Lenovo Yoga Tablet 10 Review

Introduction

You can say that Lenovo loves poking its nose everywhere, as the Chinese company is well known for manufacturing a broad range of tablets. Although they’ve made several Android based tablets to date, none of them have been able to find that path to success in making them serious contenders in the space. However, they intend for things to change with the Lenovo Yoga Tablet 10 – a peculiar looking thing that’s priced competitively at $300. Being cheap is good, right? Well, that’s as long as its performance can keep up!

The package contains:

• microUSB cable
• Wall Charger
• User Manual
• Warranty Card

Design

It’s wonderful when a company is meticulous and thoughtful when it comes to design, something that stands out immensely with the Lenovo Yoga Tablet 10. Unlike the usual slates, they’ve taken a different approach, as the tablet mimics the look of a rolled up magazine. In fact, the rolled up portion is comprised of its cylindrical handle, which also holds its uniquely shaped battery. With this particular implementation, the rest of the body is able to retain an extremely skinny figure – 0.3-inches thin to be exact.

Now there’s no concern about the tablet being brittle, mainly because its chassis is comprised out of a textured polycarbonate rear casing that’s held together by a sturdy aluminum alloy frame. The mixture works well in giving the tablet a very premium look and finish. As for the in-the-hand feel, we don’t have too many complaints – albeit, it’s always heavy towards the side of its cylindrical handle. Despite that, we appreciate that the handle itself provides us with a natural grip.

Seeing that it has such a thin profile around its display, the only things we find around its trim are the volume control, microphone, and microUSB port. However, Lenovo is able to incorporate its power button and 3.5mm headset jack into the ends of the cylindrical handle.

Just like its other Yoga branded tablets and convertibles, this one has the unique ability of being propped in a variety of ways – thanks to its solid kickstand hinge. In stand mode, it positions the tablet so that it provides us with a proper hands-free video watching experience. Meanwhile, tilt mode allows us to lay the tablet flat on its back, with the kickstand slightly elevating it, so that it’s in an ideal position when typing with its on-screen keyboard. Now, we appreciate that there are rubber stoppers that keep the tablet in place when it’s in stand mode, but they’re missing with tilt mode – resulting in it moving around while typing on slippery surfaces. Thankfully, there’s a microSD slot hidden beneath the kickstand.

Armed with a 5-megapixel auto-focus rear camera, it’s built into one side of the cylindrical hinge, which can sometimes cause us to accidentally cover it with our fingers – as we hold the tablet naturally. On the front, there’s a 1.6-megapixel camera .

Display

When you’re priced this low, there is going to be a compromise somewhere, and in this case, it’s found with the display. Specifically, it’s packing along a 10.1-inch 1280 x 800 IPS LCD display, which produces a lowly pixel density tally of 149 ppi. Sure, it might not exhibit the sharp visuals of some other high-end panels, but nevertheless, it’s ample enough to enable us to see fine text in the web browser from a normal viewing distance. Employing IPS LCD technology, the display exhibits neutral color tones, average viewing angles, and a modest brightness output – though, it still requires some shielding when the sun is out and about.

Interface and Functionality

We’ve never taken fancy over any of Lenovo’s customized Android experiences, but they’ve once again decided to take a new direction with this tablet. In general, all the core functions of Android are intact with its customized Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean experience, however, they buck the trend by eliminating the apps panel altogether. You’d think this would simplify things, but it doesn’t. Rather, it becomes a test of futility trying to find particular app icons. Worst yet, there’s no option to arrange them alphabetically. In the end, this particular implementation just feels a tad bit disorganized.

Still, there are several enhancements made to the homescreen that shows off Lenovo’s new approach. For starters, there are cool animations available when scrolling through the homescreen and rearranging icons/widgets. On top of the notifications panel and multi-tasking menu that we’re familiar with, Lenovo adds in a smart side bar that’s accessed from the homescreen by swiping left from the right section of the display – presenting us quick access to certain apps and other options.

Quite honestly, we didn’t expect to find anything extravagant with the customized experience, even more when they decided to do away with the apps panel. It’s not the most intuitive or features rich experience, but everyone has to start somewhere.

