This is quite a long post, but I thought I’ll give it my thoughts in the hope it will help someone. (image quality is pretty poor, I had the blind down because the day was a bit hot and my office faces south!)
I’ll start by saying that I hope this review is useful to someone as they are sold on AliExpress where I find some of my interesting equipment, I’ll also tell you what I think. My reasons for purchasing is related to a new position I took up in my own council as previously mentioned, to separate my data and if I am honest, I didn’t want to spend out too much for a device, so seeing a Pritom L8 for less than £50 looks very tempting, what’s it a good buy though?
First impressions:
When my local Evri courier finally dropped off the package, I was instantly greeted with a white bag with a bubble like surround to protect its journey across the seven seas. Well, it flew it, but you get the idea. First problem, green credentials = 0! Its all plastic wrapping to protect it from its bumpy journey.
Getting into it? Well, that was a different matter, the outer wrapper came off easily, the inner one?
Judge for yourself. Things aren’t looking hopeful already. I then was greeted with a nice glossy box. Ok, not as bad as I thought, took the shrink wrap off (green credentials = -1) and then lifted the box.
Well, isn’t this a bit unusual! Shipping the tablet in a case. I’ve heard of tablets and phones shipped with the case, but in the case? That’s another matter. The box was paper, which is good (green credentials = 0) and lifting the tablet out reveals more paper (green credentials = +1).
As for the manuals? Very thin on the ground.
On picking the device up, the one thing you will notice right away is how flimsy the case is, for the price point, its understandable, so a few millimetres here and there of material removed is forgivable. I guess most will end up in the hands of children (I’ll get on to this later) and it will be smashy smashy like Adam Smasher. So the price point is very appealing to parents who don’t want to buy and iPad which – spoiler alert, would be better. However, they would also be much more delicate in terms of use and wallet. So a 3 year old losing its rag and chucking it across the room in a fit of rage, its better to lose a £50 note than something costing 3 times as much. Not that I think it will stand up to that punishment – its not rugged.
On turning it on, it has a factory applied screen protector, peal and what I thought was one part, was 2 part! Nice, if only it was a little thicker. It feels thinner than a sheet of foil.
Build
All plastic! Seriously, plastic fantastic, nothing to write home but it has some weird shaping on the back. The case included is thin as a cheap rubber band, with about as much protection. Knocks, bumps, it will take, but a full on 5 year old tantrum? Probably not and I won’t have much hope for that. I don’t have kids, so I can’t tell. So far, its put up with my daily abuse of going to and from work and a little office work. The screen cover? About as rigid as a microfibre cleaning cloth! To actually stand it up, you had to use it one way, that’s it.
Theres also some really weird decisions too. The case doesn’t allow access to the SD card slot, there is 2 speakers (apparently), a microphone on the side which I haven’ tested and 2 cameras. One front and one back – but wait, is there three?
You may of noticed there is a bump showing 2 lenses, ones fake, end of! I proved it because I covered both lenses with my finger and found the bottom one fake. It also doesn’t seem to have a flash either. It looks better than it is, but this is how manufacturers get you to buy their products. At least it has a full size headphone jack at the top of the device.
It also feels really weird at the back. The back feels smooth with the case but it doesn’t feel uniform with the back cover if you take the case off. Maybe the moulds are to cater for multiple tablets? The back looks like it should be a cover, but in fact one moulded unit.
The front? The screen you can clearly see where it is in the frame, its not pure black, but a gray which makes me suggest it uses the older TFT standard, which may explain the price of the tablet. The screen protector is a nice addition though, even it it cost 10p.
Turning it on
This is where I was shocked. It lies, it really does, but they are white lies. Its not Android 14, its 13. So that’s lie one, its one camera, not 2 on the back, but what else is there? Actually, it really isn’t bad. First impressions leave a LOT to be desired.
It started for me and it was slow as hell! No seriously, it was. It turned off, when I turned it on, I couldn’t press the next button on the Out Of the Box Experience screen (OOBE). It didn’t respond. Once I gave it a couple of seconds, I could and reacted normally. It was initially very slow through the OOBE screen, but got quicker and quicker.
Once I logged in, it still was slow, it was 5 minutes in by this point but slowly getting faster, for about half an hour. I was then greeted with possibly the most plain skin of Android. Android as it was intended! Oh, it also got hot, but I initially used a USB to ethernet adapter.
