LG G Pad 8.3 - Unboxing & Review

**Tethering Internet from Mobile Device to Tablet**

One of the standout features of the LG G Pad is its ability to tether internet from a mobile device, allowing users to maintain connectivity even when not connected to Wi-Fi. This feature allows users to access the internet on their tablet using their cellular connection, making it ideal for those who need to stay online without being in range of a Wi-Fi network.

**Split Keyboard and Thumb Typing**

The LG G Pad also features a split keyboard that allows for thumb typing, making it easier to navigate and type on the device. This feature is available in both landscape and portrait orientations, ensuring that users can adapt their typing style to suit their needs. The split keyboard is particularly useful for those who prefer a more traditional typing experience, allowing them to quickly and efficiently access websites, send emails, or take notes.

**Display and Reading Experience**

The LG G Pad boasts a stunning display that is bright, vivid, and sharp, making it an ideal device for reading. The screen is well-suited for consuming text-based content, with the smallest text remaining easily readable even at full brightness. The device's lightweight design and comfortable form factor make it perfect for reading textbooks or any other type of written material.

**Comparison to iPad Mini**

When compared to the iPad Mini, the LG G Pad has a slightly different design aesthetic. While the iPad Mini is thinner and wider in portrait orientation, the LG G Pad has a more pronounced curvature and is taller than the iPad Mini when held vertically. This makes the LG G Pad feel more comfortable to hold and use in landscape orientation. However, both devices are extremely lightweight and easy to carry around.

**Camera App and Features**

The LG G Pad's camera app offers a range of features that make it suitable for everyday photography. Users can tap to focus, adjust exposure, and take photos or record video. The device also supports HDR, Panorama, VR, and more, making it an excellent choice for capturing high-quality images. Additionally, the camera app features include settings options such as autofocus, image size, color effect, white balance, and more.

**Settings Panel**

The LG G Pad's settings panel is user-friendly and provides easy access to various settings options. Users can adjust settings such as volume control, shutter release, zoom key, and more from this convenient location. The settings panel also features advanced options like autofocus settings, image size, color effect, white balance, and more.

**System Performance**

The LG G Pad's system performance is mid-range, falling short of high-end smartphones but exceeding that of the iPad Mini without a Retina display. While it may not be as quick or smooth as the Nexus 7, the device still delivers a smooth user experience, especially with its software features and animations. However, it does lack modern hardware specs like a Snapdragon 800 processor clocked at 2.3 GHz.

**Software Features**

The LG G Pad comes with various software features that enhance its functionality and user experience. One notable feature is the "knock-on effect" or "knock-on feature," which allows users to quickly switch between different apps by simply tapping on the screen. This feature is particularly useful for those who frequently use multiple apps at once.

**Value and Recommendation**

Considering its impressive features, stunning display, lightweight design, and affordable price tag of $350, the LG G Pad is an excellent value proposition. It's a great choice for anyone looking for a tablet that can handle everyday tasks, browsing, reading, and more. With its beautiful display, comfortable form factor, and robust camera capabilities, the LG G Pad is highly recommended to anyone in the market for a new tablet.

**Front-Facing Camera Test**

In a test of the front-facing camera, it was found to be capable of recording 720p video at 30 frames per second. The device's audio pickup was also tested, revealing that the built-in microphones are effective at capturing high-quality audio.

