Tesco Hudl 2 review

"This is a stylish, desirable, and cheap full-featured Android tablet that will satisfy the whole family. It completely outshines virtually everything in the same price bracket. You'll be impressed at just how much Tesco's Hudl 2 offers for your money."

For

Great value for money
Decent HD screen
Handy parental controls

Against

Poor battery life
Tesco launcher sluggish
Limited internal storage

It doesn't take a huge wad of cash to secure an Android tablet nowadays, but the experience at the budget end of the market can be frustratingly bad. It was only a matter time before someone aside from Google managed to produce a halfway decent, budget tablet, offering the full Android experience, but who knew it would be Tesco?
Step aside Google, out of the way Amazon, it takes a British supermarket to show you how to make a jaw-droppingly cheap tablet that's actually desirable. If you're looking for a tablet for the kids, something cheap to use around the house, or an affordable option for the tablet-virgin in your life, the Tesco Hudl 2 is going be downright impossible to ignore.
This is an accessible device with an HD display, solid build quality, and almost unadulterated Android 4.4 KitKat. You won't be shocked to find that the Hudl 2 costs less than half the price of the iPad mini 2, but it's also £70 cheaper than the Nexus 7 or the Kindle Fire HDX. Every little helps indeed.
Building on the success of the original Hudl, which now drops from £119 to £99, Tesco's Hudl 2 is bigger and better in almost every way. There's a larger 8.3-inch HD screen, a quad-core processor that Tesco claims is three times faster, double the RAM at 2GB, and a slightly improved 5MP camera.
I did not expect to be charmed by the Hudl 2. It only costs £129, it has a stupid name, and it's part of Tesco's bizarre plan to make and do everything. It was with some reluctance, reticence, and even regret that I put my Google Nexus 7 (2013) aside and took up my new tablet. Hudl round and allow me to explain how Tesco's tablet won me over.

Google's first Nexus 7 tablet made the smaller tablet form factor fashionable, but just as smartphone displays are growing consistently larger, so are tablets.
When Apple decided to enter the smaller tablet market it chose to make the first iPad mini's display 7.9 inches. Tesco takes the trend slightly further with an 8.3-inch display in the Hudl 2.
That display is the first thing you're going to notice taking the Hudl 2 out of the box and it makes a great first impression. The resolution has been significantly boosted to 1920 x 1200 pixels. That's a full high definition screen that matches the Nexus 7 (2013) resolution.

Colours are rich and vibrant, text is sharp and easy to read, and you can happily watch movies, game, or read on it for hours.
It feels like quite a big tablet if you're coming from the older Hudl or a Nexus 7. The Hudl 2 measures 224 x 128 x 9 mm (8.8 x 5 x 0.35 inches). If you hold it in landscape then it's much wider and slightly slimmer than its predecessor, but exactly the same height. It's also pretty heavy at around 410g, compared to 370g for the original Hudl, and just 290g for the Nexus 7 (2013).
I can hold the tablet one-handed for short periods, but if you're reading or watching a movie you'll want to prop it or your arm is going to get tired. Two hands are obviously a necessity for navigation.

It does feel nicely balanced and it's satisfyingly slim. The soft touch coating on the back wraps around the sides adding grip and making it very comfortable to hold.
It feels most natural to hold it in landscape and the larger bezels at either end make this easy to do without obscuring the screen.
Flip around to the back and you'll find a metallic embossed Hudl logo in the centre. Two fairly large speaker grills dominate either end and the camera lens sits above the right speaker grill at the top corner.

Still holding it in landscape, the left edge of the Hudl 2 plays host to a standard 3.5mm headphone port. The right has the micro USB port for file transfer and charging.
Up top there's a volume rocker with a power button just beneath it. The buttons are plastic and they have a decent amount of travel. It's not hard to find and use them in the dark.
The bottom edge includes an open microSD card slot for storage expansion with cards up to 32GB in size. It looks a little odd that the port is open and you can expect a bit of dust collection if you don't use it, but it's fairly unobtrusive.

