Viewsonic Viewpad 10

Since the launch of the Apple iPad, other PC manufacturers have been busy trying to develop alternatives.

We have reviewed tablets that use the Android operating system such as the Samsung Galaxy Tab and Windows 7 (Novatech's nTablet), but the Viewsonic Viewpad 10 goes one better and comes with both Android and Windows 7 Home Premium installed.

It has a 10in touch-sensitive screen and weighs a relatively hefty 835g, which made it tiring to use without support. At one edge of the screen are buttons – Power, Home (used as the Esc key in Windows) and Enter.

The Viewpad looks identical to the Novatech nTablet, although the Viewpad has no mobile broadband capability – there is a slot to insert a phone Sim card but it doesn't work.

At one end of the tablet are two USB sockets, a connector for an external display (Viewsonic told us it does not yet have the cables for this) and a micro-SD memory card slot. There is also a headphone socket and a built-in microphone. The top edge has three small status lights next to the webcam.

Build quality was adequate although the brushed-aluminium bottom panel creaked a lot when held at one end and occasionally the Home button became stuck. There is no cover for the ports and no case is supplied, so these could easily become full of dust.

Once turned on the device displays a menu to choose between the two operating systems using the Home and Enter buttons. Windows took about 40 seconds to start but Android took less than half thatv – to switch you must restart the tablet.

For storage there is 16GB solid state disk instead of a hard disk, with 3GB free for your storage. No programs are included, so for example installing Office would use a large chunk of that. More space can be added using the memory card slot.

Android was simple to use, but the very brief manual only explains Windows 7's touch features, with no mention of Android. It was fine for email, but web browsing often took us to the limited mobile versions of websites rather than the full ones the screen is capable of displaying. Many Android applications don't display properly on screens this size.

At least Android is designed properly for touchscreens, which is more than we can say for Windows 7. This was enormously frustrating to control with fingers, especially when trying to select menu items. The on-screen keyboard was good, but in general it was not worth bothering with, and it was made worse by the poor display when viewed from below. It was better from above, but this mean we had to use it upside-down most of the time.

We were disappointed by the Viewpad experience, and at this price it's no bargain alternative to the iPad, which remains our tablet computer recommendation.