**Indoor and Outdoor Tests**

Outdoor tests were conducted with the girls in a bright environment, allowing for an assessment of how well the camera performs in various lighting conditions. In indoor settings, the camera app allowed users to test its functionality and capabilities.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey guys mike here the detroitborg with a look at the lg g pad 8.3 8.3 is the size 8.3 inch lcd ips display so this is lg's return to the tablet market this is running android 4.2.2 and is really here to take on something like the ipad mini so i think it's kind of interesting that lg decided to go with the sort of mid-range size as opposed to the small 7-inch tablets or the larger 10-inch tablets so this seems to be the sweet spot of the market right now so this retails for 350 is available in wi-fi only at the time a cellular version has not been announced you can get this in black or white has 16 gigs of internal storage two gigs of ram a 1.7 gigahertz quad core snapdragon 600 processor 5 megapixel camera without without an led flash but we do have an ir blaster for controlling your tv and you do have a few features familiar to the lg g2 which we'll explore here so really this is sort of a companion device to the lg g2 both in its software as well as some features and we'll explore some of those here now we have a pretty decent 8.3 inch lcd ips display here with a resolution of 1200 by 1920 that gives us a pixel density of 273 so that's a little bit better than the ipad airs 264 not quite up to ipad mini retina display resolution with 326 ppi but still a pretty decent display for 350 dollars all right so let's go ahead and unbox this thing and i did remove a piece of tape that was holding down this flap was also covering up some of the information i wanted to show you guys i'm going to lift this lid up here there is our lg g pad little tab here to lift up so there it is we'll take a closer look at this it does have the silver back panel the with the plastic trim pieces very nice very lightweight and thin you can see i have a piece of plastic covering the screen right now let's set the other side and take a look at some of the accessories that come with it so we have our literature quick start guide we're familiar with this stuff we're gonna explore some of those features we also have our adapter this is our wall adapter fairly large obviously to charge this battery we have our micro usb charging cable as well and that's about it so you do not get headphones or anything like that all right so let's go ahead and get to the tablet and take a close look around first let's remove the plastic so we have a little tab up here to lift up all right so let's go and take a look at the design of the lg g pad i actually really like it we have this nice aluminum back panel which adds to the rigidity as well as that cool feeling when you handle it similar to something like an ipad mini now it doesn't completely surround the back it's just sort of a back panel it's not removable along the edge you have this plastic surround which is nice it's not a glossy plastic it's sort of a sandblasted plastic it feels similar texture to the metal very nice you can see it's got this nice design to it along the back you have these stereo speakers with these uh grilles as you can see inside along the side not much on the top you'll find your headphone jack as well as a micro sd card slot so you can expand storage up to 64 gigs we also have an ir blaster up here for controlling your av equipment of course they do give you software again very similar to the lg g2 you also have that five megapixel auto focusing camera capable recording video at 1080p at 30 frames per second this also has electronic stabilization built in we do have our volume controls on the right yeah the right side up and down as well as your sleep wake power on button again metal to match the metal along the side on the bottom you just find the micro usb connector which also is slim port so you can connect a display to your micro sd micro usb connector if you want to output your display to a device you also have your microphone down here look along the side you see we have this little bezel around the glass but mostly edge to edge glass you have no off screen android controls they're all on screen now at the top we'll find an ambient light sensor as well as a front-facing camera which is 1.3 megapixels and this records video up to 720p resolution all right so let's go ahead and boot this up i have been using this for about a week so it's all set up and ready to go all right so let's go ahead and start looking at our basic user interface starting with a lock screen as you can see we do have those familiar vienna boys choir ringtones or notification tones that we're familiar with on the lg g2 and i'll explore how you can deactivate those if they're annoying to you but you basically get this notification by default that life is good that's uh of course lg's branding all right so starting with the lock screen you see we have this little animation here for unlocking it but there are quite a few other things up here we can take a look at so we have these shortcuts to get to popular apps these are the ones they included by default so that includes chrome email the notebook app as well as the gallery and camera but you can also activate the camera by swiping to the right so that gets you to the camera or you can swoops let's go back to the lock screen you can also swipe across one of the widgets up here like the clock widget as you can see you get a little weather widget if you swipe to the right you can also add additional lock screen widgets so for example if you want your gmail widget you could do that as well and you can select your folder so now there you go if you go back to the lock screen let's take a look swipe there you go now like the lg g2 we also have that knock-on feature so basically you can double tap on the screen to unlock it sometimes it works sometimes it does it seems to be a lot less reliable with the g-pad you can also put it to sleep the same way just by double tapping on it and of course you can do this anywhere so for example if you're on your home screen just double tap on the home screen or if you're in an app that doesn't have really a blank touch area you can interface with like the browser so you can just double tap the top menu bar there to put it to sleep all right so let's go and take a look at the basic user interface starting with the home screen so you can pinch in and out to see all of your home screens and you can add new home screens or you can drag them up here to remove them you can also select which one you want to be your home screen by tapping that toggle up here and choosing which one you want hit home takes you back if you tap and hold anywhere on the home screen you get to your home screen editor so here are your apps these are the apps they've included you also have your widgets you also have your wallpaper so you can set your wallpapers from the screen so for example if you want to drag and drop any one of your apps in here you can take it up here or you can take it to one of the other home screens just drop it you can also remove them just by tapping and holding it taking up to remove the other great thing here is that you can draw drag and drop as many as you want here and you can folder them pretty easily so for example if i want to create the folders hover it over the other app and there you go and you can tap on that folder and you can edit the name but you also have several other options here you can change the folder color i can also edit the size of the folders by tapping and holding on it then you get this little editor and you can resize it to what you want now if you want to know more about your lg g pad just swipe all the way to the right and you get this little panel here full of tutorials so videos demonstrating some of its features and of course most of them will be demonstrated here now we also have our drop down notification shade which has been loaded with lots of settings and quick access toggles we have our brightness controls as well as our volume controls you can quickly enable auto mode you can also get to your volume settings here so you have very specific controls for those as well now you have lots of quick access settings up here including quick memo basically quick memo takes a screen grab of whatever you're doing right now that's just the home screen allows you to edit on it so for example even though we don't have a stylus here you can use your finger so you can change your your pen tip change your pen color and you can write on it hello and you can go ahead and save it so you can save it to either your gallery or your notebook app so let's go and save it to the notebook app now we can also toggle on quick remote so you can use your device to remotely control your av equipment we also have sound so you can set it to vibrate silent or regular sound we have wi-fi which you can toggle on and off bluetooth we have q pair which is a feature i'll demonstrate later gps rotation lock syncing mirrorcast so you can remotely display your your wirelessly display your screen onto a miracast tv we also have