If you haven't heard, Tesco has launched its very own Hudl tablet and it's aimed at all of you out there who don't yet have a tablet (three quarters of UK homes apparently). And that's one of the reasons the Hudl is priced at £119, undercutting Google's Nexus 7 by £80. Read on to find out if the Tesco Hudl is worth your money. (You can also see: Kindle Fire HD vs Tesco Hudl tablet comparison review.)
Clubcard Boost allows your Clubcard vouchers to be used for double value, so you can get the tablet even cheaper than its already budget price tag - £60 worth of vouchers.
See also: Amazon Kindle Fire HDX: Release date, price and specs and Asus Memo Pad HD 7 review: a surprisingly good budget Android tablet
Tesco Hudl tablet: Design and build quality
The Hudl feels nice in the hand with its soft touch plastic casing which comes in four colours: black, blue, red and purple. It's a little chunkier and heavier than the latest Nexus 7 at 9.9 mm and 370 g but the device doesn't feel unwieldy. It's also very well built for a cheap tablet with a solid and durable construction.
A range of accessories included cases from £15, cables and headphones. Some of which are designed for kids.
Tesco Hudl tablet: Hardware and performance
Despite the budget price, the Hudl has, we have to say, a reasonable specification. Much better than we expected, in fact.
The Hudl has a 7 in screen matching the Nexus 7 and Kindle Fire but has been designed to be used in landscape mode. You can still use portrait if you wish. The resolution is decent for a budget tablet at 1440 x 900 (higher than the iPad mini) and viewing angles are good which, to be honest, we weren't expecting (see below).
Downsides are that the screen is occasionally unresponsive and in general we needed to set brightness to the maximum level.
There's only one model of the Hudl and that comes with 16 GB of storage (around 12 GB available). There is a microSD card for adding up to 32 GB more, which is another plus point when compared to the Google and Amazon competition.
The 1.5 GHz quad-core A9 processor copes fairly well with its job. Navigation around the OS is nippy enough if not lightning fast. Web browsing and gaming is reasonable but nothing more which is reflected in our benchmark tests.
The Hudl scores 1583 in Geekbench 2 which is a little more than the original Nexus 7. It's only one frame off the Galaxy Note 8 (which is considerably more expensive) in GLBenchmark 2.5 - it managed 17 fps. In SunSpider 1.0, the Hudl scores a middling 1397 ms.
Cameras are under par with 3 Mp at the rear and a 2 Mp webcam. The results from both are low quality and the tablet has problems focusing. See below for a test photo and video.
Click to enlarge
Tesco Hudl tablet: Software
Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean is almost vanilla but Tesco had added a few of its own bits and pieces. Preloaded widgets give first time users a helping hand and other things like Clubcard status at a glance. These can, of course be removed if they are of no use to you.
Alongside the regular android navigation buttons, there is a T button which is a shortcut to the supermarket's services including Blinkbox and Clubcard TV.They are both streaming services but Blinkbox offers up to date content to buy or rent, while Clubcard TV allows free but fewer and older content.
To go with these is a micro-HDMI port to get those films and TV shows onto your TV. Importantly there is full access to Google Play Store which means the Hudl has one up on the Amazon Kindle Fire range of budget tablets.
With Jelly Bean on-board users can create multiple accounts, meaning the Hudl will suit families who want to share the tablet. The Nexus 7 also offers this facility, plus restricted accounts since it runs version 4.3 of Android.
Tesco Hudl tablet: Battery life
Tesco says that the Hudl can provide up to 9 hours of video playback, depending on various settings. At maximum brightness (for comfortable viewing), streaming a 30 minute BBC iPlayer TV show over Wi-Fi used just under 10 percent of the battery. So it will last around five hours in total if you only watch video.
General battery life will depend on how often you use the device. If you pick it up occasionally to check Facebook or Google who that actor is on TV you can't place then it will give you a few days' worth of use. The Hudl holds its charge very well when not in use. We'd like some kind of power management though, so that Wi-Fi could be automatically switched off with the screen.
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