Pros
- Stereo front facing speakers
- Battery life
- LTE
- Expandable storage
- USB-C
Cons
- Low resolution screen
- Slight chunky
- Midrange performance at best
Intro
The AT&T Trek 2 HD is AT&T’s own branded tablet featuring LTE. Although it appears to be manufactured by ZTE. This is not a flagship tablet, but it does have a couple of things going for it.
Design
The Trek 2 HD offers stereo front facing speakers with Dolby audio. The sound is pretty good and having the speakers actually face you is a big plus. It makes watching videos and gaming a lot better.
The back is covered in rubber like material giving it a nice grip. Making it easier to hold, especially when holding with one hand. A little flap on the top right corner gives you access to the nano SIM slot. As well as the microSD card slot, that supports up to 128GB. Which is almost a necessity because with 16GB of storage you aren’t left with much free space. Especially if you want to install games.
The Trek 2 HD is a little thick and feels slightly heavier than other tablets I’ve used in this range. It’s not terrible but still not as thin and sexy as other tablets in this size category. On the top is the headphone jack. While along the bottom is the new standard USB-C port, featuring a reversible connector. Then on the right side you’ll find the power button with the volume rocker below.
Software
The Trek 2 HD is running Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow. It’s very close to stock with only a few minor tweaks. Such as it requiring you to long press to unlock instead of swiping, a different theme for the notification panel, and a swipe down shortcut for the panel. Beyond that it doesn’t stray far from stock Android. Which can be seen as a good or bad thing. You won’t get a lot of extra features but it’s not the fastest tablet and you don’t want anymore bloat than is already added.
One bug I found in the software is if you put it on silent you can no longer adjust the volume with the volume rocker. It’s not a show stopper but it is annoying that it forces you to use the on screen controls.
Using it as a mobile hotspot is a great feature. It’s really convenient to use on your WiFi only devices or squeeze out a little more data if you’re close to your cap. The widget on the home screen makes it easy to toggle on or off and watch your data usage.
Performance
Using a Snapdragon 617 and 2GB of RAM the Trek 2 HD has power similar to the midrange phones from last year. In my experience performance isn’t going to suffer too much, but you can expect longer wait times when loading games. Once they get loaded though they seem to play fine. If you’re using a flagship phone from the past couple of years, you’ll notice the performance is a little lacking though.
Camera
The Trek 2 HD also comes with a pair of 5MP cameras one on the front for all your video calls and one on the back. Like with most tablets the quality isn’t all that great and you look silly taking photos with it. Just use your phone which is almost guaranteed to have a better camera. The front camera much like the back is just OK but it works.
Battery
The battery life is pretty decent on this little tablet with a 4600mAh battery. I was able to go 3 to 4 days with light to moderate usage before having to charge. Also during a video loop rundown test I got a little over 11 hours of playback.
Conclusion
In the end the AT&T Trek 2 HD definitely isn’t a high end tablet. You won’t be wowed by the screen or the performance. However this is not built to compete with high end tablets. What you do get is an affordable tablet with decent battery life, LTE, Android Marshmallow, expandable storage, USB-C, and dual front facing speakers. If you are looking for a high end tablet then you’ll definitely want to look elsewhere though. Big thanks to AT&T for lending us this review unit.
