joojoo review

Alas there are areas where the joojoo and iPad differ. And not in a good way. Principally the problems focus on ease of use, but smoothness of operation is also an issue. The first sign of trouble is when you boot it up and try to scroll up and down through the list of website icons on the home page. Instead of animating smoothly up and down, the icons stutter and jerk, and firing up the history or bookmark view (by swiping a single finger left or right) is afflicted by the same geriatric shuffling. It's bizarre when you consider how quickly this device lets you swing between web pages.

Worse is yet to come, however. With such a large screen, you might expect every icon, link and button to be easy to hit, but that's simply not the case. Swipe a single finger down, and the device's context menu that pops up at the top of the screen is too thin, and populated by tiny, cryptic icons you have to really make an effort to tap. This wouldn't be a problem if they were rarely used, but the menu bar represents the joojoo's main control centre: you need it to go back and forward through your browsing history (why no gesture-support?), you need it to go back to the home page, you need it to bring up the multitasking view and you need it to enter a new web address.