The Linx 7 is the cheapest Windows 8.1 tablet we’ve ever tested. At only £80 it immediately grabbed our interest, and this was piqued even further when we found out it comes with a year’s subscription to Office 365 Personal. This alone is worth around £50, and will let you use the Office suite on one PC or Mac, one tablet and one smartphone, so you’re not even limited to just using Office on the Linx 7 itself. You can even get a £30 rebate if you trade in an old tablet, although the appeal in doing this will very much depend on what tablet you might have lying around.
We weren’t expecting a huge amount considering the low price, but found ourselves pleasantly surprised by the Linx 7’s build quality and design. The thin bezel around the screen helps the already compact tablet feel even smaller. At 9.5mm thick it’s not the thinnest tablet you’ll ever see, but it isn’t too chunky for a budget model. It’s also not too heavy at 280g, so is comfortable to hold one-handed, and we were happily able to do so for extended periods.
The chassis is made from an unexciting matt black plastic that at least feels robust. There isn’t any noticeable flex anywhere on the chassis, which is always reassuring. Along the top of the tablet you’ll find a Micro USB charging port, Micro HDMI for connecting to an external display, a headphone jack and an exposed microSD slot. You can install a microSD card up to 64GB in capacity. Our review model came with 32GB of storage, and a browse of the Linx tablets website states that 32GB tablets are available only for a limited time, after which they’ll come with 16GB.
Although the Linx 7’s build quality and design were a real surprise, the screen shows where costs have been cut. The Linx 7 has a 1,280x800 display, which is the resolution we’re used to seeing with lower-cost Windows tablets, but as these pixels are packed on to a small 7in panel that leaves a respectable pixel density of 215ppi.
However, the real problem with the display is its grainy quality. There’s also distinct backlight bleed from the top and bottom of the screen. This is most noticeable when the screen is displaying dark images. The screen itself also picks up fingerprints more easily than most tablets, so our every touch of the screen resulted in greasy marks, and the display soon became grubby. Having to wipe down the screen constantly proved frustrating after a while.
Our calibrator also showed the display has poor colour accuracy, with it able to produce only 62.9 per cent of the sRGB colour gamut. This is below average, but still a fraction higher than the similarly low-priced Samsung Galaxy Tab Lite Android tablet. Black levels are also poor, but marginally better than the Samsung tablet, with a score of 0.49cd/m2. The contrast ratio, meanwhile, is a paltry 625:1.
The Linx 7 uses a quad-core Intel Atom Z3735G processor from the Bay Trail family. This chip runs at 1.33GHz, with the ability to boost up to 1.83GHz. This is paired with only 1GB of RAM; which is the minimum required for Windows 8.1. Performance in our Windows benchmarks was respectable, however, especially considering the tablet’s price. An overall score of 19 is higher than we see from some super-cheap laptops, and equal to the more expensive Toshiba Encore 2 WT-10A.
You shouldn’t expect to use the Linx 7 for processor-intensive applications, but it’s fine for browsing the web and editing documents. A score of 489.3ms in our SunSpider JavaScript browser benchmark is about what we expect from Windows 8.1-based tablets, and better than most Android tablets.
Gaming performance is also good for the price. Scores of 6,198 and 7,621 in the 3DMark Ice Storm Extreme and Ice Storm Unlimited tests are surprisingly good. The only problem is the limited selection of games in the Windows Store, as you won’t be able to play most games designed for laptops or desktops on a touchscreen.
The Linx 7 is equipped with 2-megapixel cameras on the front and back. The rear camera produced some of the worst-quality images we’ve encountered, with large amounts of chroma noise in the shadow tones. Images also lack detail, with some darker elements just appearing as solid colour, which was a real problem as the Linx 7 underexposed many of our test shots. There’s also a distinct lack of sharpness. Don’t expect to be using the Linx 7 for any photography unless you have very low expectations. The front-facing camera similarly produced a lot of noise, but will at least do a serviceable job for video chat.
The Linx 7 is an incredibly cheap Windows 8.1 tablet and its build quality was a genuinely pleasant surprise. It has its shortcomings, such as its below-average display, but its performance is definitely respectable.
If you have only a limited budget and are looking for a Windows 8.1 tablet, the Linx 7 is great value, especially when you factor in the year’s subscription to Office 365 Personal. It’s hardly an object of desire, but it is certainly a sensible budget purchase.
VERDICT
The Linx 7 is a ludicrously cheap Windows 8.1 tablet that makes it a bit of a bargain as long as you can live with its lacklustre screen.
SPECIFICATIONS
PROCESSOR Quad-core 1.33GHz Intel Atom Z3735G
SCREEN SIZE 7in
SCREEN RESOLUTION 1,280x800
REAR CAMERA 2 megapixels
STORAGE 32GB
WIRELESS DATA None
SIZE 109x9.5x192mm
WEIGHT 280g
OPERATING SYSTEM Windows 8.1
WARRANTY One-year RTB