Carrying the Unihertz Tank Pad 8849 provided me with a full workout

Unihertz Tank Pad 8849: 30-second review

Unihert has an excellent track record of rugged phones and tablets and has partnered with 8849, aka Shenzhen OBlue Communication Technology Co., a prominent mobile phone design company founded in 2012 and based in Shanghai.

One of the first products resulting from this synergy is the Tank Pad 8849, an 11-inch Android tablet with a modern SoC supporting 5G comms and the unique feature of an inbuilt projector.

This is easily one of the most robust tablets I’ve encountered, as it features plenty of metal and polycarbonate surfaces that should withstand the roughest handling.

Designed for the great outdoors, the Tank Pad 8849 incorporates a powerful Dimensity 8200 SoC, 21000 mAh of battery, 16GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, all protected within a shock, temperature-resistant, and waterproof case.

As you might reasonably expect with a device of this specification, a starting price of around $600 is the entry fee for something this industrial.

However, for those working outdoors or for dedicated campers, the investment in something this flexible may be worthwhile.

This might not be one of the best tablets for all applications, but it’s easily one of the best rugged tablets for the specs.

Unihertz Tank Pad 8849: price and availability

• How much does it cost? $600/€600
• When is it out? Available now
• Where can you get it? You can get it in most regions directly from 8849 Tech, or from many online retailers.

For US and European customers, the Tank Pad 8849 is available directly from 8849 Tech for $599.99 or €599.99 – check it out by clicking here. There is only one SKU with 16GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.

It can be found through online retailers, like Amazon, and at the time of writing, this is the cheapest way to buy the tablet, with a $40 discount coupon offered on Amazon.com.

There are much cheaper 5G-capable rugged tablets, like the Ulefone Armor Pad 4 Ultra I reviewed, that are around $350. However, none of them exactly match all the features of this almost unique design.

With a unique offering, Unihertz can ask what it likes for this device, and the $600 price point isn’t crazy when compared to some portable device brands.

• Value score: 4/5

Unihertz Tank Pad 8849: specs

Unihertz Tank Pad 8849: design

• Heavy duty
• Projector and camping light
• Odd button arrangement

When picking this tablet up for the first time, its weight of 1.1kg or 2.47 lbs is a significant weight that those without robust wrists should tactically avoid. But it’s difficult to ignore the rugged credentials of this design. With the exception of the screen, every surface is solid metal, polycarbonate, or carbon fibre.

The rear layout appears to have something of a split personality about the orientation in which the machine is meant to be held. The central-top positioning of the camping LED is intended for landscape use, though the idea of walking in the dark with both hands holding the tablet seems a poor plan. But the cameras are in the middle, suggesting portrait orientation. To use the projector, this machine must be laid flat, even if the controls allow for a degree of keystone control.

It has an air vent in the upper left corner to keep it from overheating and a focus wheel on the upper left side.

On the rear is a mounting for a stand or a vehicle, but these items don’t come with the tablet, and 8849 Tech does not currently list any accessories for it.

Having reviewed countless tablets and phones, I was expecting the standard button layout where the power button is near the volume rocker, with a custom button near the SIM tray.

That would have been fine, but 8849 Tech engineers decided otherwise and the power button that doubles as a fingerprint reader is actually where the custom button generally goes, and there are two buttons next to the volume rocker. Both are user-definable, and one is red to distinguish it from the other.

On the left side is a large and easily removable rubberised plug that protects both the USB-C port and a 3.5mm audio jack. While this plug doesn’t seem replaceable, it forms a good seal with the case when the tablet is new.

Charging is exclusively wired, so this protective plug must be removed every time the device is charged, or you want to use wired headphones.

While I’m not a huge fan of moving all the buttons around randomly, the rest of the design isn’t terrible, but this weight isn’t helpful if you are hiking on that wilderness adventure.

Design score: 4/5

Unihertz Tank Pad 8849: hardware

• DLP projector
• Modern SoC
• Large battery

This is one of the first Android 14 devices I’ve seen with the Dimensity 8200 Ultimate SoC, and, spoiler alert, it lives up to its benchmark billing.

Numerous improvements over the previous Dimensity designs deliver a more powerful yet power-efficient design that supports 5G and significant amounts of RAM and storage.

The review hardware that Unihertz supplied for this review came with 16GB of LPDDR5 memory and 256GB of storage. All the machines I’ve seen you can buy come with 512GB of storage, so the review hardware was an SKU that was not produced in volume, it appears.

The specifications don’t diverge in any other way, so I’m confident this isn’t a specially tweaked model for my benefit.

While it might negatively impact the overall mass of the Tank Pad 8849, the battery with 21000mAh of capacity provides plenty of range for days away from mains power. The battery can also recharge at up to 66W, enabling it to transition from empty to full in about four hours. It also supports reverse charging if you waste power by transferring it to a phone or other USB-powered device.

Wireless charging might have been a nice option, but I can see why it was omitted, given the capacity and how long that recharge might take wirelessly.

The feature that didn’t impress me much was the protector, which had many of the issues associated with tiny LCD projectors I’ve seen, alongside a few unique problems that come from mounting it inside a tablet.