battery saver mode airplane mode screen timeout wireless storage so this has a feature where you can actually go to your uh to a computer like a web browser on a computer on your wireless network and and wirelessly access the storage of this device to transfer for example your photos or video airplane mode again you can just toggle on and off you get this little animation here now you can also edit what appears in this q slide memo so you can see you can select specific apps here or you can move them around now there's a lot of customization here you can also do this with the toggles up here if you go to edit again same story here you can select which ones you want to appear or you can move them around just by dragging and dropping them around now we also have these q slide apps and they're kind of windowed apps that enable some multitasking so for example we have the videos app uh internet browser the calendar an email app voicemail which is the voice assistant similar to siri or s voice and we have file the file manager a calculator and the memo so for example if you want a calculator brings up this sort of window that which you can move around and resize we have a little corner down here to resize the app i also have this transparency slider here which allows you to reduce its transparency so you can see whatever you're doing and you can interact with the screen without interacting with the app if you want to gain control of the app again you just have to bring up the opacity and you have your calculator now you can add other apps here so let's go ahead and add the memo app so there you go you can move this around and again you can tap on any one of them to cycle between them and you can also change the opacity on one of them so you can work on the other now you're limited to two so for example if you want to add the email app there you go maximum number of windows ready so we're going to have to close one of them to do that so you get the idea it's sort of a multitasking solution now like the lg g2 we also have slide aside which allows us to save up to three apps at once so for example we can bring up the chrome browser use this three finger gesture on the screen to slide it to the left and it saves the state we can do this for another app such as the gallery app slide it aside let's do the calendar app next slide aside so now we have a little notification up here letting us know that currently we have three apps that have been saved and you can also quickly access them by tapping it right there or you can use the three finger gesture to bring them up now you can see we have this little x up here to close them so if you want to close them you can but you can also bring them forward just by tapping on them now if you want to save the state again you do have to slide it aside again so you slide it out there are your three apps and you can swipe them out of the way tap on them slide it aside and add another app go back to the calendar slide aside and there you go so that's one way of multitasking i find it a little clumsy a little cumbersome you can also slide them out of the way to close them that's one way of managing it now taking a look at our android controls these are also translucent again just like on the lg g2 so for example if you're on the home screen the wallpaper completely fills up behind them of course not all apps support this such as chromes if you go to chrome it does not fill up behind them but these are highly customizable there are lots of options here we'll take a look at that on their settings but for right now this is the default configuration so we have our back button we have our home button and we have our settings button and this is contextual of course now our home button has several purposes so for example if you tap and hold on it takes you to your recent apps which allows you to quickly access them or close them so you can tap on that to get to them and you can close them to get rid of them now if you swipe up on the home button you can get to google now or you can get to voicemate or the quick memo now quick memo again takes a screen graph of whatever you're doing allows you to annotate on it now with a voicemail it's a voice assistant similar to siri's fully integrated what's the weather like tomorrow on saturday your current location will be mostly cloudy sail a reminder for 8 pm tonight to get this review done i'm sorry i did not understand so as you can see there are some limitations to this app compared to something like siri or google now which can perform those actions for you now you can also swipe up to get to google now but unfortunately it doesn't automatically activate voice search so you have to activate it manually set a reminder for 8 pm tonight to get this review done all right so you can see it's going to set my reminders so the great thing here is that even though voicemail is pretty limited at least you have full control here with uh the google now app now taking a look at our apps we have a full array of apps from both google and lg so it pretty much covers all the basics from a video editor right there it allows you to create a video just like imovie we have our google play apps such as play games magazines movies and tv play books we also have the google play store of course and then we have standard array of utilities such as the alarm clock app this allows you to for example add certain cities uh our calculator which is one of the qslide apps so basically you have a little minimize button up here which windows it for you and then you have your camera app chrome you also have the webkit browser right here the standard webcam browser you have your downloads folder you have your contacts gallery app gmail again google apps we also have lg backup which basically allows you to backup your device content to either the internal storage or to an sd card slot you also have something called life square which is an app i haven't been able to get to work properly but basically it aggregates everything from twitter and facebook as well as your valor gallery and your uh your calendars and that sort of thing your voice memos everything into this one sort of utility now we also have our memo app which is another q slide app here again so you can minimize it and window it for you or you can go to full screen you have our full keyboard here which we'll take a look at a bit later we also have our music player and they've given us a few songs to demonstrate here so we can do the vienna boys life is good choir also allows you to demonstrate those speakers again very good sounding speakers all right so now up here you have youtube which will do a search on youtube for this content so it brings it up for you as well now we also have this notebook app which basically allows you to scrapbook stuff so for example if you're doing a project such as a research project this is where you kind of drag and drop your clip art or your clipped items text that sort of thing all aggregates here so for example i did a screen grab recently should be in here somewhere so if i go to quick memo there it is so this allows me to continue editing that item or go ahead and create another project now we also have our tasks app so you can go ahead and create a new reminder and you can add an account to which it can sync to such as an email account and exchange account and that sort of thing we have the update center which is where you update all of your apps or your software installation so you can set it to automatic or check for updates now now we also have our videos app and they give us some samples here to test out the quality of the display so let's go ahead and go to norway take a look at the quality here now if you look really closely here you can see just how sharp this display looks excellent now since the video player is a qslide app you can also minimize it and continue playing your video in the background you can move it around as well as resize it and you can also change the transparency so you can uh interact uh with the screen behind it while your video continues to play and you can also maximize it again now we also have our voice mate app which again is a q slide app so you can minimize it and have voice made sort of hovering in the background working for you now we have the voice recorder app so you can record audio memos we also have the weather app which integrates with the lock screen weather widget now we also have box which is sort of a dropbox competitor it's basically online storage now we also have this dictionary app which allows you to download one dictionary for free so in my case i downloaded the english german dictionary uh if you want other ones you have to pay for them now we also have our file manager which is a really nice app you can see it sort of breaks it down into categories such as music video images and documents you can see a complete aggregation of your available space so if you select all files you can select your file tree and basically drill down and see everything but you can see how much storage we're taking up right now which is about looks like we have 9.47 gigs available only 11 gigs are available to the user so it looks like some of that has been eaten up by the operating