Ainol Novo 7 Venus looks like a Nexus 7, runs slower, costs $140

Chinese tablet makers Ainol Novo 7 Venus looks familiar — because it looks a lot like the $199 Google Nexus 7 tablet. And on paper, Ainol’s new $140 tablet looks like a pretty good low-cost alternative.

But you also kind of get what you pay for.

The Ainol Novo 7 Venus features a 7 inch, 1280 x 800 pixel IPS display with a capacitive multitouch panel, 1GB of RAM, and 16GB of storage. It runs Google Android 4.1 Jelly Bean and has a quad-core processor.

Unfortunately that quad-core processor is an ATM7029 chip which isn’t nearly as zippy as the NVIDIA Tegra 3 used in the Nexus 7. While it’s described as an ARM Cortex-A9 processor, there’s even some doubt about whether that’s true.

That said, the ATM7029 certainly isn’t an awful processor for a $140 tablet. It’s just not quite as fast as you might expect a quad-core chip to be.

The tablet also features Vivante GC1000 graphics, a 0.3MP front camera, and a 2MP rear camera (something the Nexus 7 lacks).

Ainol’s tablet measures 7.3″ x 5.” x 0.4″ and weighs 11 ounces. It has a 4000mAH battery which whe manufacturer says should provide 5 to 10 hours of battery life.

via Droid Life

Posted on Wednesday, January 16th, 2013, 1:30 pm by Brad Linder | 14 Comments

http://twitter.com/darethehair Darren Enns

I have also found that many of the Ainol tablets lack a GPS as well
John Morris

And notice what else it has, a memory slot. Amazing how that works, if it is an actual product it almost always has one and if it is a lossleader endpoint for an ecosystem it doesn’t. Seriously, how much does a MicroSD slot cost? Is there a single tablet that lacks the physical space for one?
HKA

GPS and Bluetooth would certainly have been nice, especially when it was announced to have those features a month ago but it might still be a nice addition to your digital collection. MicroSD slot is a plus as are the cameras (quality not to be counted on).HDMI out port is also nice for viewing video on your TV or Monitor.
Dim

I know this may sound strange but the Ainol was release in 12.5.2011 and the Nexus not until 7/13/2012 so who is copying whom?
Pat

The Ainol also has HDMI out and microSD support, both of which are NOT on the Nexus…
Imran

Just bought it (English version) and it has GPS too. May be the chinese version doesnt have.
George Kountouris

The Chinese version does not have GPS- I just got mine. It’s a pretty nice tablet for the money. I bought my wife the nexus 7 last Christmas, so I was comparing them. The nexus 7 benchmarked faster and the action was buttery smooth. The Ainol tablet action wasn’t bad by anymeans, had the sd slot, HDMI, a dongle for fullsize USB and a screen that was every bit as good as what is on the Nexus 7 (plus it comes rooted already). The Ainol is a better buy. I was scared opening the package, it looked as though it had been returned, the packaging stepped on several times- but other than the packaging being trashed, all the components were in pristine condition.
Kurt Meister

Sounds good Do you have full Google Play access and no restrictions?
http://www.facebook.com/LAB1NE Patrick Lefebvre

First I tried purchasing the Ainol-Novo Crystal from Amazon, that was an entirely different nightmare and mostly Amazon’s fault.

Being unable to purchase the Crystal, I decided to add a little money and get the Venus. More power and memory.
I ordered it January 31 and received it a week later.
Everything seemed fine…
Then only 3 weeks in… WiFi stopped working.
I reset the device to factory default.
Played around a little, WiFi came back on.
Reinstalled almost everything and reconfigured all my stuff…
WiFi stopped working again a few hours later… would not come back on.
Started
looking on the Internet… turns out it’s common, everywhere… all
over the place. People on forums all over the Internet get these Ainol
devices and sometimes WiFi doesn’t even work right out of the box.

I
sent 5 or 6 emails to Ainol over 4 days. Eventually they told me I
needed to apply a firmware update. Didn’t tell me WHERE to GET the
update.
I finally found a link on a forum pointing to their website with the update on it… in Chinese, with Chinese instructions…
Blah…

I
figured out how to install it. Unfortunately, having a hard time
following Chinese instructions, I made a mistake that turned my Ainol
Tablet into a Brick… Gah!!!

Finally after many hours messing around, I was finally able to fix it, and get the update on it…

NOPE…
WiFi still isn’t working. Being an IT guy, I was able to get a look at
the Android logs on the Ainol… it doesn’t even SEE a network chip on
there… this thing is totally broken.

now I’m expecting to have
the classic back and fourth, the run around, shipping it back all the
way to China yaddi yaddi yadda… it’s a freaking NIGHTMARE… plus at
BEST I lose the thing for 2 months… at worse, the thing’s a total
write-off because I just dont want to waste my time and suffer the
aggravation.

SO… being as this is a VERY VERY common problem with ALL Ainol tablets…
Seriously… spend the extra 30$… get yourself a Nexus or a Samsung instead…
Life’s too short… you know?
trip

I have checked the CPU on the Firewire and Venus tablets I have purchased direct from Ainol and both are fitted with an Arm v7 Processor Rev (v71). This is a dual core running at 1008Mhz. This is not the Allwiner A31 quadcore A7 that is advertise for the Firewire or the ATM 7029 quadcore Arm cortex A9 1GHz for the Venus 7 as having. I need you to either ship me an Ainol Novo 9 FireWire and Venus 7 with the specifications as advertised. The WiFi is poor also. Not a patch on my S2. Ainol are not the only Chinese tablet maker to make false claims about the hardware fitted. You get what you pay for.
trip

I have checked the CPU on the Firewire and Venus tablets I have purchased direct from Ainol and both are fitted with an Arm v7 Processor Rev (v71). This is a dual core running at 1008Mhz. This is not the Allwiner A31 quadcore A7 that is advertise for the Firewire or the ATM 7029 quadcore Arm cortex A9 1GHz for the Venus . The WiFi is poor also. Not a patch on my S2. Ainol are not the only Chinese tablet maker to make false claims about the hardware fitted. You get what you pay for.
Atomique

does anyone noticed the CPU speed on ainol venus 7?? it’s not 1,5 quad-core, it’s a 1,1GHz quad-core working only 980 MHz only … I sold nexus seven to buy this…has advantages and disadvantages… the main disadvantage is the faulty multi touch that can be noticed while playing games. For internet is perfect,…battery good, nice display and HD
http://www.facebook.com/Omong.Kosong Harry Ngegem

How can you say that Nexus 7′s price is $199 while there’s an advertising in this page with $224 price? ‘-_-
http://www.liliputing.com/ Brad Linder

Because the 16gb model sells for $199, the 32gb model costs $249 but sometimes goes on sale for less, and I don’t choose the ads that run on each page of this site. We contract with third party ad providers who use technology that automatically determines which ads to run.

Ainol Novo 7 Venus looks like a Nexus 7, runs slower, costs $140

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