LG announces the LG G PAD 8.3 – coming mid-November

LG has today announced that their first foray back into the Android Tablet market – the LG G Pad 8.3 – will be hitting Australian stores this month, with JB HiFi to begin selling the devices around the middle of the month.

Priced at $399, the 8.3¨ tablet is a mid-range tablet with some decently higher end specifications that have been paired with some great software that aims at giving you control over your AV equipment, while giving you a comfortable and user friendly way to consume media.

The tablet has a very nice plastic bezel, with a metallic back which is actually quite comfortable to hold in the hand, it has a solid feel due to the 4,600 mAh battery that is included inside the unit. There’s a little bezel around the screen at the side, but at either end the 16:10 aspect ratio screen is easily held in landscape mode when viewing media. There’s stereo speakers mounted on the back of the unit which gives an extremely large and high quality sound out of it, which will satisfy most users.

With communications, LG has gone to lengths to maintain an open communication standard with all Android devices with their QPair software, there’s quite a bit of functionality that’s been built in with the sync relationship aimed at giving you an almost symbiotic relationship between phone and tablet.

Simply download QPair from Google Play, to any Android phone running 4.1 and above, sync the tablet and device together and you can then control syncing between devices all from the tablet. You can receive Call/Message Notifications from your phone via QPair so you will be notified on the tablet when you receive calls or messages on your phone which you can then reply to with a Text Message from the tablet.

If you’re using an LG Phone, then you will also be able to transfer QMemo content from phone to tablet with QPair to allow for on the go content creation on a larger screen. Or if you’re on your phone and transfer over to the G Pad, you’ll be prompted to load the last application you were using on the phone making it easy to continue your work flow.

With QRemote and an IR blaster installed on the G Pad 8.3 you will be able to control your TV, DVD and Bluray players, potentially making this an excellent home automation control centre.

The G Pad also includes one of the best features of the LG G2 – KnockON, the ability to double tap the screen to wake the device.

Hardware wise, the G Pad contains a fair specification :

• 1.7GHz Quad-Core Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ 600 SoC
• Display: 8.3” WUXGA (1920 x 1200 pixels / 273 ppi)
• 16GB eMMC (Micro SD up to 64GB)
• 2GB LPDDR2
• Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0 LE
• 5.0MP AF Rear-Camera and 1.3MP Front-facing camera
• 4,600mAh Lithium Polymer
• Android Jelly Bean 4.2.2 with LG
• 216.8 x 126.5 x 8.3mm @ 338grams

The G Pad 8.3 will begin appearing in JB Hifi stores, where staff will be offering demos of the units in use with the AV equipment in-store to show off the capabilities of the tablet.

The G Pad 8.3 is a very nice looking tablet and has some great software functionality built-in, overall it promises to be an interesting prospect and we look forward to bringing a full review in the very near future.