Storage Options Scroll 7-inch Tablet review

If the Storage Options Scroll 7-inch Tablet had been priced at £70, then we could sympathise with its limitations. On the plus side, the design and build quality isn't too bad.

A brushed silver metal backing and a trim 7-inch screen mean holding it in your hands is comfortable – and it does look attractive. We also liked the physical buttons for the home, back and index options.

At 455g, the Scroll is quite heavy to hold, but it does give it a feeling of robustness. Unfortunately, it's all downhill from there.

The Scroll will do the basics such as browse the web, watch YouTube videos and allow you to check your email, but the experience is a tiresome one. The 1GHz ARM 11 processor and 256MB RAM weren't enough to avoid a sluggish response and long load times for demanding applications.

When it comes to applications, don't expect too many of them, as the Scroll doesn't come with the Android Market installed. Instead, you are given the option of 10 apps from Scroll's own selection. Although these do include the excellent Amazon Kindle, BBC News and TuneIn radio apps, they're not enough to ensure longevity from this tablet. You're best off with an Android tablet that supports the Market, which gives access to hundreds of thousands of apps.

Flash support

The browser does support flash-based websites, but accessing anything too demanding will slow the speed down to a crawl and reduce any kind of video to a slideshow. A number of times we also found that the browser simply crashed for no reason.

If you can get it to work, then reading content on the 800 x 600-pixel screen is comfortable if not great. Viewing your pictures isn't too much trouble either and you are able to crop and rotate your images.

You can also use the 0.3-megapixel camera to take your own pictures, but these have a grainy and washed-out quality. There is no rear-facing camera.

Storage Options claims that the device can run 1080p video and, to be fair, it did play high-definition (HD) YouTube videos, but the unspectacular screen limited the experience, although it does come with a mini-HDMI port for connecting to an HDTV.

There are other ports on this device and the Scroll includes both a USB and a MicroSD Card slot for expanding the memory and using peripherals.

The battery life suffers, but is helped somewhat by the fact the Scroll seems to shut itself down if left unattended for too long – a good idea, except for the fact that starting it up takes an age.

To conclude, we just can't think why you would buy this tablet, as the price precludes it even being a budget purchase. If you want a 7-inch tablet to do the absolute basics, then this will suffice, but we'd recommend spending an extra £100 for a Samsung Galaxy Tab or Dell Streak.

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