[REVIEW] Teclast T30 is an excellent tablet with a 10.1″ IPS display and quality build

A lot of customers complain about freezing on Chinese tablets with MediaTek processors. How does one of the most popular and affordable models—Teclast T30—hold up? We’ve been using it in the office for quite a while, so here’s a detailed review.

Where to buy Teclast T30?

We ordered the Teclast T30 tablet from the popular e-shop Banggood. It was available in the EU warehouse, so delivery was very fast and hassle-free. Only 3 days had passed since we placed the order, and the courier was already waiting with the package.

Right now, though, it’s sold out—and it’s still available from the official Teclast seller on the AliExpress marketplace. In Spain, there are still a few units at the time of publishing the review. It has a very good price, so if you’re interested, don’t hesitate.

If you can’t get the free unit, we also recommend the Teclast M40 model, which also comes with an eight-core processor and enough RAM memory.

Package contents

Teclast T30 comes in a high-quality, flat, white box with an orange Teclast logo. Once you open it, the tablet is right on top. The top side of the box is covered with soft padding, so it’s well protected.

A transparent protective film is stuck directly on the tablet to guard the display against scratches. The film isn’t very high quality—scratches appeared on it very quickly. There’s also a film on the back, so the device is protected from both sides against scratches. However, the back film peels off easily around the camera area, where it then attracts dust. That back film was removed from the back cover very quickly.

Besides the tablet, you’ll also find an EU plug charger and a SIM/microSD slot opening pin in the box. At the bottom, under the tablet, there’s also a multi-language user manual. The package includes all the basic elements we expected. We would’ve also liked a case similar to the ones Xiaomi includes with its phones, but you’ll need to buy that separately.

Overall, the tablet is packaged well, and we have no complaints about the box itself. The tablet is also protected inside the carton against impacts that could happen during shipping.

Teclast T30: Build Quality

The Teclast T30 has an aluminum body, and the first touch already feels very solid. The tablet measures 24.90 x 13.50 x 0.85 cm, so it’s very slim. It weighs 560 g, and we have to admit you can feel that weight—and after holding it for a longer time in your hands, it starts to feel heavy. But it’s a 10.1″ tablet, so the extra weight makes sense.

The build quality is good—nothing on the tablet creaks or flexes even when you press down firmly in different places. So we’re satisfied with the overall quality.

As we mentioned, there’s a transparent protective film applied at the factory on both the front and the back. Under the back film, there’s a matte, black plastic cover. Even though it’s matte, it still collects fingerprints.

Connectivity and controls

The Teclast T30 offers fairly rich connectivity—both wired and wireless. When it comes to ports and slots, unusually you’ll find a charging USB-C port, a SIM card slot, and a memory slot, plus a microSD card slot and even a 3.5 mm audio port on the right side. The maximum supported memory-card capacity is 128 GB. On the right side you’ll also find volume controls, a microphone, and a small hole for resetting the tablet.

The bottom side has a special magnetic port, which makes this tablet interesting. Using this port, you can connect a keyboard to the tablet and use it like a laptop. The keyboard then folds down in the same way as on a laptop, which essentially protects the display. Teclast T30 is sold in a version with a keyboard or without. We have the version without the keyboard available, because we don’t need it.

But if you’ll be using the tablet for typing often, definitely consider buying it together with the keyboard. You can also buy it separately, and it costs around 20 – 30 €. On the top side, you’ll find stereo speakers, another microphone, and a button for turning the display off and on or locking and unlocking it. The left side is completely empty.

As for wireless connectivity, you get dual-band WiFi (2.4 GHz and 5 GHz), 4G including our 800 MHz B20 band, GPS, and Bluetooth 4.1. An FM radio is also included.

Display and system

The display has a 10.1″ diagonal with a resolution of 1920 x 1200 px and a 16:10 aspect ratio. It uses an IPS panel with a maximum brightness of 370 nits. It’s not the highest-quality display with the best resolution, but it’s definitely not bad. Around the display there’s a fairly thick 12 mm bezel. A thinner bezel would look nicer, but on the other hand, you at least avoid unwanted, accidental touches on the display.

The colors have a slightly cool tint, and of course on the IPS display, black isn’t completely black—but considering the price, the display quality is good. Viewing angles are excellent, and the image isn’t distorted at all, even when viewing it from almost a 180° angle.

