Archos Arnova FamilyPad

I was excited about this product (which I purchased from Amazon.de) but unfortunately the implementation of just about everything is terrible.

The screen size is ideal for what I was looking for, 13.3" (although weighing in at just over a hefty 1kg) and especially good for reading books (landscape, 2 pages to a screen) and magazines (in portrait mode). That WOULD be the case if it weren't for the atrocious viewing angles making it almost impossible to read and certainly at best uncomfortable on the eyes should you happen to look at the screen from even the most slender of angles - i.e. reading when on your side in bed, which was the number one purpose for me (so as not to wake the good lady at night).

Not withstanding the poor screen, the tablet I received had a rather nasty defect - the touch screen would start touching things on its own! The phantom touching was registered mostly after waking the tablet from sleep, seemingly the vast majority on the right hand side of the screen. This was evidenced using various softwares from Google Play to show touch screen capability.

Obviously this meant the tablet was all but unusable until the phantom clicking settled down, else I would have a lucky dip of brower, settings and Google Play opening and closing by themselves, and whatever other widgets I had on the screen. It did settle down after a fashion, but still I had the odd page turning in a book that I didn't initiate. And then the same cycle over again when waking the tablet from sleep.

Also the 1ghz Allwinner A10 is mighty slow for a tablet these days.

Oh well, back to sharing my wife's first class Asus Transformer TF101 which has NEVER suffered any problems like those I mention and has a wide viewing angle. Time to save my pennies for the forthcoming (surely almost magical) Asus Transformer Book.

I read Archos/Arnova are coming up with the Familypad 2, which has a 1.6ghz Dual Core CPU, but unless they have a touchscreen with a much improved viewing angle it will not be much better.