the apps that are pre-configured in these categories.

Below that column of buttons are three icons on the screen representing, from left to right: Back Button, Home Button and Recent Apps Button.

Netflix works just fine and streaming YouTube videos also works well on this tablet. Several games are preinstalled including Angry Birds and Fruit Ninja. Strangely both of those games don't reorient themselves if the tablet is in the "low" position, but only if the tablet is standing up do the apps look right side up.

The built-in speakers put all other tablet speakers to shame. Obviously since this is such a large enclosure, the Neos is able to have significantly larger speakers inside along with a more powerful 5watt amplifier. It makes a huge difference. But still, you can use external bluetooth speakers if you wish since the tablet also has bluetooth capability.

I like that the tablet comes preconfigured with a bunch of apps, many of which are actually useful... like Netfilx, Skype, Angry Birds, Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Gmail, YouTube, Pandora and more. There is also a preconfigured number of apps available in the "Available Apps" button that can be downloaded using one touch of the download icon for each app listed. Some of the apps here are: Epicurious Allrecipes, Evernote, Spotify and quite a few more.

I kind of like this tablet in spite of it's poor screen resolution. The large screen is great and will appeal to kids as well as people with vision that is not quite good enough to see small screen text. It's kind of cool that it has an Audio-in jack so that you can play MP3 players or other audio sources through the built-in speakers if the Neos. And it has an Ethernet port so you can connect directly to the WAN instead of using WiFi.

I particularly like that you can add additional storage by the SD/MMC card slot.

The USB port allows you to connect peripherals such as a keyboard... or you could use a bluetooth keyboard if you deisred. I should also mention the on-screen keyboard... it is HUGE. I mean it is nearly impossible to do anything but one finger typing on this because the low screen resolution makes the keyboard gigantic. Very odd to see and use this on-screen keyboard.

If only the screen were better, I"d rate this higher. Unfortunately the screen has about the worst viewing angles I"ve seen on any computer/tablet screen. If resolution is not an issue for you, you might enjoy this table-top tablet quite a bit. I"m close a 3 star rating but feel that the large screen, in spite of its poor viewing angle and low resolution, great speakers and pre-installed apps do have some merit so am settling on 4 stars.

I was provided a sample for review.

Review from Mr Erb.Thanks for watching.