Oh yes, that was a nice surprise. I thought the USB port was for charging only, at this price point, the USB-OTG spec I was expecting to be completely missing, the first adapter didn’t work, but my second one did! So it supports USB-OTG. Good start.
It came with all the Google apps needed and it was geared towards children, you’ll get loads of questions about that at the OOBE experience, so the target audience is children. That’s good.
Installing everything, I went for Outlook, Displaylink and a few other apps, geared towards work. They installed without an issue.
Poked around in the settings, oh, its Android 13! But the listing was Android 14. It seems to be Android 13 which is Ok I guess.
You have the option of extending the ram, this is actually virtual memory and is likely to wear out your storage quicker, so watch out for that problem. And you get the idea.
User experience
No skin = nice, its actually pretty quick. I’ll be honest. I was expecting a slideshow! I was not expecting anything impressive but so far, it is pretty good. The screen actually was quite nice, it can be a problem in bright sunlight, but really, its not bad. Its got some surprisingly good viewing angles and it doesn’t have many noticeable problems from when I used it, except…
(No more shown as I am using Microsoft Launcher and to respect GDPR)
The navigation bar! Oh the navigation bar that has been there since the early Android days sucks! Why? Back works, menu works, multi tasking (square) doesn’t at all. So if you accidently close an app, you have to relaunch it. That is the only bad thing about this tablet.
Otherwise, the speakers are pretty OK, I bass isn’t great to be expected, but its clear to my ears (acceptable) and not a garbled mess. Videos play smoothly too and it didn’t get hot after the first initial use.
Battery life? Forget it! Seriously. 4 hours if you are lucky.
On screen keyboard? Expect typos, its split by default, so that’s something to watch out for. But for the price? Its not bad.
(Pritom L8 top, Samsung Galaxy Tab A9 8.7 bottom)
Performance I’ve not tested, but as I didn’t want to mess up my council work with my personal work, I just went on WebGL samples and started the aquarium. Compared it to my Samsung and it actually held its own. Its nowhere quick but it did keep up, it really wasn’t horrible and the photo shows that.
Bluetooth works well, I had a keyboard connected and I had no issues, Wifi works on my network without issue and it can charge from anything, not quickly, its rather slow! It works, that’s the thing that really surprised me, there is soo many horror stories of tablets that really suck, this was one of them, so I thought. It really wasn’t’
Camera Samples
As for the camera, just one big piece of advice. Don’t expect much:
Moving objects? Camera lag? Yep, it has it all
Bright sunlight? Forget it!
So who’s it for?
Anyone who doesn’t mind a cheap tablet for day to day work that don’t want to spend out for anything expensive. If you are hard on your equipment and tend to break things quickly or go into an area with high amounts of crime, this might be a good buy and no thief is going to want to touch it. Especially when you just do basic work on a tablet. Web browsing, content consumption, bit of word processing, maybe a spreadsheet, it will do it. No issues. Anything performance related? Give it a wide berth. I’ve not tried emulation yet, but it might actually deal with DOS emulation or retro gaming.
Just make sure you carry the charging cable. You will need it and a power bank. It also doesn’t have 3/4G, but has an SD card slot.
Would I buy another, surprisingly, actually, yes, it really isn’t bad for the price.
Reported specifications:
Allwinner A523 Octo-core CPU (ARM 8xA55 cores at different speeds, 4×1.8ghz + 4×1.4ghz)
Mali G57 GPU
RISC-V embeeded controller (WHAT?)
4GB LDDR4 ram
64GB eMMC
8” capacitive touch screen
But the question remains, why is it so cheap?
I spent many times thinking about this problem and then it raises more questions than answers. For a start, I’m not suggesting anything at all. In fact, it might be one point that is true and pushing their goods out. So lets start with a list:
– Cheap labour.
Assembling these tablets in a factory with low labour rates maybe one thing, its not unknown, but a lot of companies do this, its why China has become so popular. However, the question is, how cheap is too cheap? And at what expense? What is their contracts saying? Are there any concerns about welfare in the factories to reach that price point?
For a fascinating look into how the factories operate, I recommend these videos, its worth a look and draw your conclusions. These were shot 10+ years ago, but even then, the welfare didn’t seem much of a concern:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfyAjkPIYyc
$30 Allwinner A13 7″ Android Tablet Factory Tour, ZXS ZhiXingSheng
- Thin profit margins.
