Artist Review: Vastking KingPad K10 Pro (Android 10 tablet)

KingPad K10 Pro is a budget 10.1-inch Android 10 tablet that supports a pressure sensitive stylus. The tablet is sold by Vastking which also sells other budget Android tablets.

The unit i have is a review unit from Vastking. I agreed to this review only because I wanted to see how good this tablet is at drawing with the included pressure sensitive stylus.

I'll make this review as complete as possible even though it's supposed to be an artist review. Just scroll to whatever section that's relevant to you.

KingPad K10 Pro is released early 2021 and is priced at US $239 with the stylus and keyboard case included. At time of this review, there is a $30 off pre-order discount when you use the coupon code VastkingK10Pro.

Here's the full specification:

• Display: 10.1 inch
• Weight: 500g (not including keyboard case)
• Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.3 x 0.3 inches
• GPU: Mali-G52-3EE-2core@ 650MHz ES3.0 20fps
• CPU: Dual-core A75 1.8Ghz + Six-core A55 1.6GHz
• Chipset: Spreadtrum T618
• Resolution: 1920 x 1200
• Storage: 64GB
• RAM: 4GB
• OS: Android 10
• Battery capacity: 6000 mAh
• Speakers: Dual speakers, 1W
• Ports: Type C, 3.5mm earphone port, microSD card slot (up to 512GB)
• Wifi: 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz
• Cameras: Selfie 8MP, with face recognition, main 13MP
• Bluetooth 5

This US $239 budget tablet can't compete with more expensive tablets for features that's for sure, but the specifications do look reasonable for the price, and you have to consider the keyboard case and stylus are included.

Just for comparison purposes, the other budget or lower-end tablets I have reviewed are Samsung Tab A with S Pen (2019) (US $239) and Samsung Tab S6 Lite (2020) (US $349).

Design and build quality

Design of the tablet looks good. Corners are rounded, edges are beveled. Finishing is good, smooth, and build quality feels solid.

The glass display seem to protrude out to make the tablet thicker, like first-gen-iPad thick.

Bezels are thick but that's alright.

This tablet seems to be designed for use in landscape orientation. Selfie camera is at the top when tablet is horizontal. 3.5mm audio jack is at the top left. Power and volume buttons, and USB-C port are on the left. Having the power button and USB port on the same side confuses me since most tablets have them on opposite sides.

The only branding appears on the back of the tablet.

The USB-C port is actually recessed slightly into the tablet. That means certain USB-C cables may not fit because you can't push the USB-C connector all the way in.

Micro SD card slot for expandable storage.

Image quality from the 13MP main camera is so-so. The 8MP selfie camera is also used for face unlock and works quite effectively and fast.

Display

10.1-inch display has a 1920 x 1200 resolution. The resolution is alright on a small tablet even if pixelation is noticeable. First thing you'll want to do when setting up the tablet is to change the UI size smaller so that you can see more content.

There's no mention whether it's actually an IPS or TFT display on Vastking's website.

Viewing angles are good in the sense that colours don't shift when viewed from the side, but brightness does drop off significantly when viewed from the side.

Colours look good but not good compared to premium IPS displays. For the price of the tablet, the display colours are considered reasonably good.

Brightness is also reasonably good. It's bright enough to work with even in a brightly lit room, but certainly not under the sun.

Keyboard case

Having the keyboard case included makes this tablet a good deal. It's a well made keyboard case. Material used for the keyboard case is the smooth matte PU leather type material.

The keyboard case makes the tablet almost two times thicker, and heavier.

There's a sleeve on the side for the pen. When the case is closed, the pen will get in the way of the USB-C charging port.

Build quality of the keyboard case is good, feel durable.

The hinge is very tight and can hold the tablet firmly at any angle. But it's not firm enough for you to rest your hands on it for drawing though.

The chiclet style keys are smaller than standard keyboard keys but the overall layout is good. The function keys on top double as media control buttons. There is no backlight though.

