I picked up a Hisense Sero 7 Pro tablet this evening. I’ve only spent about 90 minutes with it, but my first impressions of it are very favorable. It’s fast and smooth, the screen is sharp, and the price is right at $149. I’ve seen people at xda-developers say it’s the best $149 they’ve spent in a long time. While I won’t go quite that far, I’ll say this: If you’ve heard of this tablet and you’ve been thinking you might be interested, you’re interested. You won’t regret it.
I’ll talk about it some more this week, I’m sure, but here’s the lowdown on it: It’s a no-name tablet, sold in discount stores, that uses the same chipset as the Google Nexus 7, but it adds a video port so you can connect it to your TV for video playback, and it adds a microSD card slot for expansion. So it fixes the only two flaws the Nexus 7 had, but costs $50 less. It’s probably not as rugged as a Nexus 7 for that price, but for $50, you can buy a carrying case to ruggedize it a bit.
Once the word really gets out about these tablets, I think they’re going to be able to sell them as quickly as they can make them. I’m that impressed, and that’s with the stock ROM on it. I understand that if you’re willing to load a custom ROM, the first custom ROM to come available for it removes some bloat and performs even faster.
David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He started his career as a part-time computer technician in 1994, worked his way up to system administrator by 1997, and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He invests in real estate on the side and his hobbies include O gauge trains, baseball cards, and retro computers and video games. A University of Missouri graduate, he holds CISSP and Security+ certifications. He lives in St. Louis with his family.