At the top, next to the selfie camera, there’s a light sensor that handles automatic brightness adjustment. It works well, with a slight delay. What’s odd, though, is that turning automatic brightness control on or off isn’t found in the notification bar as usual. To enable this feature, you need to go to the display settings.

The brightness level is sufficient. Indoors, we mostly kept the brightness set to below 50%. Outdoors, you need the maximum brightness, but the display remains readable. There’s also a night mode that eliminates the blue tone and tints the display yellow-brown, helping protect your eyes. Night mode can also be set in automatic mode, where it turns on and off based on the selected times— or at sunset and sunrise.

Teclast comes with a clean Android operating system in version 9. An update to a newer version isn’t available.

You’ll find only a minimum of preinstalled apps here, which we see as a big plus. Since there’s no Android skin on top of it, the system looks relatively plain. You can get to the main menu by swiping up from the bottom of the display. This menu scrolls downward. We personally don’t really like this style of menu, but that’s just our subjective opinion.

How does Teclast T30 take photos?

Teclast T30 has a rear, 8 MPx camera with a maximum photo resolution of 3264 x 2448 px with an aspect ratio of 4:3. The front/selfie camera is 5 MPx.

The cameras are below average. So far, though, we’ve never needed the tablet for taking photos, so personally we don’t really miss better cameras. But if someone wants to take photos with a tablet, the Teclast T30 isn’t a good choice. Photos aren’t very sharp, and the image quality is genuinely quite poor. In worse lighting, there’s also a fairly noticeable amount of noise. Autofocus is slow, and the camera app offers only basic settings.

The selfie camera is enough for video calls, even though the quality isn’t dazzling either.

For a better idea of how the tablet takes photos, you can check out a few pictures taken with this tablet below.

Performance and Sound Quality of the Teclast T30

The Teclast T30 has a powerful 8-core MediaTek Helio P70 processor, supported by RAM with a capacity of 4 GB. There’s also built-in storage with a capacity of 64 GB, which can be expanded using microSD memory cards.

Even though MediaTek processors aren’t as well known and popular with us as Snapdragon ones, you don’t have to be afraid here. Unlike some other Chinese tablets where many users complain about stuttering, we didn’t notice anything like that. Even though the Teclast T30 isn’t among the top-performing devices on the market, we’ve been using the tablet for almost 2 months and we haven’t noticed any stuttering or significant slowdowns.

The interface is very smooth, and it’s great for everyday work, watching videos, movies, or even gaming. You’ll find a Mali G72 graphics chip, and the tablet can handle even more demanding games. We tested Asphalt 9 and PUBG—the games run very well on the tablet.

One positive surprise for us was finding that there are stereo speakers built in. The sound is good, even though the maximum volume isn’t very high. Watching movies, series, or YouTube videos is even better thanks to the large display—because you also get stereo sound with good quality.

Battery life & charging

The tablet hides a battery with a capacity of up to 8000 mAh. We expected such great battery life on a single charge. Our expectations were met, because the tablet handled several days of normal use without any issues. With intensive use and gaming, of course, the battery life drops, but you can still expect at least two days—even with somewhat heavier usage—without 4G.

Charging is a bit disappointing, though. Since the battery has a high capacity, we were worried about it taking a long time to charge. With the included charger, the tablet went from 20 % to 100 in almost 4 hours. For today’s standards, that’s quite long. We’d appreciate faster charging, but even with a different, stronger charger the charging time doesn’t really improve, because the tablet doesn’t support fast charging.

Teclast T30: Final verdict

As we already mentioned in the introduction, we’ve been using the Teclast T30 for quite a while now, so we can evaluate its strong and weak points better. We have to say we’re satisfied with the tablet. Of course, it’s not flawless. A nicer AMOLED display would be great, but it would probably reduce battery life on a single charge. We’d also like faster charging and better-quality cameras.

Thanks to its 10.1″ display, the tablet is a great companion for everyday browsing, watching YouTube videos, movies, series, or even playing games. The sturdy aluminum body ensures high build quality and sufficient durability.

Another big advantage is the option to buy an original keyboard, which connects easily via a special connector. This way, you can turn the tablet into a small notebook without hassle.

Since we’ll keep using the tablet for personal purposes, don’t hesitate to contact us with any questions.