Further along towards the middle of the bottom edge there's a surprise micro-HDMI out connection so that you can plug your Hudl 2 directly into your TV. This is a rarity on tablets nowadays and it's one that some people will appreciate because it makes it very easy to play content from your tablet on the big screen.
The Hudl 2 feels surprisingly premium and it looks good too. I had the black model for review, but you can add some colour if you prefer as it's available in blue, turquoise, orange, pink, purple, red, or white.
Based on the design alone I would never have guessed that this tablet was so cheap.

Interface and performance

The Tesco Hudl 2 runs Android 4.4.2 and it's basically stock Android, just like Google's Nexus tablets. All Tesco has done is load its own smattering of apps and the My Tesco launcher. The launcher has some Tesco widgets pointing you at Tesco content and a basic app drawer.
Tesco Hudl 2 review

You can't uninstall the apps, but you can disable them. You can also download a new launcher, such as the Nova Launcher and make it the default instead of My Tesco launcher.
The interface is essentially stock Android. You have three home screens to begin with, but you can add a couple of extras by dragging app icons or widgets to the edge for a total of five home screens.
The app drawer is bottom centre in the permanent dock where you can configure three app shortcuts either side. The app drawer is slightly different in that it's just a big list of your apps, there's no widget tab in there.
You long press on the screen to add widgets, or to change your wallpaper. Tesco includes a large selection of wallpapers featuring happy people huddling together.
Pull down from the top left of the screen and you'll get your notifications. Pull down from the top right and you can access settings. Stock Android is a breeze to use and it's very easy to get to grips with.
I found the My Tesco launcher a little bit laggy. The animation when you swipe isn't always very smooth and the widget can take a while to populate. When I switched to the Nova launcher navigation felt that little bit snappier.

Taking a look inside the Hudl 2 you'll find an Intel Atom quad-core processor clocked at 1.83GHz. It's backed up by 2GB of RAM. That's a major boost over the original Tesco Hudl and it does feel fast and responsive. For the most part apps and games are quick to load and you can skip back to the home screen with a tap.
Geekbench 3 gave the Hudl 2 a single-core score of 792, but we're really interested in the 2147 multi-core score. I ran Geekbench 3 on my Nexus 7 (2013) and it scored 576 and 1896 respectively. When we tested the, much more expensive, Galaxy Tab Pro 10.1 earlier this summer it scored 2722.
What we can conclude from all this is that the Hudl 2 is fast and performs well. I ran some high-end games like Asphalt 8 and there was nary a stutter. It gets pretty hot around the back near the camera when you play graphically intensive games for any length of time, but so does my Xperia Z2 and my Nexus 7.

It hasn't all been rosy, there were a couple of moments when the Hudl 2 seemed to freeze coming out of an app. I suspect that the My Tesco launcher is the culprit there.
It also completely refused to turn on at one point. I was watching Netflix, using the Hudl 2 to select content and streaming it to my Chromecast. I watched a couple of episodes of Suits and when I went to stop it, the Hudl 2 simply didn't respond to the power button.
I tried holding it down for ten seconds, nothing. I tried holding down the power button and the volume down button for ten seconds, still nothing. The battery hadn't been low, but I tried plugging the Hudl 2 into the charger for a while anyway and the screen seemed to come on, but it was blank and dull.
I read the booklet, but it has no information and the current technical support on Tesco's website still refers to the original Hudl.

After half an hour of charging I unplugged it and tried again, but it still wouldn't turn on. Finally I just sat holding down the power button and the volume down button and eventually the Hudl 2 vibrated and powered completely off.
When it started up again it went through the boot cycle and worked as normal. I used the Hudl 2 with Netflix and the Chromecast again several times, but it never happened again.
For the most part the Hudl 2 performed well during our time together. There's no telling how often it will get updates. My Nexus 7 already has Android 4.4.4, while the Hudl 2 is on 4.4.2 and I did check for updates with no results

Battery life

Tesco prefers to state "up to 8 hours battery life" rather than provide us with a capacity in mAh. I suspect that the battery isn't all that big, and that's a shame, because the Hudl 2 really needs a big battery.
Tesco Hudl 2 review

