I want to like Verizon’s Ellipsis brand of tablets. I bought two. Both suck. The first Ellipsis tablet I bought was the 7″ that came out on Black Friday in 2014. It was ok enough. There is one flaw, however, that causes me to hate it. Verizon asked for 1GB of app space in the design and did not allow said app space to be expanded. The only way to change or update the apps on it was to wipe it and carefully load each app one by one until the app space was full. Then, because the app space was full, it would stop working. The ellipsis 7 is now my son’s problem.
It’s been 3 years. I like the idea of a tablet as a portal for consuming content. I want it for Kindle Books, Google Play Music, and Netflix. The third generation Ellipsis tablet, the Ellipsis 10, is available from Verizon for $99.00 on a two year contract. I signed the contract. I own a two year agreement to pay for a data plan on a tablet that sucks.
This site is not a tech toy review site. It is a whiner and complainer site. There is good news in the world. The sun does shine and because it is spring, there is another round of budding life. We don’t care. The Verizon Ellipsis 10 isn’t a complete disaster. Or is it?
The Data
| Display: | 10.1” IPS LCD 1920 x 1200 224 dpi, with light sensor and oleophobic coating. |
| Device Type: | Tablet |
| OS: | Android (5.1) |
| Camera: | 5 megapixel rear, 2 megapixel front, 1920 x 1080 (1080p HD Video) |
| Hardware: | ARM Cortex-A53, Quad core, 1500 Mhz |
| Battery: | 9100 mAh |
| Connectivity: | LTE Categry 4, Bluetooth, WiFi a/n, GPS, A-GPS |
For Demo
The screen resolution is low. The storage capacity is 16GB. The version of Android is old–Lollipop. The sound is bad. It’s slow. There is no flash on the camera. The camera is some boomer-gen pinhole thing not worth the silicon it is made of. Low light performance? Please. You can’t add more than 32GB of Micro-SSD storage when a half-terabyte can be purchased for $70.00. It is heavy. I always buy cases and screen protectors for my devices. The case weighs enough on its own. The case and the tablet together feel like concrete shoes. Thin & light? Not this thing.
ProTip to those choosing products for a brand like Verizon: whatever specifications you feel you need? Double those. Three years ago 2GB was not enough app space and you asked for 1GB. This year you sold me a 16GB tablet when there are 32GB phones on clearance and the leading edge is 128GB. Your tablet will address an additional 32GB of mass storage when I can buy a half-terabyte for $70.00. The bar was set too low and this tablet suffers for it.
Parents: I hope you know this. Your kids will outpace any device you buy for them. Going cheap because, “it’s just for the kids” will make you the enemy of children everywhere. We live in a multi-petabyte world where 40GB is one movie. Ghetto welfare kids own 3D VR goggles.
You probably don’t mind slow 4G connectivity and having to spend an hour a week choosing which content to store on your device. Your children will put a tablet like this one under the cat litter and let the cat pee on it. The resulting fire from the LiOn battery is much more satisfying.
Ellipsis Fail
The thing that pisses me off about Verizon’s tablet is the overwhelming underestimation of what makes a product worth 3 Benjamins. They set the bar low so they wouldn’t disappoint. In going with a sure thing they made something that is only for demo. It works as a display piece on a shelf in the living room so you can say you have a tablet. It is fine as long as you don’t ask it to function beyond being pretty.
I don’t have 1500 words on this. I’ll keep it. I’m under contract with it for two years. As a rip-off Kindle Fire it’ll do. But I sort of feel like a teenage boy who finally caught the girl and she, once undressed is not at all what had been keeping him up at night. She’ll do but the idea and the actual are light years apart.