It took me no time to get use to typing on a smaller keyboard.

The keys are surprisingly good to type on with good travel and feedback. This whole review was written on the keyboard case.

The horizontal trackpad works fine. Clicking involves tapping on the trackpad surface. There are left and right clicks on both corners. Pressing down to click is quite stiff though.

This trackpad is not designed for clicking down in the middle. You can't press the middle part down, only the left and right.

The auto sleep and wake function work well.

Stylus

The included stylus looks good and has excellent build quality. I actually mistook it for the Microsoft Surface Pen (the one with clip). There are no buttons.

The pen is powered a single AAAA battery. If this pen is like other pens that use AAAA batteries, you can probably expect at least 6 months of battery life.

Pen tip is the hard plastic type and is quite firm.

The pen tip is quite smooth on the glass but not too slippery, thankfully. Not sure how long the pen nib can last also but with plastic against glass, it should be able to last. You can contact Vastking to buy replacement nibs but I'm not sure how much they will be.

There's a small gap between the pen tip and the LCD. The gap is not as big or as noticeable compared to the 10.2-inch iPad though. Accuracy is good in the sense that there is no misalignment and the line will always be directly beneath the pen tip.

The pen supports pressure sensitivity but there's no mention of how many levels. Pressure sensitivity can only be adjusted through apps that allow for adjustments, e.g. Clip Studio Paint.

This is very likely an active stylus which means the tablet can differentiate the pen from fingers. There is perfect palm rejection for apps that you can set to allow only pen input.

There is no tilt sensitivity.

There's no cursor when the pen is hovering.

OS and apps

The tablet runs on Android 10 but I can't tell whether it's stock Android 10, so I can't say whether you'll be able to get OS updates. But even if you can't get OS updates, Android 10 is good.

One nice thing is there's absolutely no bloatware included. There's just a handful of Google apps installed, and Google Play Store.

Overall performance

The Spreadtrum T618 chip is an entry level 8-core chip released in Nov 2019. It's a budget chip for a budget tablet.

Just for comparison purposes, the Samsung Exynos 7904 found in the Samsung Tab A with S Pen (2019) is 10% faster, and I found the performance for that tablet to be satisfactory considering the budget price.

Overall speed is what you would expect from an entry level budget tablet. It's not that fast but it's not too sluggish.

Speed is reasonably quick for app launches, switching between apps and tabs, scrolling web pages and drawing. I did not test gaming.

4GB of RAM is included. As I'm typing this review using Google Chrome (with 5 tabs opened), there's 1.5GB RAM left.

Areas where I noticed lag is when zooming in and out of certain drawing apps, and when switching back to the web browser after not using that for a while. For a budget tablet, you have to expect lag somewhere but at least, for me, it's not the irritating type of lag.

Drawing performance

Lines drawn slowly in Concepts app show some jitter. When drawing faster, the lines are smoother. Jitter only happens with diagonal lines.

Line jitter did affect my drawing slightly. Line jitter does not look that obvious with sketches but it's going to be a challenge for creating line art that demands more accuracy, e.g. architectural sketches.

Concepts app is one of my favourite drawing apps on Android and it performs quite well with the Vastking tablet despite some issue with accuracy.

Lines drawn slow and fast with Medibang Paint Pro. Again there is line jitter.

I draw lines at moderate speed so I'm not affected by line jitter as much. You can expect more noticeable line jitter if you're someone who draws more slowly.

For quick sketching, the input lag is very noticeable. If you are shading or hatching lines, watching the lines catch up to the pen tip after each stroke is not a nice. Certain apps will have more input lag than others.

Clip Studio Paint is the best drawing app on Android and it performs really well, as expected.

Sure there's line jitter when drawing slowly. However, Clip Studio Paint does allow you to set how much you want to smoothen the lines and the default settings work great. You're also able to adjust the pressure sensitivity of the pen.

