Vodafone Smart Tab 2 review

Apps and games

Since the Vodafone Smart Tab 2 runs a stock Android OS apps and games can be downloaded from the Google Play Store. The Play Store has over 900,000 apps and games, which includes lots of indy content – one of the Play Sotre's greatest attractions.

The device itself comes with quite a lot of apps pre-installed, around 2GB worth. Including the basic android apps like Maps and Hangouts, but also apps like Docs To Go, a Microsoft office document editor, and Tune In Radio, a digital radio receiver.

Tune In Radio is pretty cool, it finds your local stations relatively quickly and you can get to playback in just a few taps.

We wanted to test games performance on the Smart Tab 2, so we downloaded Let's Bowl and tested how long it took to open compared to the Nexus 7. The Smart Tab 2 took 14 seconds, which was double what the Nexus 7 took.

We then took it a step further. We began a large download of another game, via the Google Play Store, and reopened Let's Bowl and the game became almost non-responsive. The Nexus 7, however, had no performance issues whatsoever.

Aside from the lag, the Smart Tab suffers in the graphics department too. Although, they don't look bad, the colours look washed out and the animations are blurred – not exactly an entertaining experience.

Google Maps runs well, it found our position quickly and, with 3G, we were able to navigate around without any hiccups.

We took the SatNav for a spin and it directed us without the need to stop, scratch the head, and ask a stranger for directions.

As on other devices you'll get full text directions of where to turn and which roads to head down – as well as the option of turning on navigate and being told, audibly, where to go. The device was able to give us real time, accurate, updates on our location.

Battery life

Battery life on the Vodafone Smart Tab 2 isn't great and you will get around 5 hours on average with general use.

That includes some mild gaming and brief video watching, but we reckon 3G is most likely what is chomping battery life and you can extend it by an hour or so if you turn it off. It's just slightly lower than other tablets in the range with the Nexus 7 coming in at 8 hours and the Kobo Arc at 6.

We ran our 90 minute Nyan video test, with push notifications on and full screen brightness, and after a full charge, the Smart Tab had lost 25% battery, leaving it at 75% - which is lower than the Kindle Fire HD at 82%.