system you also go to your video files and see them like that so you can see preload those are the files they've included of course you can add your own we also have the full polaris office suite for editing and creating office standard office files like word excel and powerpoint we have lg smart world which is basically their app store this is where you can purchase wallpapers ringtones and apps from lg and of course you have to create an lg account if you don't have one already you have your task manager here this is where you can stop your apps and see how much ram they're taking up you can see i have only 261 megs free and i can go ahead and stop them all now we also have this translator app which actually works pretty well so for example you can speak in a language and it will output in another language so right now i've selected english or german but you can select which language you want from here so let me go ahead and try this out now you can also take a photograph of text and translate it into another language and you can select whether you want to select a line a specific word or a block of text now let's go and take a look at some of our settings now we can jump to our settings either from this app or we can go to the drop down shade and the little settings icon next to the clock is right there so we have standard array of settings including wi-fi and up here you can see we have this little sort of toggle up here for turning certain features on you'll see this across the settings panel uh you also have bluetooth so you can change your bluetooth settings here data usage you have more settings as well wireless storage which you can toggle on mirrorcast which you can also talk on again all these are also available from the drop down menu smart share beam so you can turn on and receive multimedia content via smart share beam from lg phones or tablets which is an lg exclusive feature we also have vpn controls now under sound we also have our notification sounds and this is where you can turn off the default life is good vienna boy choir tone so you have lots of options here including other vienna boy tones and arpeggio uh so i find these particularly annoying of course the lg g2 has lots of these including ringtones and you can select something else now just to know we do have a vibration motor in this device so you do have haptic feedback display so you can change your home screen here so you can change the wallpaper screen wipe effect so you can see we have several options here i'm not going to go through all of them you can also allow screen looping so if you enable this if you go to screen looping now you can see it just continues to swipe through it they also have lock screen and this is where you can select which apps appear which shortcuts appear on the lock screen so if you go to this editor here you can see the ones they've included and you can go to this little edit icon so for example let's go ahead and remove notebook so it gets you to your apps and here you can delete the shortcut or you can select something else so for example if you want the calculator here just select that changes it to calculator now we can also see our storage here so you can see we have about 9.47 gigs available our battery so you can see how much battery is discharging you can also enable the battery percentage icon up here which is off by default you can also enable battery saver mode you can also see all of your apps as well so you can see downloaded running apps all apps and more you can see how much space we've used up so far you also see the slide the side effect which you can toggle on and off now we also have accounts and sync and this is where you can add additional google accounts or microsoft exchange accounts or email accounts such as an imap account now we also have users here so you can add additional users so right now i can see my account and i've also added another user so i can trash that user right now and we're going to add another one just to show you here so if you go to add user click ok and we're going to go ahead and set that up now so what happens when you do this is that if you go to the lock screen you have these two user icons down here so if you want to unlock and unlock in any one of these accounts just tap on any one of them and swipe up to access them and of course i just set this up i just set up this account so right now i'm going to have to reset my device just for that user now this means they can log into their own google account to sync all of their information without affecting yours now this user can completely customize their experience unique to them so for example they can choose their own wallpaper let's just go with the feather app or feather wallpaper click ok so you can see and they can also rearrange the apps they can put them in their own folders that sort of thing and now if you want to get to your account just lock the device unlock it select your account swipe up and there you go and it's just like nothing happened now like i said you can also delete that account because you are the account holder for this device now under our display settings we also have smart screen and smart video which are toggled off by default now this is familiar to the lg g2 as well and it's pretty similar to what samsung does so smart screen is like smart stay basically it monitors for the presence of your eyes using that front camera uh so it prevents the display from going to sleep we also have smart video which pauses video playback or resumes it depending on whether you're looking at or not now we can also configure our front touch buttons and as you can see we have our default configuration and you can pick ones that change the order or you can pick ones that actually add features including this sort of drop down shade button so instead of swiping down from the top you can actually tap the button down here you can also add quick memo so it has that quick memo icon which does a screen grab for us and allows us to annotate on it or you can add both so if you want both or you can change the order of how you want that so you can have both the drop down shade and the quick memo icon as well as all the other standard android controls now you can also change the theme from white to white gradation or black or black gradation as you can see it changes here now by default we have a transparent background but if you uncheck that and now go to the home screen you can see that our menu bar is now permanently opaque now you also have your location settings and this does have gps antennas in it uh security settings language and input backup and reset date and time accessibility pc connection so you can change how this behaves so for example uh the usb connection method you can see i have several options here accessory modes as well as about this tablet so here you can find out about your software so if we go to software information see android 4.2.2 now if we go to the webkit browser this actually has a feature that's kind of interesting here so i went to the verge this is a full desktop view of the verge if we go to menu here we have something called capture plus so basically what will happen is that it captures an image of the entire website from top to bottom and saves it to our photo gallery so you can crop it if you want but we're just going to save the entire thing and take a look at it so now if we go to our photo gallery you can pinch all the way in to see the text scroll around and you have it permanently saved in your gallery all right so let's take a quick look at q pair so q pair is an app that comes standard with the lg g pad and the lg g2 but you can download it free from the google play store as i have with my nexus 5 here they connect through bluetooth so they communicate through bluetooth and when you have it active you can actually see it in the notification panel up here so you can see a cue pair activated and you can tap on them to disable them so if you don't want this to constantly be happening you can turn them off so it does drain battery life when you're using this feature but basically allows your smartphone to stay connected to your tablet so you can receive call notifications you can't receive calls on the tablet but you can receive call notifications and you can reject them or send a notification for that sort of thing from your tablet but you do have to pick it up on your smartphone you can also receive message notifications uh so for example text messages will appear here and when they do they pop up on the screen and you can reply to them um but you do not have a messaging app on the tablet so all the history will not be saved on the tablet you have to go to your smartphone but it does stay sync so any message you send here will appear on your smartphone you can also receive social media notifications and you can select specifically which apps you want to receive notifications from such as facebook foursquare google plus hangouts and a lot of others i actually don't have installed on the other device but you can see twitter here so all of those will appear in your notification panel as well when you receive notifications on your phone of course you could just install those apps and it would do