PiPo Max M9 Review - The First Available Quad-Core RK3188

Let's start by talking specs... and I will highlight some of the good and bad I as move through. Hardware IS something this device packs in well... The Pipo Max M9 is the first unit out of China to offer the much anticipated Rockchip RK3188. Why is this much anticipated? Frankly, in this reviewer's opinion it is highly anticipated because of the RK3066, a dual-core chip from Rockchip that has transformed the China mobile chip market's target audience from the occasional (and serious) Western a hobbyist to the much more... harder to please... Western consumer. Why harder to please? Because the Western markets have been dominated by devices packing IPS displays and dual-core Tegra II and now quad-core Tegra III chips for the better part of 3 years now. Yes, a dual-core A9 chipset for the better part of 3 years in Western devices. The RK3066 was the first quality dual-core A9 chipset to come out of China that could even begin to compete on a level with what we have had in the West. Better yet, rather than just beat out a Tegra II by some slim margin, the RK3066 (with only 2 cores) easily offers Tegra III levels of performance which is anywhere from 2 - 3x faster than a Tegra II. Previous China chips couldn't even touch a Tegra II. So that is the interesting history lesson which brings us to the present, the RK3188. Rockchip announced the RK3188 as a cool-running 28 nm Quad-Core A9 chip that would be clocked at 1.8 Ghz and while having the same GPU as the RK3066, the Mali-400 MP4, it's GPU would be nearly double-clocked. So... hotly anticipated considering what an incredible success the RK3066 was (and still is)... we basically expected a "double helping" of RK3066... and therein also lies the biggest disappointment regarding the M9... but we will get to that later.
Continuing on down the specs list for the M9... here is something that makes this device extremely unique in both the Eastern AND Western Tablet world... 2 GB of DDR3 Ram... Yeah... 2 GB.... In a tablet, that is massive. Pretty much double of every top device presently on the market... and I mean EVERY TOP device. The only tablet currently on the Western Market to offer 2 Gb of Ram that I am aware of is Google's Nexus 10... which is an absolute beast... but is well outside of the price-range of the M9 so it isn't a fair comparison :). In short, the fact that the M9 packs 2 Gb of ram is nothing short of wonderful and quite unique at present. (Yes there are some Allwinner A31 tablets that also now offer 2 Gb of ram, but the A31 can't touch the RK3188 in regards to performance so it is being ignored for the moment).
So far so good...
Let's talk screen... The screen on the Pipo M9 Pro is what I would now call high-end "China Tab" -standard- fare... What does that mean? It means it is a 10.1" IPS panel with a respectable 1280x800 display resolution. In regards to quality, it is quite good but not excellent. It is decent bright and viewing angles or good. But it does look a bit muted and a bit darker next to say the panel in the Ployer Momo 12 or the Yuandao N90 II/Quantum Meson..., which are IMHO the two best/brightest "normal resolution" IPS panels currently available on the market. It is VERY good, don't get me wrong, and I am quite happy with it. Colors are decently vibrant and the panel is bright enough that I have been using my unit on the lowest brightness setting all week (all indoors in well-lit settings) and haven't been bothered in the least. I also am reviewing a Freelander PD80 Vogue (TNT WILL NOT BE SELLING THIS MODEL BECAUSE OF THE PANEL) which has a pretty aweful IPS 9.7" panel. I have some comparison pictures showing the PD80 Vogue (which is bad) next to the PiPo Max M9 (which is quite good) next to the Quantum Meson (excellent) and you can see the difference. Now, I am talking strictly about the brightness and color vibrancy here, not resolution. Once again, in my opinion, 1280x800 on a 10.1" screen Cheap Tablet PC is just about the perfect amount of Pixels per inch of screen. Everything is very sharp and that is one thing that I do miss when I switch back to the 9.7" Meson screen at a resolution of 1024x768 which equals a lower PPI. I will also mention that my unit did have a single dead pixel near the top edge of the display but it hasn't been too bothersome (because the pixels are so tiny...) so no major complaints.