The Qooq tablet is an interesting idea; not so much for what it provides – which is actually pretty useful – but as a pointer for the way ahead for certain niche tablets. We’ve already got a hatful of tablets of all prices which do pretty much everything fairly well – browsing, video, games and all the rest of it – but there’s probably a market for a product specifically designed for a certain audience.
The Qooq tablet may be a good start, it’s designed with the culinary art in mind and comes with ingredients lists, recipes and videos of meal preparation all pre-installed. You may note that there are plenty of recipe apps out there already for the iPad and Android devices and that may be true, but the Qooq integrates them into the GUI with much more style for want of a better word. There are hundreds of recipes, a comprehensive guide to which wine you should be serving with your chosen dish and scaled ingredient amounts which can be adjusted depending on the size of your guest list.
The French-made Qooq
The Qooq is also heat and water resistant to a certain extent which makes using it in the kitchen a less nerve-wracking experience. A kickstand on the back means you can stand it up for a good view. Of course it’s also a tablet with most of the features you expect from its rivals but the Qooq is unashamedly for cooks – don’t buy this if you live on takeouts and fast food. It’s a 10.1 inch screen with a dual-core 1GHz Cortex A9 processor and runs on a very customised version of Linux designed for the cooking experience.
It’s manufactured in what some may consider the spiritual home of the chef – France – and has been unavailable there for a while now. You won’t have to battle the French-language website or user interface for long though – it will be available in the United States before long for around $400. Do note though that you’ll need to subscribe to take advantage of the new recipes which are added to the Qooq each month.