The New E-Fun Nextbook 8

Design
The Nextbook 8 is just the right size to use with one or two hands, provides significantly more screen space than your phone, and slips easily into a large pocket to take on the go. Measuring 0.35 by 4.84 by 8.46 inches (HWD) and 0.82 pounds, the compact tablet is roughly the same size as the Toshiba Encore and the Asus VivoTab Note 8.

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The 8-inch display covers the front of the tablet, but offers only five points of touch and a basic 1,280-by-800 resolution. This is common in lower-priced systems, but the quality (or lack thereof) is very noticeable, especially when compared with the In-Plane Switching (IPS) displays of the Asus VivoTab Note 8 and the Acer Iconia W4-820-2466. The panel itself suffers from severely limited viewing angles in any direction, with dramatic color distortion and negative effects when viewed from only a few inches off-center. The built-in speakers are too quiet to hear at low volume and don't sound good at higher volumes. You'll do far better with a pair of headphones.

The built-in cameras are similarly low quality. The rear-facing, 8 megapixel camera will do fine with basic snapshots, but colors are off (bright colors look very muted, and white objects took on a decidedly yellow tint in my testing). And you'll need to watch out for bright lights and dark shadows, since the camera doesn't handle dynamic contrast very well. The front-facing, 2-megapixel camera is more of a problem. The automatic brightness adjustment is dismal, and the limited viewing angles of the display combine to make a halfway-decent shot for a basic Skype call nearly impossible.
The 8-inch size works well for a tablet. I could easily use it with one hand, while still being able to scroll through apps using just my thumb. With two hands, typing is easy with the on-screen keyboard , and it's simple to hold the tablet in one hand and navigate apps and menus with the other. The tablet is meant to be held in Portrait orientation, putting the built-in webcam at the top of the display, but it also works just as well in a horizontal Landscape orientation. On the right-hand side of the chassis are physical buttons for Power, Volume Up/Down, and a physical Windows button instead of the touch-sensitive Windows logo seen on other tablets.
Features
Port selection is sparse, with only a few connections offered, all found on the top edge of the tablet. There are connectors for Micro USB (which doubles as a power connector), Micro HDMI-out, a microSD card slot, and a headset jack. The microSD slot lets you add up to 64GB of storage, which you'll want to take advantage of, since the tablet itself has only 16GB of onboard storage, and most of that is filled by the operating system and software. Compared with the 32GB that comes standard with the Lenovo Miix 2 8 and the 64GB of the Acer Iconia W4-820-2466, this is quite small. As of this writing, E-Fun also includes a free 16GB microSD card with each tablet, effectively doubling the storage size. This limited time offer is set to end December 31st.

To bolster the local storage, Microsoft offers a free terabyte of OneDrive storage for 12 months. You'll also get a one-year subscription to Office 365 Personal, which includes all of Microsoft's productivity tools, like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote, along with Outlook for email. Both OneDrive and Office 365 require activation within 6 months of purchase. Aside from these offerings, there isn't much preinstalled on the tablet, though it does come with Skype and Barnes & Noble's Nook ebook reading app.
Aside from the ports and connections, the Nextbook 8 doesn't offer many of the smartphone sensors and capabilities usually found in smaller tablets. There is no stylus or GPS functionality, like you'd get with the Asus VivoTab Note 8, but there is a 3-Axis G-sensor, which lets it sense tilt and auto-rotate the display. For wireless connectivity, the tablet is outfitted with 802.11n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0, and there's no option for mobile data. E-Fun covers the Nextbook 8 with a one-year warranty.
Performance
The tablet is equipped with an Intel Atom Z3735G quad-core processor and 1GB of RAM. While that's enough to run Windows (at 32-bit, not 64-bit) and Windows apps, you'll still run into issues if you try to run the same software you would use on your laptop PC. It completed our Photoshop CS6 test, but took 22 minutes 48 seconds to crawl through it. Most of our basic benchmark tests wouldn't run, like PCMark 8 Work Conventional, Cinebench R15, and Handbrake, but this wasn't unexpected—with only 1GB of RAM, no 64-bit support, and a low-power processor, these limitations are just part of the tradeoff made for the low price. You'll still be able to run the included apps and all of your Office programs, and you shouldn't have any problems with Web browsing and streaming media, aside from some slow loading times.

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While a Windows tablet will let you run some of your regular software, the integrated graphics solution used by the Atom Z3735G isn't good for much more than basic video and Web games. The low-powered tablet completed 3DMark CloudGate with 799 points, but was unable to run the more demanding 3D Mark FireStrike.
Battery life is pretty short. The tablet lasted just 6 hours 49 minutes in our battery rundown test. The Editors' Choice Asus VivoTab Note 8, for example, lasted 9:10 in the same test, more than 2 hours longer.
Conclusion
A low sticker price and an even lower sales price can make any product tempting, but when it comes to Windows tablets, the difference in experience between a $250 device and one costing $150 is enormous. One will leave you feeling like you got a solid device at an affordable price, while the other is likely to leave you disappointed. That said, the E-Fun Nextbook 8 is priced so low as to be nearly disposable, and that's probably the best way to approach it. If you want to get a tablet for a child or family member who won't care about the overall quality, it's a great choice. For a better tablet PC overall, we strongly recommend the Editors' Choice Asus VivoTab Note 8, which offers better battery life, a fuller feature set, and still sells for under $250.