India has its own tablet maker in the form of Brave. They introduced the Ark, a good-looking tablet, which we have been using over the past few weeks. While we cannot say it was a perfect ride, yes, it did have its bumps, but mostly the tablet managed to sail through. If you are in the market for a tablet under Rs 40,000 with attachments, then you would definitely want to read the rest of our Brave Ark tablet review.
Priced at Rs 37,999, the Brave Ark is the debut product from Indian brand Brave Tech, and it is genuinely audacious. A Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 chip, a 14,550mAh battery, a 12.95-inch 144Hz display, and a stylus bundled in the box. On paper, this thing should not exist at this price. In practice, it very much feels like it needed six more months in the oven.
In This Article
Design: Built Like a Safe, Weighs Like One Too
The Brave Ark looks the part. A dense aluminium unibody, a boxy professional frame, and a silver octopus logo that oozes quiet confidence for a brand nobody has heard of yet. First impressions? Solid.
Second impressions? Your wrist.
At 706 grams, the Brave Ark is heavy. Clip on the separately sold keyboard cover and you are holding almost a kilogram of device, which puts it squarely in laptop territory without the laptop-level refinement. After just one week of normal use, the paint near the corners on our review unit had already started chipping. There is no water or dust resistance either, and strangely, no fingerprint scanner. Face unlock is your only biometric option, which feels like an oversight on a device marketed at busy professionals.
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The 12.95-inch form factor feels workspace-ready on a desk. Carrying it around all day is a different story entirely.
Display: Big Screen, Small Payoff
Turn it on and the slim bezels and buttery-smooth 144Hz refresh rate genuinely impress. The screen is huge, bright enough indoors at 700 nits, and comfortable for reading or sketching.
Then you try to watch a movie.
The 2.8K resolution, spread across nearly 13-inches, delivers a pixel density of 264ppi, which means text and fine detail look softer than they should. More critically, the Brave Ark has no HDR support. Put on something cinematic on Netflix, and the visuals look flat, a bit washed out, like watching through slightly foggy glass. Outdoors, direct sunlight wins every time, and we loved it. The eight-speaker system is loud and gets the job done, but calling it cinematic would be generous.
Performance: A Sports Car That Can Use Better Wipers
The Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 is a proper powerhouse. Apps snap open, multitasking is smooth, gaming is fast and the device barely breaks a sweat. For pure processing performance in this price range, the Brave Ark is genuinely impressive.
But mobile gamers, note this: there is no gyroscope. On a device this powerful, that is something that has stumped us, too.
The software is clean, bloatware-free Android 15. That is the good news. The bad news is that it also feels bare and unpolished. A dedicated photo gallery app is absent. Small but telling. A 13MP rear camera and a 5MP front camera are also in the mix. Both work just fine for video chatting.
Ark Pen and PC Mode: Great Ideas, Rough Reality
The Brave Ark Pen is included in the box, which is a genuine value win at this price. The three customisable shortcut buttons are brilliant. You can map them to screenshots, music controls, or a presentation laser pointer. Apple does not offer anything like this on its stylus.
The execution, however, needs serious work. The pen disconnected randomly few times during testing. Palm rejection is inconsistent, leaving accidental streaks across notes. PC Mode, the feature Brave uses to pitch this as a laptop replacement, gives you a taskbar, floating windows, and a desktop-style layout. The idea is excellent. At first, it was a jittery, stuttering interface that feels like a beta build, but as we tested it further, these bugs subsided.
Battery: The One Thing That Cannot Be Argued With
The 14,550mAh battery is the Brave Ark’s superpower, and it is a big one. Samsung’s most premium tablets do not come close to this capacity. In real-world use, you can expect 12 to 14 hours of screen-on time consistently. Light users will stretch it across an entire weekend without hunting for a charger.
The included 33W charger gets the job back to full in around two and a half hours. Not fast, but forgivable given the tank-sized battery.
If you want a tablet that simply will not die on you, the Brave Ark delivers in a way almost nothing else at this price can.
Verdict: A Prototype with Promise
The Brave Ark Tablet is a first-generation product that behaves exactly like one. It is proof that Indian hardware ambition is real and growing. But ambition is not enough when the software lets the hardware down at every turn. For Rs 37,999, the Xiaomi Pad 7 and OnePlus Pad 2 offer far more polished, reliable, and future-proofed experiences from brands that have actually earned your trust over time.
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The Brave Ark is the right step in a bright direction. But we want to see version two? That could be something worth waiting for.
Buy Brave Ark Tablet from here.
Pros
- Flagship-grade Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 performance
- Genuinely massive 14,550mAh battery with real-world stamina
- Stylus included in the box with useful shortcut buttons
- Clean, bloatware-free Android 15 software
- Large 12.95-inch display with smooth 144Hz refresh rate
Cons
- Heavy and bulky, especially with the keyboard attached
- PC Mode feels unfinished and jittery
- Zero commitment to future software or security updates
- No gyroscope despite the powerful hardware