the same thing but you can also use tethering mode here this is where you can access tethering so you can tether your internet from your cellular internet from your mobile device to your tablet so you can maintain internet connectivity even when you're not in wi-fi now just to take a look at our keyboard we do have a split keyboard which is available here so if you split this allows you to thumb type it so this works in both landscape and portrait orientation now lg has done a really nice job with this display it's really bright and vivid with nice colors and it's really sharp so even the smallest text on the full website is still readable and it's definitely a great reading device and coupled with the fact that it's still really lightweight makes this a great uh tablet for reading textbooks or that sort of thing now just to give you an idea of the size comparison between this and the ipad mini now the ipad mini is certainly thinner but it is wider as you can see in portrait orientation and not as tall in landscape orientation that's because the ipad favors this 4x3 aspect ratio which gives you a pretty balanced experience both in portrait orientation as well as landscape orientation this is a little less comfortable to handle in portrait orientation just because there's so much weight toward the top so if you're down here handling the keyboard it does feel a little more awkward than something like the ipad mini this wants to be used mostly in landscape orientation which feels really comfortable but as you can see it's slight difference in size but both tablets are fairly lightweight and thin all right so let's go and take a look at our camera app so we have tap to focus also adjust the exposure depending on what you're tapping here you can shoot your photo you can also switch to video mode now when you record video you can also snap photos at the same time you can pause it and you can resume it or you can stop it now let's go back to still mode and you can see we have lots of options to pick from so we have normal dynamic or hdr panorama vr panorama continuous shot beauty shot time catch shot sports mode and night mode you can change the viewer here as you prefer now we also have settings here and if we go to standings we have lots of things that are easy to access right from the settings panel so you can go to autofocus change how that behaves you can change your image size you can change your color effect white balance so pretty nice user interface overall you can also enable your volume control for your shutter release or your zoom key you can also reset all these back to default you can also enable geo tagging so let's select on now of course you don't have features like dual shot mode and a lot of other things that the lg g2 can also do now in terms of system performance the lg g pad is sort of mid-pack it's still well south of something like a high-end modern smartphone like the nexus 5 and certainly well south of the ipad air but it's much better than the ipad mini without retina display now while this isn't as quick and smooth as something like the nexus 7 this is still a very smooth operating tablet especially for something that's heavily skinned so we have lots of software features and a lot of animations going on but it's really slick and smooth and it doesn't have really next generation hardware specs we don't have a snapdragon 800 processor clock at 2.3 gigahertz this is only 1.7 gigahertz so it still gets the job done especially on this high resolution display i'm pretty impressed overall by what i see here of course we have lots of software features some of them are useful so for example for me that knock-on effect or that knock-on feature is really useful i actually use it a lot i wish actually every device did this but in the end you're still left with what i think is the perfect size tablet with a beautiful display nice lightweight thin form factor that's made very well and cost only 350 dollars so i definitely highly recommend the lg g pad so that's going to do for me in this video thanks for watching and i'll see you again in the next one hey guys mike here the detroitborg testing out the front facing camera again this is 1.3 megapixels records video at 720p resolution so it's a pretty basic camera gets the job done also gives you an idea of the audio pickup of those microphones all right this is just a test of the main camera the rear firing cameras to see how this looks again this is a 1080p video at 30 frames per second and we're gonna do some indoor tests with the girls and then we're gonna go outside and take a look at how it works outside in bright light hey girls hey zoe he's zoey hey zoe what what chloe what the camera's over here they can't see you there there you are all right let's go outside so youhey guys mike here the detroitborg with a look at the lg g pad 8.3 8.3 is the size 8.3 inch lcd ips display so this is lg's return to the tablet market this is running android 4.2.2 and is really here to take on something like the ipad mini so i think it's kind of interesting that lg decided to go with the sort of mid-range size as opposed to the small 7-inch tablets or the larger 10-inch tablets so this seems to be the sweet spot of the market right now so this retails for 350 is available in wi-fi only at the time a cellular version has not been announced you can get this in black or white has 16 gigs of internal storage two gigs of ram a 1.7 gigahertz quad core snapdragon 600 processor 5 megapixel camera without without an led flash but we do have an ir blaster for controlling your tv and you do have a few features familiar to the lg g2 which we'll explore here so really this is sort of a companion device to the lg g2 both in its software as well as some features and we'll explore some of those here now we have a pretty decent 8.3 inch lcd ips display here with a resolution of 1200 by 1920 that gives us a pixel density of 273 so that's a little bit better than the ipad airs 264 not quite up to ipad mini retina display resolution with 326 ppi but still a pretty decent display for 350 dollars all right so let's go ahead and unbox this thing and i did remove a piece of tape that was holding down this flap was also covering up some of the information i wanted to show you guys i'm going to lift this lid up here there is our lg g pad little tab here to lift up so there it is we'll take a closer look at this it does have the silver back panel the with the plastic trim pieces very nice very lightweight and thin you can see i have a piece of plastic covering the screen right now let's set the other side and take a look at some of the accessories that come with it so we have our literature quick start guide we're familiar with this stuff we're gonna explore some of those features we also have our adapter this is our wall adapter fairly large obviously to charge this battery we have our micro usb charging cable as well and that's about it so you do not get headphones or anything like that all right so let's go ahead and get to the tablet and take a close look around first let's remove the plastic so we have a little tab up here to lift up all right so let's go and take a look at the design of the lg g pad i actually really like it we have this nice aluminum back panel which adds to the rigidity as well as that cool feeling when you handle it similar to something like an ipad mini now it doesn't completely surround the back it's just sort of a back panel it's not removable along the edge you have this plastic surround which is nice it's not a glossy plastic it's sort of a sandblasted plastic it feels similar texture to the metal very nice you can see it's got this nice design to it along the back you have these stereo speakers with these uh grilles as you can see inside along the side not much on the top you'll find your headphone jack as well as a micro sd card slot so you can expand storage up to 64 gigs we also have an ir blaster up here for controlling your av equipment of course they do give you software again very similar to the lg g2 you also have that five megapixel auto focusing camera capable recording video at 1080p at 30 frames per second this also has electronic stabilization built in we do have our volume controls on the right yeah the right side up and down as well as your sleep wake power on button again metal to match the metal along the side on the bottom you just find the micro usb connector which also is slim port so you can connect a display to your micro sd micro usb connector if you want to output your display to a device you also have your microphone down here look along the side you see we have this little bezel around the glass but mostly edge to edge glass you have no off screen android controls they're all on screen now at the top we'll find an ambient light sensor as well as a front-facing camera which is 1.3 megapixels and this records video up to 720p resolution all right so let's go ahead and boot this up i have been using this for about a week so it's all set up and ready to go all right so let's go ahead and start looking at our basic user interface starting with a lock screen as you can see we do have those familiar vienna boys choir ringtones or notification tones that we're familiar