Again, not unusual, but its not unknown for companies to build devices through a contractor en-mass where they build one long production run. But doesn’t seem to be the case with this tablet as it was built in June 2025. So may have a late production run. Considering I wrote this in August 2025, that’s about a month hanging on a shelf if not slightly longer
- Drop shipping.
Drop shippers are notorious for having, no stock and having to sell products fast, because having products sitting in a warehouse for months on end is extremely costly. In fact, places like AliExpress and Amazon do charge for space after a certain interval. So if you can’t sell a product, you pay for the space it takes. Often again, you look at extremely thin profit margins because of the competition. In some cases, you’ll do anything to get rid of these products, even if it means making a loss because it’s not sold. Even then, in some cases, it’s a case of actually not sending out a small order, but a big one which is less costly than the storage space. That has happened to a colleague of mine
- Cheap components.
Now I’ve not mentioned the specs. It’s an 8” tablet, tablets of this screensize are not that common, they used to be, but not any more. I find them difficult to hide and 8” tablets fit into places where a larger one doesn’t, such as my trouser pockets. (Yes really). Now smaller screensizes should lower costs. The use of plastics rather than metal is the same and makes the device more rugged (yes really), then we come to the boards, these maybe repurposed boards, but I noticed the A523 chip fitted to this tablet, which was a surprise. Now CPUs or in this case SOC (System On Chip) changes a lot in the budget range when manufacturers try to break into the market and get known. This is actually an old hand called “Allwinner”, who back when Android was appearing was known to produce ultra cheap chips, the Allwinner A523 is no exception. What is surprising is that Allwinner didn’t really deal with much budget range SOCs for about 10 years, so its nice to see them back in the market. Many manufacturers were usually looking at Mediatek who really broke some ground and Spreadtrum who apparently are now UNISOC. Again, Spreadtrum is a name that appeared then disappeared.
Allwinner isn’t exactly known for its friendliness to the OpenSource community however and there are controversies. On the other hand, VIA used to offer budget CPU’s but seemed to of faded into obscurity.
- Questionable business practices
This is just one of those things you wonder “is it actually happening” kind of thing? The answer is, you don’t know, what happens on the factory floor. Often, the manufacturer of the device is ethical, but not necessarily the component manufacturer. Its not just workers rights that needs to be considered, what is going on in the background? Why are they cheap? Is it because there are other bad links?
- Questionable Hardware hacks.
This is one I want to see for myself, I think I can possibly do it and find out, then again, all manufacturers are at it, some more than others. Does Pritom have a link to the Chinese Government? And that may mean, is it riddled with spyware? The answer is, until you do some sort of network diagnostics to inspect every packet, you really can’t tell. Its like the Huawei vs Trump scandal all over again. You can’t base a ban because you feel like it or you got dodgy proof, can you prove it? I can’t, I can only suspect it and until I get more information, I cannot confirm or deny. These days, the only real way to get away with something is to bury it so deep into the firmware, no one can detect it at the surface or takes specialist equipment to find it.
- Safety concerns
Apart from the above, which I’ve covered separately, this is unlikely due to the way they work but there is one thing I am particularly concerned about. The mainboard, screen, cameras, shouldn’t pose much of a safety risk in normal use, but I don’t know if it is RoHS certified (Reduction of Hazardous Substances). Which, what is the case carrying? It maybe plastic, but is it painted? With VOCs? (Volatile Organic Compounds). The big one is the biggest concern is the battery to me. Will it turn into a spicy pillow or worse? Sounds far fetched but with lithium ion batteries blowing up everywhere in e-bikes and e-scooters, you have to wonder. After all, why did the Samsung Galaxy Note 8 (nearly ended up with one myself) have a high failure rate with batteries blowing up even after a recall? As long as this device doesn’t and is able to expand during a fault, its unlikely to blow up in my face – literally!
- Regularity problems
Finally, I’m going to finish with something common with cheap products, they often have faked or missing regularity information, this seems to have it all, but if I do a FCC search for 2BNGZ-L10, comes up with this, some small discrepancies between the names and location: FCC ID 2BNGZ-L10
But more importantly, no products listed. The more you wonder.
Later addition (25/08/2025):
I wrote the post in early August and since, I’ve taken it to and from work, used it at work and kept upto date with the council. It’s performed pretty well in that retrospect and I’ve had next to no issues – except the battery life. It will last 3 days with occasional use, but drains fast if you use it too intensively.
However, the USB port doesn’t support HDMI out I discovered, not a biggie, so I used my DisplayLink Dock which worked without issues – proving it does support usb OTG.
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