TCL XESS home tablet
TCL, parent company of Alcatel has just announced
its next-generation XESS tablet. The TCL XESS tablet is a home-oriented 17.3-inch
Android-powered tablet with connected-hub capabilities. Like last year’s model,
the XESS comes with a network camera that you can set up in your home to check
on the kids, pets, or whatever you want to keep an eye on while at home or
away.
The tablet also comes pre-loaded with a kitchen
recipe application, one that will provide you with recipes with accompanying
video clips. The XESS tablet also comes enabled for Alexa out of the box. That
means that the XESS tablet can do everything the Amazon Echo can: control smart
home devices, change smart thermostats, control smart lights, tell you the
weather, sports scores, and ask general-knowledge questions like “how far is
the moon”, all with just the sound of your voice.
There are various gestures you could perform with your hand for hands-free
interaction. These gestures are nowhere to be found in the press release or the
product page. Perhaps the company thought it was too early to
promote the gesture navigation.
Specwise, the tablet runs a 1.5 GHz, octa-core AMD
CPU, 3GB of RAM, with 64GB of storage on-board. The tablet weighs 6 pounds, so
it likely won’t be something you bring with you onto an airplane. Also, the
17.3 inch screen has a 1080p resolution. Oh yeah, and the OS runs Android 5.1 Lollipop
with TCL’s home-oriented UI. A bit behind on software, especially for a smart
home hub.
The XESS tablet will go on sale starting today on
Amazon and can be purchased for US$ 499 in the US.