Murena /e/OS Tablet Review: Privacy for a Price

Inside the Volla is an Octa-core, MediaTek Helio G99 chip—which, while not the fastest mobile chip around, was plenty speedy enough for web browsing and watching 4K video. The only place I would see this chip as a limiting factor is in gaming. For that, you'd probably want something more powerful.

Along with the processor you get 12 GB of RAM and 512 GB of built-in storage space. There are no additional configuration options, and disappointingly there's no microSD card slot to expand the storage. There is a sim card slot, though, and I was able to use the tablet on T-Mobile's network without any issues.

The version of /e/OS that ships with the Volla is based on Android 14, which is a little behind at this point, but is at least the release which saw Google finally add a few features that make it easier for developers to build apps for large screens. Any apps taking advantage of these features should work just fine on /e/OS.

For its part, Murena has not added any tablet-specific tools to /e/OS, the way Samsung and OnePlus have built their own productivity-enhancing UIs for their tablets. You get the features of stock Android 14 in the form of split screen apps, but that's about it in terms of tablet-specific features. The main appeal is, of course, the privacy-focused /e/OS and the lack of Google Services installed on the Volla. Instead, you get Murena's services (optional), or you can do what I do and use your own web services (a mix of Syncthing and NextCloud with some other odds and ends). Either way, you get to start without Google.

This does mean that there can be issues with apps. As I noted in my review of /e/OS, some banking apps in particular seem to have issues with microG, which is what /e/OS uses instead of Google's various APIs and tools. On this tablet, I ran into another issue that could possibly be related to microG (though it could also be hardware-related).