Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I picked this tablet up at the local Verizon store recently. At the time I was buying accessories for my Samsung Galaxy S5, and the salesperson mentioned I could get this tablet for free, with only the extra cost of $10 per month that adds an extra GB of data to our plan. It sounds like an awesome deal; in the end, you wind up paying $240 for it since you're locked in a contract for it for 2 years. That still doesn't sound like a bad deal if you compare the price of other tablets. THEN you actually use it. The first thing I noticed was that this tablet feels bulky for its screen size. It seems to be physically sturdy, but the screen seems smaller than it should for some reason. The first thing I do with my devices is to start customizing them, and I noticed that its very difficult to set a wallpaper that doesn't end up looking grainy. After some research, I found some people have noted that the screen only displays up to 720p. That's a little disappointing for a modern tablet. I want to list some positives about this tablet, but in all honesty I can't really think of any worth noting. This tablet fails to really exceed at any task whatsoever. It runs apps and games from the store fairly well, though Google itself has already started crashing occasionally. After owning it for three days, the settings app crashes when trying to open the display settings. There is no native Miracast functionality. Both cameras are awful. Battery life is extremely short; you can run it down in about 2 hours or so of constant use, and it takes about 6 hours to fully recharge. What's worse is that it hogs so much power, you can't use it and charge it at the same time; if you use it while plugged up, all of the power is used to keep it going and the battery doesn't charge at all. You pay $10 per month for data to use this tablet on the go, but it might as well be classified as a Wi-Fi only tablet. It connects via 4G LTE AND NOTHING LESS. If you happen to travel into an area with less than 4G connectivity, this thing drops connection altogether. My old LG Lucid phone could at least handle 3G. If you're moving and pass by any power lines, forget streaming videos or any other kind of media. The widgets are ugly, and very few in the store are compatible with it. The Android OS installed on it is as barebones as you can get; it doesn't even come with a preinstalled video player app, which is one of the main things a tablet is good for. Customization is so limited that it can't handle wallpapers properly, and you can't even change the lock screen wallpaper. At this point I can't even change the settings; as mentioned earlier, the settings app crashes. About the only thing I can see this tablet being used for is an eBook reader and a larger screen for video streaming. Anything this tablet can do, nearly any modern (and some outdated) smartphones on the market can do it better. Verizon is more than happy to push it on you though; the reason its free is that they couldn't possibly get you to take it any other way. Then they can lock you into a higher monthly bill, and if you take it back within a 14 day period you get slapped with a $70 "restocking" fee. I'm stuck with it now. Take my advice; STAY AWAY FROM THE ELLIPSIS 7.