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.

Photograph: Scott Gilbertson

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).