Smartlink Digitab SS1078W
Smartlink might not be a well-known brand in the tablet market, but the company has been around for quite a long time. Formerly the Indian avatar of D-Link, Smartlink became an independent company in 2008 and has since then dealt in products ranging from networking infrastructure to motherboards, with multiple brands including Digilink (now sold to Schneider Electric), Digisol, Digicare, and Digilite.
Now, it has also branched out into the consumer tablet market with a range called - what else - Digitab. Three products have been launched, with features and specifications tailored for the Indian market. Two of these are 7-inch tablets, while the most expensive one has a 10.1-inch screen.
We have the unintuitively named Digitab SS1078W, the largest of the three, in for review today. Let's see if Smartlink has what it takes to compete with existing local and international companies.
First impressions are important, and unfortunately the SS1078W did nothing to impress us when we took it out of its box. It appears to be made out of cheap plastic, like most off-brand imported products, and borrows quite a few design cues from the first-generation iPad. From a distance it doesn't look bad at all, but you can immediately feel the low quality of the body material when you first pick it up.
The SS1078W is oriented in landscape format, so the front camera is in the middle of the wider top border and all the buttons and ports are on the narrower left edge. The back is slightly curved, but this doesn't do much to mask the tablet's thickness.
A strip of black plastic wraps around the top and rear, reminiscent of the one on iPads with cellular connectivity. In this case, a plastic flap within the black strip covers the SIM card slot. This is the only thing on the top edge, as everything else is on the left edge. From top to bottom, there's a small power button, volume buttons, a physical Back button (for inexplicable reasons), a 3.5mm headset socket, mic, microSD slot, Micro-USB port, Mini-HDMI port, and DC input. That's right, this tablet does not charge over USB; there's an old-style cylindrical DC input jack. This means you'll have to carry the specific charger that comes with it everywhere you go.
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