with on the lg g2 and i'll explore how you can deactivate those if they're annoying to you but you basically get this notification by default that life is good that's uh of course lg's branding all right so starting with the lock screen you see we have this little animation here for unlocking it but there are quite a few other things up here we can take a look at so we have these shortcuts to get to popular apps these are the ones they included by default so that includes chrome email the notebook app as well as the gallery and camera but you can also activate the camera by swiping to the right so that gets you to the camera or you can swoops let's go back to the lock screen you can also swipe across one of the widgets up here like the clock widget as you can see you get a little weather widget if you swipe to the right you can also add additional lock screen widgets so for example if you want your gmail widget you could do that as well and you can select your folder so now there you go if you go back to the lock screen let's take a look swipe there you go now like the lg g2 we also have that knock-on feature so basically you can double tap on the screen to unlock it sometimes it works sometimes it does it seems to be a lot less reliable with the g-pad you can also put it to sleep the same way just by double tapping on it and of course you can do this anywhere so for example if you're on your home screen just double tap on the home screen or if you're in an app that doesn't have really a blank touch area you can interface with like the browser so you can just double tap the top menu bar there to put it to sleep all right so let's go and take a look at the basic user interface starting with the home screen so you can pinch in and out to see all of your home screens and you can add new home screens or you can drag them up here to remove them you can also select which one you want to be your home screen by tapping that toggle up here and choosing which one you want hit home takes you back if you tap and hold anywhere on the home screen you get to your home screen editor so here are your apps these are the apps they've included you also have your widgets you also have your wallpaper so you can set your wallpapers from the screen so for example if you want to drag and drop any one of your apps in here you can take it up here or you can take it to one of the other home screens just drop it you can also remove them just by tapping and holding it taking up to remove the other great thing here is that you can draw drag and drop as many as you want here and you can folder them pretty easily so for example if i want to create the folders hover it over the other app and there you go and you can tap on that folder and you can edit the name but you also have several other options here you can change the folder color i can also edit the size of the folders by tapping and holding on it then you get this little editor and you can resize it to what you want now if you want to know more about your lg g pad just swipe all the way to the right and you get this little panel here full of tutorials so videos demonstrating some of its features and of course most of them will be demonstrated here now we also have our drop down notification shade which has been loaded with lots of settings and quick access toggles we have our brightness controls as well as our volume controls you can quickly enable auto mode you can also get to your volume settings here so you have very specific controls for those as well now you have lots of quick access settings up here including quick memo basically quick memo takes a screen grab of whatever you're doing right now that's just the home screen allows you to edit on it so for example even though we don't have a stylus here you can use your finger so you can change your your pen tip change your pen color and you can write on it hello and you can go ahead and save it so you can save it to either your gallery or your notebook app so let's go and save it to the notebook app now we can also toggle on quick remote so you can use your device to remotely control your av equipment we also have sound so you can set it to vibrate silent or regular sound we have wi-fi which you can toggle on and off bluetooth we have q pair which is a feature i'll demonstrate later gps rotation lock syncing mirrorcast so you can remotely display your your wirelessly display your screen onto a miracast tv we also have battery saver mode airplane mode screen timeout wireless storage so this has a feature where you can actually go to your uh to a computer like a web browser on a computer on your wireless network and and wirelessly access the storage of this device to transfer for example your photos or video airplane mode again you can just toggle on and off you get this little animation here now you can also edit what appears in this q slide memo so you can see you can select specific apps here or you can move them around now there's a lot of customization here you can also do this with the toggles up here if you go to edit again same story here you can select which ones you want to appear or you can move them around just by dragging and dropping them around now we also have these q slide apps and they're kind of windowed apps that enable some multitasking so for example we have the videos app uh internet browser the calendar an email app voicemail which is the voice assistant similar to siri or s voice and we have file the file manager a calculator and the memo so for example if you want a calculator brings up this sort of window that which you can move around and resize we have a little corner down here to resize the app i also have this transparency slider here which allows you to reduce its transparency so you can see whatever you're doing and you can interact with the screen without interacting with the app if you want to gain control of the app again you just have to bring up the opacity and you have your calculator now you can add other apps here so let's go ahead and add the memo app so there you go you can move this around and again you can tap on any one of them to cycle between them and you can also change the opacity on one of them so you can work on the other now you're limited to two so for example if you want to add the email app there you go maximum number of windows ready so we're going to have to close one of them to do that so you get the idea it's sort of a multitasking solution now like the lg g2 we also have slide aside which allows us to save up to three apps at once so for example we can bring up the chrome browser use this three finger gesture on the screen to slide it to the left and it saves the state we can do this for another app such as the gallery app slide it aside let's do the calendar app next slide aside so now we have a little notification up here letting us know that currently we have three apps that have been saved and you can also quickly access them by tapping it right there or you can use the three finger gesture to bring them up now you can see we have this little x up here to close them so if you want to close them you can but you can also bring them forward just by tapping on them now if you want to save the state again you do have to slide it aside again so you slide it out there are your three apps and you can swipe them out of the way tap on them slide it aside and add another app go back to the calendar slide aside and there you go so that's one way of multitasking i find it a little clumsy a little cumbersome you can also slide them out of the way to close them that's one way of managing it now taking a look at our android controls these are also translucent again just like on the lg g2 so for example if you're on the home screen the wallpaper completely fills up behind them of course not all apps support this such as chromes if you go to chrome it does not fill up behind them but these are highly customizable there are lots of options here we'll take a look at that on their settings but for right now this is the default configuration so we have our back button we have our home button and we have our settings button and this is contextual of course now our home button has several purposes so for example if you tap and hold on it takes you to your recent apps which allows you to quickly access them or close them so you can tap on that to get to them and you can close them to get rid of them now if you swipe up on the home button you can get to google now or you can get to voicemate or the quick memo now quick memo again takes a screen graph of whatever you're doing allows you to annotate on it now with a voicemail it's a voice assistant similar to siri's fully integrated what's the weather like tomorrow on saturday your current location will be mostly cloudy sail a reminder for 8 pm tonight to get this review done i'm sorry i did not understand so as you can see there are some limitations to this app compared to something like siri or google now which can perform those actions for you now you can also swipe up to get to google now but unfortunately it doesn't automatically activate voice search so you have to activate it manually set a reminder for 8 pm tonight to get this review done all right so you can