Sporting the stock Android keyboard, it’s especially most useful with the landscape option – just because it works well when the tablet is in tilt mode. With its spacious layout, speedy response, and good auto-correct feature, there’s nothing we don’t like with this.

Processor and Memory

In order to meet its pricing criteria, Lenovo opted to outfit the Yoga Tablet 10 with an unfamiliar piece of silicon – a quad-core 1.2GHz MediaTek MT8125 processor coupled with 1GB of RAM. It’s not something we’d refer to as first-class hardware, but nonetheless, it’s effective enough to handle most basic tasks with ease. However, it strains and cracks under pressure with more processor intensive stuff.

For something priced so low, it’s awesome that it’s blessed with 16GB of internal storage, which can be further supplemented by its available microSD card slot.

Internet and Connectivity

Its screen isn’t the most detailed, nor does it have the fastest performance with its processor, but at least things are swell with the web browsing experience. Heck, at the very least, it has all the elements that make it fantastic – such as quick page loads, fast rendering, and smooth navigational controls.

Even though there’s a placeholder to what appears to be a SIM slot next to the microSD slot, there’s no mention if we’ll see this tablet become available with cellular connectivity in the future. Indeed, it’s stuck with 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi connectivity, as well as aGPS and Bluetooth 4.0, but it’s missing things like NFC and video-out functionality.

Camera

Thankfully, Lenovo didn’t tinker too much with the camera app, since it bears a good combination of shooting modes and manual controls to give both novice and hardened shutterbugs something to mess around with. Launching the app takes approximately 3 seconds, with another few seconds after that for the auto-focus to kick in and actually snap a shot.

There’s nothing pretty with the quality from its 5-megapixel auto-focus camera, well, it’s more unflattering than anything else. First and foremost, details are just downright poor – to the point where photos can sometime appear speckled in tone. Secondly, colors appear dull and washed out. And finally, its low lighting performance is utterly horrendous, as it’s painfully dulled by noise and its flat details.


Knowing that it doesn’t handle still images all that well, we’re not too shocked to find it failing with its 1080p video recording quality as well. No people, it’s not just bad, but it’s actually terrible from every facet with can think of. Out of everything, details are just gone – like out the door kind of gone! Not helping things out, it’s also plagued by some heavy artifacting and bland colors. Heck, the only bright spot in everything is its clear audio recording quality.

Multimedia

All music is handled by the preloaded Google Play Music app, so there’s nothing more to say about its presentation and functionality, since it’s the same thing we find with most tablets and smartphones. Placing our attention on its dual speakers, which gives it stereo support, we notice that its volume output is lacking – not to mention being flat too with its tones.

Out of the box, it supports all of the popular video codecs out there, and on top of that, it offers Dolby Digital Plus to give it a subtle surround sound feel. Naturally, it plays 1080p videos with minimal fluff. Interestingly though, Lenovo enhances the experience by allowing us better multi-tasking by minimizing the player so it can be layered on top of something else.

Battery

Setting new records, the Lenovo Yoga Tablet 10 exceeds our expectations and sets the pace with its unprecedented battery life. Donning a 9000 mAh battery, it’s rated to deliver 18 hours of battery life with Wi-Fi web browsing. However, in our real world experience, it pulls out roughly 3.5 days of normal usage – a tally that’s outstanding! Seriously, you’ll never have to worry about running out of juice, since its battery is just so darn good.

Conclusion

Lenovo might still be trying to gain some traction in the Android tablet space, but they’re definitely getting our attention with the Lenovo Yoga Tablet 10. It may not be a high powered thing that would capture the imagination of people, but the combination between its affordable cost, intriguing design, and unprecedented battery life, help to give it a standing chance in hitting the big time.

At only $299 for the base 16GB option, it’s a steal no doubt when we find a sturdy built tablet that has a very peculiar design – one that’s different from most things out there. Well, it’s not without its low points either, like its disorganized homescreen layout and poor camera quality. Despite that, we can’t help but think about that cost in the end. If you’re strapped for cash, then it’s a no-brainer decision to pick this one up.

Software version of reviewed unit:
Android version: 4.2.2
Build number: B8000_A422_026_130919_WW-WIFI
Kernel version: 3.4.5