MediaTek Kompanio 1300T Wants To Give Tablets A Leg Up
Tablets haven't become obsolete in the advent of phablets, as many market watchers and analysts previously predicted. In fact, they experienced a resurgence along with PCs, in no small part thanks to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on life, work, and school. In contrast to the likes of the iPad Pro, however, most Android tablets are often seen mostly as content consumption devices rather than portable computers for both play and work. MediaTek wants to change that perception with its new Kompanio 1300T chipset designed specifically for devices with large screens.
We've mostly heard about MediaTek's Helio and new 5G-enabled Dimensity chips for smartphones, but those are hardly the only silicon that the company makes. It has been pushing its new Kompanio line of processors recently, focusing on delivering the same benefits to new form factors, particularly Chromebooks. With the MediaTek Kompanio 1300T, however, the chipmaker is aiming squarely for the tablet market, which mostly means Android tablets, of course.
The 5G Kompanio 1300T shares some similarities with the latest Dimensity 1200 chipset for phones. Those include the same TSMC 6nm process and octa-core mix of Cortex-A78 and Cortex-A55 cores, except the Kompanio's configuration has an even split between the two. There's also the same Mali-G77 MC9 for graphics and support for UFS 3.1 storage.
Where the Kompanio 1300T differs is in its support for different display configurations. It can handle 2.5K 1440p screens running at 120Hz refresh rates or 144Hz at Full HD+ resolutions. It can even support dual 1080p displays, something that makes more sense for tablets and Chromebooks than for phones.
As with any MediaTek processor, the Kompanio 1300T doesn't exactly offer the best performance but balances that out with power efficiency and affordability. At this point, there are few Android tablets that even take advantage of Qualcomm's higher-end Snapdragon processors anyway. MediaTek says that tablets powered by this new chip will be available starting in the third quarter of the year, so we'll soon see how many manufacturers will take advantage of it to offer "prosumer" Android tablets.