Best Buy recently started carrying a new Android tablet called the Insignia Flex Elite. The screen and overall design are reminiscent of the latest iPad Mini.
I often highlight tablets with high resolution screens because they are the best tablets for ereading. The Insignia Flex Elite definitely fits that bill with its 7.85-inch 2048 x 1536 resolution screen, which equates to an impressive 326 pixels per inch.
At $149, the price isn’t bad either. There’s also a cheaper $99 model with a lower resolution 1280 x 800 screen.
The Insignia Flex Elite runs Android 5.0 Lollipop and it comes with 16GB of storage space, a microSD card slot, a quad-core 1.8 GHz Rockchip processor, 2 gigs of RAM, Bluetooth 4.0, and dual cameras.
There is one noticeable drawback in terms of specs. Battery life is only rated at 6 hours. Lower battery life is often one of the main things that separates budget tablets with brand name tablets.
The new Asus ZenPad 8 has a similar screen and specs. Its estimated battery life is in the 8/9 hour range. It costs $50 more, however, but it has some other hardware upgrades too.
Nonetheless, the Insignia Flex Elite is an intriguing tablet for the price, especially if it ever goes on sale in the $129 range. Unfortunately there are no reviews posted at Best Buy yet so there is no word on overall performance. Sometimes high resolution tablets can bog down more having to run all those extra pixels, so that’s something to look out for.
Insignia Flex Elite Specs
- 7.85″ IPS screen
- 2048 x 1536 resolution
- Android 5.0 (Lollipop) operating system
- Rockchip 3288 quad-core processor, 1.8 GHz
- 16GB onboard storage space
- RAM: 2GB
- GPS
- Headphone jack
- MicroSD card slot
- Wi-Fi
- Bluetooth 4.0
- Cameras: 2.0MP front; 5.0MP rear
- Battery life: 6 hours
- Weight: 11.2 ounces
- Dimensions: 7.9″ x 5.4″ x 0.3″
I was interested in this because it has hardware encode/decode for the new H.265/HEVC standard. It plays up to 4K files without any problem. It also has 5Gz A/AC band WiFi that the Asus lacks. The hardware overall is great. AnTuTu scores 38005. The firmware is lacking. The auto brightness is not adjustable and it is too bright and drains the battery quickly. The lowest manual setting is still too bright for reading in a dark room. User installed apps cannot see the SDcard, so you cannot store or read any e-books stored there. These and many other SW flaws make this unsuitable to use as a reader. If they fix the firmware this will be a great value. Hold off until it has something higher than Android 5.0.1.