see it's going to set my reminders so the great thing here is that even though voicemail is pretty limited at least you have full control here with uh the google now app now taking a look at our apps we have a full array of apps from both google and lg so it pretty much covers all the basics from a video editor right there it allows you to create a video just like imovie we have our google play apps such as play games magazines movies and tv play books we also have the google play store of course and then we have standard array of utilities such as the alarm clock app this allows you to for example add certain cities uh our calculator which is one of the qslide apps so basically you have a little minimize button up here which windows it for you and then you have your camera app chrome you also have the webkit browser right here the standard webcam browser you have your downloads folder you have your contacts gallery app gmail again google apps we also have lg backup which basically allows you to backup your device content to either the internal storage or to an sd card slot you also have something called life square which is an app i haven't been able to get to work properly but basically it aggregates everything from twitter and facebook as well as your valor gallery and your uh your calendars and that sort of thing your voice memos everything into this one sort of utility now we also have our memo app which is another q slide app here again so you can minimize it and window it for you or you can go to full screen you have our full keyboard here which we'll take a look at a bit later we also have our music player and they've given us a few songs to demonstrate here so we can do the vienna boys life is good choir also allows you to demonstrate those speakers again very good sounding speakers all right so now up here you have youtube which will do a search on youtube for this content so it brings it up for you as well now we also have this notebook app which basically allows you to scrapbook stuff so for example if you're doing a project such as a research project this is where you kind of drag and drop your clip art or your clipped items text that sort of thing all aggregates here so for example i did a screen grab recently should be in here somewhere so if i go to quick memo there it is so this allows me to continue editing that item or go ahead and create another project now we also have our tasks app so you can go ahead and create a new reminder and you can add an account to which it can sync to such as an email account and exchange account and that sort of thing we have the update center which is where you update all of your apps or your software installation so you can set it to automatic or check for updates now now we also have our videos app and they give us some samples here to test out the quality of the display so let's go ahead and go to norway take a look at the quality here now if you look really closely here you can see just how sharp this display looks excellent now since the video player is a qslide app you can also minimize it and continue playing your video in the background you can move it around as well as resize it and you can also change the transparency so you can uh interact uh with the screen behind it while your video continues to play and you can also maximize it again now we also have our voice mate app which again is a q slide app so you can minimize it and have voice made sort of hovering in the background working for you now we have the voice recorder app so you can record audio memos we also have the weather app which integrates with the lock screen weather widget now we also have box which is sort of a dropbox competitor it's basically online storage now we also have this dictionary app which allows you to download one dictionary for free so in my case i downloaded the english german dictionary uh if you want other ones you have to pay for them now we also have our file manager which is a really nice app you can see it sort of breaks it down into categories such as music video images and documents you can see a complete aggregation of your available space so if you select all files you can select your file tree and basically drill down and see everything but you can see how much storage we're taking up right now which is about looks like we have 9.47 gigs available only 11 gigs are available to the user so it looks like some of that has been eaten up by the operating system you also go to your video files and see them like that so you can see preload those are the files they've included of course you can add your own we also have the full polaris office suite for editing and creating office standard office files like word excel and powerpoint we have lg smart world which is basically their app store this is where you can purchase wallpapers ringtones and apps from lg and of course you have to create an lg account if you don't have one already you have your task manager here this is where you can stop your apps and see how much ram they're taking up you can see i have only 261 megs free and i can go ahead and stop them all now we also have this translator app which actually works pretty well so for example you can speak in a language and it will output in another language so right now i've selected english or german but you can select which language you want from here so let me go ahead and try this out now you can also take a photograph of text and translate it into another language and you can select whether you want to select a line a specific word or a block of text now let's go and take a look at some of our settings now we can jump to our settings either from this app or we can go to the drop down shade and the little settings icon next to the clock is right there so we have standard array of settings including wi-fi and up here you can see we have this little sort of toggle up here for turning certain features on you'll see this across the settings panel uh you also have bluetooth so you can change your bluetooth settings here data usage you have more settings as well wireless storage which you can toggle on mirrorcast which you can also talk on again all these are also available from the drop down menu smart share beam so you can turn on and receive multimedia content via smart share beam from lg phones or tablets which is an lg exclusive feature we also have vpn controls now under sound we also have our notification sounds and this is where you can turn off the default life is good vienna boy choir tone so you have lots of options here including other vienna boy tones and arpeggio uh so i find these particularly annoying of course the lg g2 has lots of these including ringtones and you can select something else now just to know we do have a vibration motor in this device so you do have haptic feedback display so you can change your home screen here so you can change the wallpaper screen wipe effect so you can see we have several options here i'm not going to go through all of them you can also allow screen looping so if you enable this if you go to screen looping now you can see it just continues to swipe through it they also have lock screen and this is where you can select which apps appear which shortcuts appear on the lock screen so if you go to this editor here you can see the ones they've included and you can go to this little edit icon so for example let's go ahead and remove notebook so it gets you to your apps and here you can delete the shortcut or you can select something else so for example if you want the calculator here just select that changes it to calculator now we can also see our storage here so you can see we have about 9.47 gigs available our battery so you can see how much battery is discharging you can also enable the battery percentage icon up here which is off by default you can also enable battery saver mode you can also see all of your apps as well so you can see downloaded running apps all apps and more you can see how much space we've used up so far you also see the slide the side effect which you can toggle on and off now we also have accounts and sync and this is where you can add additional google accounts or microsoft exchange accounts or email accounts such as an imap account now we also have users here so you can add additional users so right now i can see my account and i've also added another user so i can trash that user right now and we're going to add another one just to show you here so if you go to add user click ok and we're going to go ahead and set that up now so what happens when you do this is that if you go to the lock screen you have these two user icons down here so if you want to unlock and unlock in any one of these accounts just tap on any one of them and swipe up to access them and of course i just set this up i just set up this account so right now i'm going to have to reset my device just for that user now this means they can log into their own google account to sync all of their information without affecting yours now this user can completely customize their experience unique to them so for example they can choose their own wallpaper let's just go with the feather app or feather wallpaper click ok so you can see and they can also rearrange