I found that the battery drained very quickly out of the box, but it's not unusual for batteries to take a while to bed in and you tend to use new devices more than you realize in the first few days. There's also an additional drain from downloading and installing all your regular apps.
After fully charging the Hudl 2, I gave it a lazy Sunday test. I surfed the web for a couple of hours, played Clash of Clans for ten minutes, watched two movies, and then the kids watched an episode of Spongebob. By the end of that it was dropping down to the 10 percent mark. Not too impressive.
In an average week day with light usage you probably aren't going to have any problems, and you might squeeze a couple of days of use out of it between charges. Medium and heavy users are going to have to get used to charging it daily at least.

Playing a relatively simple game like Duet for ten minutes drained the battery by 4%. Playing Asphalt 8 for ten minutes drained it by 6%.
Tesco Hudl 2 review

Running our 90 minute battery test video at full brightness on a fully charged Hudl 2 reduced the battery to just 63%. That's a worryingly large drain of 37 percent.
The original Hudl only lost 21%, the Nexus 7 dropped 20%, and even the relatively poor LG G Pad 8.3 only dropped 30% during the same test.
If you want a tablet to take out and about on your travels, then you had better look elsewhere. The Hudl 2's weak battery shouldn't be such a big issue when you're at home with a plug socket at hand, but I'm still disappointed at its lack of stamina.

The essentials

Since the Hudl 2 is essentially using stock Android the basic essentials are solid. The keyboard is accurate and easy to type on. The stock Android calendar, email, contacts, and camera apps are straightforward.
You'll find the same redundancy you get on many Android devices with Google's Gmail app and an email app, as well as a Gallery app and Google's Photos app. It's not an especially big deal, but it's going to confuse some people.
Tesco Hudl 2 review

In addition to Tesco's Blinkbox content offerings you'll find apps for ordering food, banking, clothes, managing your Clubcard, and Tesco's photo store. Some of them aren't apps at all; they're just shortcuts to the website. All are useless and eminently ignorable if you don't use Tesco.
All of Google's content apps are there and you'll also find Google Maps. I tested it a couple of times and the Hudl 2 GPS was quick to get an accurate fix. You're not likely to use it for navigating, especially with the limited battery, but you could if you wanted to.
You'll find Google's Chrome browser as the default web browser on the Hudl 2, but there is a slight oddity related to the parental controls for your children's profiles.
If you set up a child's profile and limit web access then they use a special browser labelled Internet which keeps them from browsing anywhere you don't want them to. It works, but it's not as slick or fast as Chrome.
Camera

Why do they put cameras on tablets? The Tesco Hudl 2 has no answer.
Tesco has beefed up the main camera to 5MP, compared to the 3.2MP in the original Hudl, but the front-facing camera has gone the other way from 2MP down to 1.2MP. Megapixels aren't everything, but it would be challenging to argue that there's anything impressive about either camera in the Hudl 2.

It's a little strange that the front-facing camera has been hobbled when it's probably the more likely to get used, whether for apps or for making Internet calls on apps like Hangouts and Skype.
The app is the stock Android camera app and it's very basic. You can switch on grid lines to help you line up shots, or you can swivel to the front-facing camera.

There's also a timer option. If you swipe in from the left side of the screen you'll reveal the menu where you can switch to video or try out the Lens Blur, Panorama, or Photo Sphere effects.
Tesco Hudl 2 review

You can tap on screen to tell the camera to focus on a specific area or subject. It's pretty slow to actually take a shot and the quality is generally poor. Google's camera effects are a bit gimmicky and can be very frustrating to actually pull off, with repeated errors about moving too fast when you try to pan.
The photos I took with the Hudl 2 were all bad. They lack detail, contrast is bad, and the camera can't deal with low light at all. There's no flash, so this is strictly a camera for well-lit situations.
The video camera is equally terrible, struggling to adjust to changing light, blurring if you move it, and introducing loads of noise unless you're in a very well lit area.