A tablet made specifically for the kitchen may sound a bit excessive, but that's what Alcatel seems to be aiming for with its upcoming Xess tablet.
It's not just a tablet, however. It's a giant tablet. At a massive 17.3-inch in screen size, the Xess is nearly five inches larger than Apple's 12.9-inch iPad Pro.
The Xess' closest competitor, however, would be Samsung's Galaxy View that has an even bigger screen at 18.4 inches. Unlike the Samsung device that comes with a handle on its rear so that it could be moved around, Alcatel's oversized tablet is meant to stay in the kitchen.
Branded as the "perfect 17-inch accessory for the kitchen", it probably is the only 17-inch accessory for the kitchen. At that size, the Xess blurs the line between a tablet and an all-in-one (AIO) computer.
Developed in partnership with Alcatel's parent brand, TCL, the Xess sports a full HD display with a 1,920 x 1,080 resolution, a 64-bit eight-core MediaTek MT8783T processor running at 1.5GHz, 3 GB of RAM, 32 GB of storage that can be expanded with a microSD card, and two 3-watt JBL-branded speakers.
There's also an included remote camera that can be placed anywhere within a home and monitored using the Xess. Finally, all of that stays on with the Xess' equally massive 10,000mAh battery. However, if it's being sold as kitchen accessory, it might as well just be plugged into a socket.
"We've been committed as a company to expanding the reach of our consumer technology and how it can bring better experiences and value to the lives of our customers, and with Xess, we're delivering a meaningful connected kitchen hub that allows users to access more of the content they want and need," says Steve Cistulli, President and General Manager for Alcatel North America.
As a device for the kitchen, Alcatel has also preloaded kitchen-centric and family-friendly software into the Xess.
"[D]iscovering and creating new meals via the pre-loaded recipe applications, accessing Nickelodeon content, such as PAW Patrol for kids, or catching up on the latest news and entertainment" can all be done on the big kitchen tablet.
The $499 price tag is quite hefty for the big tablet, but Alcatel firmly believes that there is indeed a market out there for it. We'll see if that's really the case when the Xess goes on sale online on April 22.
