HCL ME G1 vs Wicked Leak Wammy Athena: Shootout of the Budget Dual Core Tablets

While the global tablet market is dominated by Apple iPad with a 9.7 inch display, several companies including Samsung, Google and more have released 10.1 inch offsprings into the market.

Speaking of the Indian tablet market, though the local vendors are completely focused on the 7 inch market segment these days, but they do offer 9.7 inch tablets as well.

Several companies including Micromax, Karbonn, iBall, Wicked Leak, HCL and others have come up with 9.7 inch Android tablets in the past few months, in order to capture the consumers who are looking for products in that segment.

Continuing on the same, Wicked Leak has taken a step further with Wammy Athena – an Android 4.1 Jelly Bean based tablet with a price tag of Rs 13,999 making it really affordable.

At the same time, HCL has also launched ME G1, an Android ICS based tablet priced at Rs 14,999. Moreover, the HCL offering is a 3G enabled device and it belongs to the successful ME product lineup.

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Hence, Gizbot has come up with a comparison of HCL ME G1 and Wammy Athena tablets.

Display: Both the tablets head against one another in this segment with a 9.7 inch IPS capacitive touchscreen display of 1024 x 768 pixel resolution.

Processor: In this segment, both the tablets have a dual core ARM Cortex A9 processor and quad core Mali 400 GPU, but, Wammy Athena gains more weightage as it has a faster 1.5GHz chipset as compared to the 1.2GHz chipset in ME G1.

OS: On the OS front, Wammy Athena scores more with Android 4.1 Jelly Bean OS as the HCL offering is flavored with Android 4.0.4 ICS platform.

In terms of software features, Jelly Bean OS offers Project Butter for faster, smoother and more responsive performance, expandable and contractible notifications, resizble app widgets, simplified task navigation, live wallpaper preview, high resolution contact photos and many more.

Camera: In terms of camera optics, both the camera fare well with a 2MP rear camera, however, HCL offering has a 0.3MP VGA front camera for video calling while Wammy Athena has a 2MP front camera.

Memory: When it comes to memory storage, both the tablets have 16GB internal storage, 1GB RAM and a micro SD card slot supporting up to 32GB expandable storage.

Connectivity: On the connectivity front, HCL ME G1 comes packed with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, mini-HDMI and 3G and Wammy Athena has Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n and 3G through dongle features.

Battery: ME G1 is loaded with a 7,000 mAh Li-Po battery, whereas Wammy Athena has an 8,000 mAh Li-ion battery offering up to 6 hours backup. More tablet specs.....

Price: In terms of pricing, the HCL offering is available for Rs 14,999 and Wammy Athena is priced at Rs 13,999 respectively.

Verdict

Both HCL and Wicked Leak tablets are priced competitively in the budget conscious Indian market and they are packed with some impressive specifications.

Detailing on HCL ME G1, the tablet preloaded with Thinkfree Office productivity suite which lets users open, edit and create Microsoft Office documents, spreadsheets and presentations. With free access to the ME App store, the user can choose from over 15,000 incredible applications.

When it comes to Wammy Athena, the tablet comes with plethora of features such as Adobe Flash 11.x, Word, Excel, Powerpoint and PDF documents.

For those consumers who like to have Bluetooth and HDMI connectivity on the tablet and interested in more applications can choose the HCL offering.

If the concern is on a faster processor, Jelly Bean user experience, better front camera for video calling purposes and a lesser price tag, Wicked Leak Wammy Athena should be a better choice.