PRITOM 8 inch Tablet Android 13 4gb/64gb with code Sold by Cutesliving Store

Wasn't this or the 7" one, £27 in the recent sale/promotion that AliExpress always seem to be having?

Although this deal has expired, it, or something very similar, will almost certainly pop up again so I thought I'd share my experience as a warning for others.

I bought one of these specifically to use as a cheap offline e-reader and, to be honest, it does the job admirably however under no circumstances would I recommend using this as a 'normal' tablet.

I have no specific evidence that anything untoward is written into the firmware but there are quite a few red flags that suggest something isn't quite right. Things I've found so far -
- There's the usual spattering of Chinglish throughout the menus (not particularly unusual on cheap Chinese tech) that hints, at best, at some poor fiddling/optimisation.
- I keep getting 'warning' notifications to complete set up things that I'd skipped (on purpose). Tapping them results in no action except a new 'blank' notification.
- You cannot bring up the 'recent apps' view to see what is running and close apps (what don't they want us to see?)
- You cannot enter developer mode (requiring 7 taps on the build number in software information) to take a deeper look as it launches the calculator on the 5th tap. The calculator cannot be disabled as it can on stock Android.
- There's a bespoke video app that cannot be disabled or uninstalled that just looks 'hooky'.

If you're not at least mildly tech savvy, I'd say avoid this and all similar too cheap to be true Chinese tablets. If you do decide to take the plunge I'd strongly recommend signing up with a new, clean Google account specifically for this tablet rather than an existing one and I wouldn't risk using any app that requires entering sensitive passwords or data.