I'm severely disappointed
Posted: April 17th, 2012, 7:23 pm
Received my Extreme this morning from eBuyer and left it charging all day so that I could ensure I didn't mess the battery up.
Was a bit alarmed that the box's shrinkwrap was not sealed (but loosely wrapped around it, as if it'd been opened) and there was an existing wi-fi connection listed which definitely wasn't anything to do with me. Was someone's name, too, not even a generic "factory 1" or something similar.
So, having noticed that, I thought I'd start off with a factory reset, just to make sure there was nothing problematic needing flushed away.
First impressions seemed good. The screen is gorgeous and the viewing angles are superb. The tablet itself feels nicely weighted and aesthetically feels like a more expensive model than the £180 it actually costs.
However, that was about the end of the love affair. I encountered three deal-breakers (for me) which mean I've already contacted eBuyer to request a refund;
1) The wi-fi connection will not stay up. It wouldn't seem to go more than five or ten minutes at a time without vanishing. Not from idleness either - often when in the middle of attempting to browse (I'll come on to that) or on the Google Play store. None of my other devices have any problems with my router, and I even tried sitting right next to it and connecting my old router (which had been gathering dust in the cupboard) to see if it was a router communication issue of some kind. No joy. Pretty much a killer right from the get go, really.
2) Web browsing is chronic. I'm on a fibre line, so my speed is not an issue. The responsiveness of the Scroll Extreme, however, was. Even the most basic of sites was lagging like crazy and giving "the browser has not responded" style pop-up boxes something like twice a minute. Again, I was not browsing anything particularly intensive - more just idly wandering. Even Wiki, for goodness sake, was barely capable of response. I tried downloading Dolphin and Opera, but both had the same issue. Opera was a little less frequent in the lag stakes, but still pretty damn bad.
3) The last straw was streaming performance. I'm a big fan of Netflix and it was, in fact, one of the reasons I wanted a tablet in the first place - being able to use it wherever in the house I was appealed massively. So downloaded the app, it all seemed good - picture quality was superb (when the wifi stayed connected), however the videos would not play more than a few minutes without then completely stopping. The app itself didn't crash - I could hit 'back' and go back to the program selection. It's just that the video would completely stop dead, not even a 'buffering' - generally the picture stops first, with the audio carrying on for a few seconds before stopping too.
So has anyone else experienced these problems?
I've tried to raise an RMA with eBuyer this evening, however it's telling me I need to call their tech support line first. I have this horrible feeling I'm going to be stuck with a £180 paperweight because they'll completely disown my issues.
I'm pretty gutted, as I've been dying to get my hands on my Extreme since they were first announced months ago.
Was a bit alarmed that the box's shrinkwrap was not sealed (but loosely wrapped around it, as if it'd been opened) and there was an existing wi-fi connection listed which definitely wasn't anything to do with me. Was someone's name, too, not even a generic "factory 1" or something similar.
So, having noticed that, I thought I'd start off with a factory reset, just to make sure there was nothing problematic needing flushed away.
First impressions seemed good. The screen is gorgeous and the viewing angles are superb. The tablet itself feels nicely weighted and aesthetically feels like a more expensive model than the £180 it actually costs.
However, that was about the end of the love affair. I encountered three deal-breakers (for me) which mean I've already contacted eBuyer to request a refund;
1) The wi-fi connection will not stay up. It wouldn't seem to go more than five or ten minutes at a time without vanishing. Not from idleness either - often when in the middle of attempting to browse (I'll come on to that) or on the Google Play store. None of my other devices have any problems with my router, and I even tried sitting right next to it and connecting my old router (which had been gathering dust in the cupboard) to see if it was a router communication issue of some kind. No joy. Pretty much a killer right from the get go, really.
2) Web browsing is chronic. I'm on a fibre line, so my speed is not an issue. The responsiveness of the Scroll Extreme, however, was. Even the most basic of sites was lagging like crazy and giving "the browser has not responded" style pop-up boxes something like twice a minute. Again, I was not browsing anything particularly intensive - more just idly wandering. Even Wiki, for goodness sake, was barely capable of response. I tried downloading Dolphin and Opera, but both had the same issue. Opera was a little less frequent in the lag stakes, but still pretty damn bad.
3) The last straw was streaming performance. I'm a big fan of Netflix and it was, in fact, one of the reasons I wanted a tablet in the first place - being able to use it wherever in the house I was appealed massively. So downloaded the app, it all seemed good - picture quality was superb (when the wifi stayed connected), however the videos would not play more than a few minutes without then completely stopping. The app itself didn't crash - I could hit 'back' and go back to the program selection. It's just that the video would completely stop dead, not even a 'buffering' - generally the picture stops first, with the audio carrying on for a few seconds before stopping too.
So has anyone else experienced these problems?
I've tried to raise an RMA with eBuyer this evening, however it's telling me I need to call their tech support line first. I have this horrible feeling I'm going to be stuck with a £180 paperweight because they'll completely disown my issues.
I'm pretty gutted, as I've been dying to get my hands on my Extreme since they were first announced months ago.