Teclast T50 in the test: An 11-inch tablet with good performance for only 120 euros

An actually usable tablet, only currently 120 Euros cost, but still comes with an 11-inch display, sufficient power and even LTE support? It sounds fantasy, but thanks to the Teclast T50 it is reality. What many cheap Chinese tablets try to do, the manufacturer has largely achieved here. Testing shows that the tablet still struggles with the typical weak points that we know from cheap tablets from the Far East. Testing shows what these are and what other points say for the device.

There’s nothing wrong with the Teclast T50’s design – if only for the reason that it’s so plain and simple. The aluminum housing is a uniform, round block, with a little variety thanks to the Teclast logo in the middle and a slightly contrasting color and plastic antenna module at the top.

The main camera at the back is attractively framed in a black cube with rounded corners. The front camera is on the long, right side of the device and is placed in the center. The edges of the display appear somewhat bulky and thick. The dimensions of the device are 260 × 164 millimeters – the average value for an 11-inch tablet. With its 9.7 millimeters thickness, the Teclast T50 is slightly thicker than its counterparts. The slightly increased weight of 510 grams also contributes to this. However, both values ​​are still within the range. The workmanship is generally fine, although a slight creaking sound in the case was noticeable during testing.

The display on the Teclast T50 is an 11-inch IPS panel with a resolution of 2000 × 1200 pixels. This is absolutely fine for this price range and brings us to a pixel density of around 212 ppi (pixels per inch). As expected, the refresh rate is 60Hz. There is nothing wrong with this screen in everyday life. Colour reproduction is fine, although a bit unnatural in some places. Contrast and viewing angles are also good.

Things get a little more difficult when it comes to brightness – the Teclast T50 only manages to achieve around 280 cd/m². It’s a little dark even indoors, and in most cases a tablet with this screen brightness is probably not suitable for use outdoors. Most of the competitors here are quite brilliant.

The Teclast T50 has two cameras – a main camera with a resolution of 20 megapixels and autofocus and a front camera that takes pictures with a resolution of 8 megapixels. Not surprisingly, you shouldn’t expect much from photos on a cheap tablet. Images from the main camera show weaknesses in colors that are often not reproduced realistically or are too oversaturated; everything looks unnatural and almost like an oil painting; the camera is hardly usable in the dark. The front camera offers similar performance, although we would rate it as suitable for video conferences. Video recording is possible at a maximum resolution of 1080p at 30 frames per second.

The Unisoc Tiger T616 is used as the processor. This is a chip that is now five years old and is manufactured using a 12 nm process. Despite its age, it is still suitable for entry-level devices as it has more than enough performance to be able to carry out everyday tasks without major problems. In the PCMark Work 3.0 benchmark, the device achieved around 8200 points, which corresponds to a good value in this price range. The 490 points that the device achieved in the 3DMark “Wild Life” graphics benchmark are less good. Far from simple casual games Angry Birds The performance here is not good enough for sports.

RAM is comparatively generous: 8 GB of RAM is available here, the manufacturer adds a completely unnecessary 8 GB of virtual RAM and comes up to 16 GB. The huge storage available is either 128 or 256 GB, which is as much.

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Other features of the device are also below par for the price. Users can rely on Wi-Fi 5 and Bluetooth 5.0 for communication services. It also has support for GPS with GLONASS and LTE mobile communication and that too with dual SIM. You don’t see this every day. The condition for dual SIM here is that you don’t use a microSD card. These are also supported, but take up one of the two SIM card slots.

The Teclast T50’s Widevine Level 1 certification, which many cheaper devices don’t have and thanks to which streaming in Full HD quality is also possible, seems just as rare as LTE. The four speakers deliver good sound, but surprisingly not very loud. It’s a shame that the manufacturer doesn’t offer a fingerprint sensor or a 3.5mm audio jack. The operating system used is Android 13, which is almost unchanged but comes with an old security patch from January 2024.

The manufacturer uses a 7500 mAh lithium-ion battery in the Teclast T50. In the PCMark battery test we achieved about 8 hours of playback time with the device. Considering the large battery, this is an average value, many competitors last a little longer. With high-intensity use it should still last up to two days. It charges at 20 watts.

The Teclast T50 is only available in gray. The storage combination with 8/128 GB is priced at Aliexpress 120 Euros,

In fact, there is hardly any equivalent tablet in this low price range. Amazon’s Fire HD10 (test report) also costs the same, but is noticeably slower and has a glossy display. For 50 euros more, buyers get the Blackview Tab 9 (test report), a more stylish device with Android 14 and a brighter display, but less performance.

With the T50, Teclast has managed to bring a solid but inexpensive tablet to the market that impresses in the most important areas. The 11-inch display is dark, but convincing in other respects. Performance is good, there’s plenty of memory and RAM and features are comparatively generous thanks to LTE, dual SIM and Widevine Level 1. It’s not surprising that we found shortcomings in things like camera quality or software – after all, this is still a cheap tablet from a small manufacturer.