The biggest issue is that without a stand to lift the tablet up away from whatever it’s resting, getting the clearance for an unobstructed image. It needs an appropriate stand that allows the tablet to tilt upwards.

The DLP laser projector has a resolution of 854 x 480, meaning that projecting anything greater than 720p is generally pointless. Once the projector is running, a fan becomes active to avoid the predictable overheating that these devices are famous for, making it less than ideal for a show or movie with quiet parts.

After playing with this for some time, I concluded that for those on their own, a better experience can be had with the screen output alone. It’s mildly useful in a darkened location if you have greater numbers, but how long the machine would last powering this projector is debatable.

I ran it for 30 minutes, and it consumed about 8% of the battery capacity projecting YouTube videos, hinting at a total running time of around six hours potentially.

What annoyed me was that the projector controls are linked to the settings of the tablet and not an app, and some of the sub-menus for this feature are still in Chinese.

I guess you can watch Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring, but don’t expect to get all the way through Two Towers before the power runs out.

• Hardware score: 4/5

Unihertz Tank Pad 8849: cameras

• 50MP rear sensor
• 32MP on the front
• Two cameras in total

The Uniherts Tank Pad 8849 has two cameras:

• Rear camera: 50MP Sony IMX766
• Front camera: 32MP Sony IMX616

I’ve seen some exceptionally poor cameras put into various tablets, but the ones in the Tank Pad 8849 are decent, though hardly exceptional.

Unihertz went with Sony sensors, putting a 50MP IMX766 on the rear and IMX616 on the front.

What’s a bit odd about the still image capture is that the photo application doesn’t provide any means to select different resolutions at all. All pictures are either taken at 13MP, after being pixel binned down from the 50MP sensor. Or, you can select Super-resolution mode, and get full sensor-resolution images.

If you use the Pro mode you can save in DNG raw format, but there is still no ability to select a resolution there either.

I’d complain more about this if the pictures weren’t good, but for a tablet camera, they’re adequate. Video capture does offer resolution control, and it can grab 4K video if you want it.

Obviously, the screen’s maximum resolution is a little above 1080p, but you could easily download 4K and play it elsewhere.

If you intend to use streaming services with this tablet, the makers didn’t consider giving it Widevine L1 encryption, so the best resolution you will get from most paid-for services is 480p, unfortunately.

That point aside, the cameras on the Tank Pad 8849 are good enough for many purposes, even if many phones have superior sensors these days.

Unihertz Tank Pad 8849 Camera samples

• Camera score: 3.5/5

Unihertz Tank Pad 8849: performance

• Excellent SoC
• Great battery life

In these tests, I’ve pitted the Unihertz Tank Pad 8849 against the Ulefone Armor Pad 4 Ultra, a much cheaper option with a lower-powered MediaTek SoC.

The difference between the Dimensity 8200 on the Tank Pad and the 6300 on the Pa4 Ultra couldn’t be more stark. The Dimensity 8200 is twice the power of the 6300 and close to three times that of the Helio G99 using tablets.

The GPU performance is excellent, making this a great platform for more demanding titles and tools that generate 3D images. The Arm Mali-G610 MC6 is so good that some of the 3DMark tests failed to run, declaring them ‘Maxed Out!’ when you try to run them.

With all this power, it would seem logical that battery life would suffer accordingly, but that appears not to be the case. Reaching nearly 36 hours with the 21000mAh capacity implies that four full working days of use is not an unrealistic assumption, and many more days if you aren’t constantly using the tablet.

Interestingly, the Ulefone Armor Pad 4 Ultra has more than 50% of the battery capacity but fails to last more than half as long as the Unihertz Tank Pad 8849.

Overall, the performance is better than that of a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 machine, and that’s an accolade it should cherish.

• Performance score: 4.5/5

Unihertz Tank Pad 8849: Final verdict

The Tank Pad 8849 was clearly a development of the previous 8849 TANK3 PRO, a rugged smartphone with a massive battery, DLP projector, 200-megapixel camera. The tablet form factor allows for an even bigger battery, though the camera specification was reduced somewhat.

The best aspect of this device is just how abuse-resistant it is, being able to handle being dropped or even submersed in water for a period of time. It also has a big battery and a power-efficient SoC, which can last a long time, especially if operations are curated.

While it only sports 50MP and 32MP camera sensors, these are good enough to capture some good quality still images and video.

I’m not especially impressed with the projector, but it might have its uses for those wishing to share the moment a bear chased them from earlier in the camping holiday.

The camping light is bright and powerful, even if it eats battery life, and the SoC, RAM and storage make for a good user experience with Android 14.

If I list all the aspects of this device, they’re almost all good or acceptable, with relatively few below-average scores. But then, at $600, it should be.

The biggest issue is that 8849 Tech hasn’t got its accessories ready to support this device when it badly needs those mounts to make the most from this hardware.

Once those come along, presumably, then this might be an excellent Android platform for those in construction or agriculture who need rugged and reliable equipment.

Should I buy a Unihertz Tank Pad 8849?

Buy it if…

Don’t buy it if…

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