Creative Ziio 7-inch Review

Jayesh Shinde

Tablets are raining down left, right and centre, rainy season or not. Well known for its audio equipments, Creative recently jumped into the tablet fray with its very own 7-inch creation, the Ziio. The tablet is priced below Rs. 20,000, making it one of the most inexpensive Android tablets to buy in India. Creative also sells a 10-inch Ziio tablet, though. But here we take a closer look at the Ziio 7-inch.

Creative Ziio 7-inch: Looks, Design

Encased in white plastic, the Creative Ziio 7-inch has a metallic sheen on the back that makes it pleasing on the eye. It’s not glossy, mind you, but the tablet’s plastic back panel has a shiny lustre sprayed on it. And it’s not just good looking; the tablet looks quite delicate in the box but after you pick it up, you can sense it’s a well-built thing -- props to Creative for the Ziio’s sturdy build quality. The petite tablet is quite slim, weighs just 415 gm, and is very well built. It’s not as good as the Apple iPad 2’s build quality but at par with the 7-inch Samsung Galaxy Tab. The tablet also comes with its own travel case -- a convenient addition. In fact, the Creative Ziio 7 looks more like an eReader than a tablet with its compact 7-inch form factor.

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The tablet’s connectivity ports are spread across its edge -- the volume rocker sits on the right edge, micro-SD card slot is on the left, whereas mini HDMI, mini USB and audio jack are placed on the top edge of the Creative Ziio 7-inch Android tablet. Nothing’s out of place, so far so good.

Creative Ziio 7-inch: Hardware Features

The Creative Ziio has a 7-inch display screen, with a 480x800 pixel resolution. But unlike the Apple iPad, Samsung Galaxy Tab, Motorola Xoom and RIM Playbook, the Creative Ziio has a resistive touchscreen -- all the others come with a superior capacitive touchscreen. Other noteworthy specs include the Creative Ziio’s Android 2.2 Froyo operating system -- yes, it doesn’t come with Honeycomb 3.0. The tablet has a front-facing VGA-resolution (0.3MP) camera -- Creative bundles a dedicated app to exploit the feature. A stylus is included with the tablet to help use the resistive screen better.

The Creative Ziio 7-inch also packs in a mini HDMI port (no cable included) capable of 720p playback and a mini USB port for data transfer. Wireless connectivity is taken care by 802.11 b/g and Bluetooth 2.1 support. The Creative Ziio also has a 3.5mm audio headphone jack and microphone out (mono). The Android 2.2 tablet supports memory expansion up to 32GB and comes with a built-in accelerometer. The tablet comes with a 1-GHz Cortex A8 processor, 512MB of RAM and 8GB of built-in memory -- in fact, the Ziio’s RAM and CPU combo is better than the original Apple iPad. It charges via a thin-pin charger (included) or mini USB cable.

Click next to read more about the Creative Ziio 7-inch tablet's performance and usability, and our verdict...