the apps they can put them in their own folders that sort of thing and now if you want to get to your account just lock the device unlock it select your account swipe up and there you go and it's just like nothing happened now like i said you can also delete that account because you are the account holder for this device now under our display settings we also have smart screen and smart video which are toggled off by default now this is familiar to the lg g2 as well and it's pretty similar to what samsung does so smart screen is like smart stay basically it monitors for the presence of your eyes using that front camera uh so it prevents the display from going to sleep we also have smart video which pauses video playback or resumes it depending on whether you're looking at or not now we can also configure our front touch buttons and as you can see we have our default configuration and you can pick ones that change the order or you can pick ones that actually add features including this sort of drop down shade button so instead of swiping down from the top you can actually tap the button down here you can also add quick memo so it has that quick memo icon which does a screen grab for us and allows us to annotate on it or you can add both so if you want both or you can change the order of how you want that so you can have both the drop down shade and the quick memo icon as well as all the other standard android controls now you can also change the theme from white to white gradation or black or black gradation as you can see it changes here now by default we have a transparent background but if you uncheck that and now go to the home screen you can see that our menu bar is now permanently opaque now you also have your location settings and this does have gps antennas in it uh security settings language and input backup and reset date and time accessibility pc connection so you can change how this behaves so for example uh the usb connection method you can see i have several options here accessory modes as well as about this tablet so here you can find out about your software so if we go to software information see android 4.2.2 now if we go to the webkit browser this actually has a feature that's kind of interesting here so i went to the verge this is a full desktop view of the verge if we go to menu here we have something called capture plus so basically what will happen is that it captures an image of the entire website from top to bottom and saves it to our photo gallery so you can crop it if you want but we're just going to save the entire thing and take a look at it so now if we go to our photo gallery you can pinch all the way in to see the text scroll around and you have it permanently saved in your gallery all right so let's take a quick look at q pair so q pair is an app that comes standard with the lg g pad and the lg g2 but you can download it free from the google play store as i have with my nexus 5 here they connect through bluetooth so they communicate through bluetooth and when you have it active you can actually see it in the notification panel up here so you can see a cue pair activated and you can tap on them to disable them so if you don't want this to constantly be happening you can turn them off so it does drain battery life when you're using this feature but basically allows your smartphone to stay connected to your tablet so you can receive call notifications you can't receive calls on the tablet but you can receive call notifications and you can reject them or send a notification for that sort of thing from your tablet but you do have to pick it up on your smartphone you can also receive message notifications uh so for example text messages will appear here and when they do they pop up on the screen and you can reply to them um but you do not have a messaging app on the tablet so all the history will not be saved on the tablet you have to go to your smartphone but it does stay sync so any message you send here will appear on your smartphone you can also receive social media notifications and you can select specifically which apps you want to receive notifications from such as facebook foursquare google plus hangouts and a lot of others i actually don't have installed on the other device but you can see twitter here so all of those will appear in your notification panel as well when you receive notifications on your phone of course you could just install those apps and it would do the same thing but you can also use tethering mode here this is where you can access tethering so you can tether your internet from your cellular internet from your mobile device to your tablet so you can maintain internet connectivity even when you're not in wi-fi now just to take a look at our keyboard we do have a split keyboard which is available here so if you split this allows you to thumb type it so this works in both landscape and portrait orientation now lg has done a really nice job with this display it's really bright and vivid with nice colors and it's really sharp so even the smallest text on the full website is still readable and it's definitely a great reading device and coupled with the fact that it's still really lightweight makes this a great uh tablet for reading textbooks or that sort of thing now just to give you an idea of the size comparison between this and the ipad mini now the ipad mini is certainly thinner but it is wider as you can see in portrait orientation and not as tall in landscape orientation that's because the ipad favors this 4x3 aspect ratio which gives you a pretty balanced experience both in portrait orientation as well as landscape orientation this is a little less comfortable to handle in portrait orientation just because there's so much weight toward the top so if you're down here handling the keyboard it does feel a little more awkward than something like the ipad mini this wants to be used mostly in landscape orientation which feels really comfortable but as you can see it's slight difference in size but both tablets are fairly lightweight and thin all right so let's go and take a look at our camera app so we have tap to focus also adjust the exposure depending on what you're tapping here you can shoot your photo you can also switch to video mode now when you record video you can also snap photos at the same time you can pause it and you can resume it or you can stop it now let's go back to still mode and you can see we have lots of options to pick from so we have normal dynamic or hdr panorama vr panorama continuous shot beauty shot time catch shot sports mode and night mode you can change the viewer here as you prefer now we also have settings here and if we go to standings we have lots of things that are easy to access right from the settings panel so you can go to autofocus change how that behaves you can change your image size you can change your color effect white balance so pretty nice user interface overall you can also enable your volume control for your shutter release or your zoom key you can also reset all these back to default you can also enable geo tagging so let's select on now of course you don't have features like dual shot mode and a lot of other things that the lg g2 can also do now in terms of system performance the lg g pad is sort of mid-pack it's still well south of something like a high-end modern smartphone like the nexus 5 and certainly well south of the ipad air but it's much better than the ipad mini without retina display now while this isn't as quick and smooth as something like the nexus 7 this is still a very smooth operating tablet especially for something that's heavily skinned so we have lots of software features and a lot of animations going on but it's really slick and smooth and it doesn't have really next generation hardware specs we don't have a snapdragon 800 processor clock at 2.3 gigahertz this is only 1.7 gigahertz so it still gets the job done especially on this high resolution display i'm pretty impressed overall by what i see here of course we have lots of software features some of them are useful so for example for me that knock-on effect or that knock-on feature is really useful i actually use it a lot i wish actually every device did this but in the end you're still left with what i think is the perfect size tablet with a beautiful display nice lightweight thin form factor that's made very well and cost only 350 dollars so i definitely highly recommend the lg g pad so that's going to do for me in this video thanks for watching and i'll see you again in the next one hey guys mike here the detroitborg testing out the front facing camera again this is 1.3 megapixels records video at 720p resolution so it's a pretty basic camera gets the job done also gives you an idea of the audio pickup of those microphones all right this is just a test of the main camera the rear firing cameras to see how this looks again this is a 1080p video at 30 frames per second and we're gonna do some indoor tests with the girls and then we're gonna go outside and take a look at how it works outside in bright light hey girls hey zoe he's zoey hey zoe what what chloe what the camera's over here they can't see you there there you are all right let's go outside so you\n"