Best Buy’s Secret RK3288 iPad Mini Clone

Comment here from Dan EE:

One of the cheap Chinese clones is the Best Buy Insignia Flex Elite 7.85″ that actual looks promising. It is $150 and has A/B/G/N, 2048×1536 display. I picked one up to try it out. It has the Rockchip RK3288 processor. WiFi is better than my N7. It has a Broadcom WiFi/BT combo chip. The Asus Z580C doesn’t have A band and that is a show stopper for me. The local coffee shop and has both A and G. The G band is so crowded and slow, but the A band is not crowded at all.

I got 38005 on AnTuTu the first time I ran it before Google had time to install all the apps I don’t want. After all the Google installs and updates, it consistently gets ~36,380. The biggest thing that impressed me was the AnTuTu V3.0 video test score was 785. Handled all the AVC/HEVC in 2K and 4K. Screen looks great. The bad thing is the SW like all these clones. It runs 5.0.1 but the screen auto brightness only has one setting. It doesn’t pay attention to the brightness setting in auto. It won’t turn on from the off state if charging. You can tell they took the Nexus 7 as the baseline for the SW. The regulatory information under “about tablet” has the Nexus 9 model 0P82100 page. Whoops! It also lives up to it’s name and has a lot of flex. It could use metal frame on the edge. Other than that the HW is good. RockChip released a new 5.1 SDK to the manufacturers at the end of May. It may be a new firmware release come soon and will clear up most of the problems. Having Best Buy as the marketer may increase the pressure to get the SW right.

I was in four Best Buy stores this week. None of them had this.

Rockchip 3288 at 1.8GHz, 7.85-inch IPS Retina-class screen at 2048 x 1536, 2GBs of RAM, 16GBs of internal storage, microSD card slot, microUSB port, 2MP front and 5MP back cameras, 4,000mAh battery.

Is this why Hisense decided not to sell the Sero 8 Pro in the U.S.?

This is weirdly billed as “Special Buy: While Supplies Last.”

What supplies?! Four Best Buy stores — none had it!

And Insignia is Best Buy’s house brand!

This is just another example of Best Buy’s incompetency. Their tablet displays have been going to hell, not all stores have all models of tablets, and no one seems to keep track of anything. And what’s our alternative in NYC? DataVision? Not for this tablet! Buying from Amazon? I won’t buy without trying in person.

Anyway, a “secret” tablet. Way to go there, Best Buy.

And the kicker: This would be a triage tablet for me. And it’s likely I’d buy this over the Asus ZenPad S 8.0 — while waiting for the “Plus/Pro” model of it to go on sale.

Thanks to Dan EE for the tip!