Palettes in CSP do take up much space leaving you a much smaller canvas area to draw on, but with the keyboard you can easily Tab to hide/show the palettes. And since the Android version of CSP is essentially the desktop version, all the keyboard shortcuts are supported so having the keyboard case is incredibly useful here.

Handwriting and note taking performance

Below are screenshots from various note taking apps.

Wacom Bamboo Paper

Inkredible

Nebo

OneNote

Squid

Handwritten text look better on apps that apply smoothing to strokes. E.g. Wacom Bamboo Paper and Inkredible. Nebo, Microsoft OneNote and Squid all had rather jittery strokes and wasn't able to capture my handwriting style as accurately.

Nebo has text recognition and worked rather well even though my handwriting did not look good.

There is visible input lag when writing. As you write, there's this split second delay before the line actually catches up with the pen tip.

If you want to take notes and appreciate legibility, stick with using Wacom Bamboo Paper (more accurate capture) and Inkredible.

Other notes

You can't control the cursor tracking speed with Android 10. Moving the cursor from corner to corner requires several swipes on the trackpad.

Right-click functionality is not the full desktop OS right-click functionality. For example, you can't right click to copy image URL.

Scrolling direction of the trackpad cannot be changed. Swiping down on the trackpad will go to the top of the webpage.

These are typical Android tablet functionality and behaviour. Just thought you may want to know in case you're thinking of using this as productivity tablet.

Face unlock works quite effectively, and fast.

Battery life

I managed to get around 6 hours of on-screen time with the 6000 mAh battery. That's with 80 - 100% brightness throughout.

The other model

There's another model called KingPad K10 which is priced at US $169. That comes with a keyboard case but no stylus. The specs are also not as good with 32GB storage and 3GB RAM vs KingPad K10 Pro's 64GB storage and 4GB RAM.

Between the two models, the model with 4GB ram will give you better performance especially if you have many apps or tabs open. More RAM is just better for multitasking.

Conclusion

This is a entry-level budget tablet with specifications designed to keep the price low.

Overall performance is satisfactory for web browsing, watching shows, checking email, social media. Performance is not going to be as snappy compared to more expensive tablets, but hey the price savings here is significant. Compared to the Samsung Tab A with S Pen (2019) which, at time of this review, is similarly priced, you get a larger display and a keyboard case that's actually very nice to type on.

Less than ideal performance is noticed when zooming in and out with certain drawing apps, and when switching to back apps that you've not used for a while.

As a drawing tablet, there's line jitter when you draw slowly, and there's input lag. Having said that, if you actually use Clip Studio Paint ($25/year subscription), the drawing experience is actually quite good. I enjoyed drawing using Concepts app as well.

Many things that are less than ideal can be shrugged away with "but it's just US $239".

Whenever I review tablets, there are always people who suggest spending a bit more to get a better tablet as if money is no issue. So if you have a limited budget and can't stray away from that, this is a tablet you can consider but of course note the downsides.

In terms of value for money, this tablet does seem like it is worth the money especially since pen and keyboard case are included. The performance is in line with you-get-what-you-pay-for.

Pros and cons at a glance
+ Solid build quality
+ Design looks good
+ 1920 x 1200 resolution adequate for 10.1-inch display
+ Colours look alright
+ Brightness is adequate
+ Pen and keyboard included
+ Active stylus with pressure sensitivity and palm rejection
+ Keyboard case is great to type on
+ Micro SD card slot
+ 4GB RAM included just enough for multi-tasking
+ 3.5mm audio jack included
+ Reasonable specs and performance for a budget tablet
+ Face unlock works effectively and fast
+ No bloatware installed
+ Competitive price
- Battery life of 6 hours (max brightness)
- USB-C port is recessed and can't work with certain cables
- Input lag noticeable when writing or drawing
- Line jitter can happen when writing or drawing
- Image quality from camera is so-so
- Audio is not loud, quality is alright

Where to buy

You can find the KingPad K10 Pro tablet on Vastking website.

The tablet is also available on Amazon.com.