In the first week of October, Tecno unveiled yet another tablet in the Kenyan market.
The Tecno DroiPad 10 Pro II which has been selling since then, joins the not-so-phone-not-so-tablet Tecno PhonePad 7 II which went on sale mid this year and the 8-inch DroiPad 8 II which opened the floodgates of budget Tecno tablets earlier in the year.
Unlike the aforementioned devices, though, the DroiPad 10 Pro II tries to be a bit different.
The difference can be seen physically, in the software it packs and the hole it will leave in your wallet.
First things first, at Kshs 28,900, it is the costliest tablet Tecno has released in the Kenyan market this year. Probably, this has to do with the shift from the cheap feeling of its predecessors to the more premium look and feel and the accessories Tecno manages to bundle with the device. Like the Bluetooth keyboard one gets in the box which is intended to place the DroiPad 10 Pro II as a productivity workhorse.
There is also this “executive-looking” leather case which we’re not sure if it is included as a standard with all purchases or we were lucky to get it as reviewers. Whichever the case (🙂), it’s there.
Also included in the box is a microUSB to USB OTG adapter cable (just as it was the case with the other Tecno tablets) alongside the obvious: a USB cable for charging and data transfer, a wall adapter and some paperwork. There are no earphones included.
But that is not all that there is to the DroiPad 10 Pro II, there’s one more thing. While it runs on Android like the other tablets we’ve seen from Tecno this year (there’s not been a WinPad, yet), it’s not your everyday Android. It’s Remix OS 2.0. Remix OS, for those not in the know, is simply Android that has been given a desktop look and feel by Chinese startup Jide Technology. If this sounds familiar then it is because we had a brief look at it when we covered the “world’s first true Android PC”, the Remix Mini, which goes for about a third the price of the Tecno 2-in-1.
Does Remix OS make the DroiPad 10 Pro II a better tablet than its ridiculously long name implies? Maybe, maybe not. We’ll explore that in our upcoming review.