Since Lenovo woke up from its relative slumber about 3 years ago, it has been releasing a steady stream of personal gadgets in the market. The popularity was buffeted by the likes of its Twist and Yoga series of products which, if not for anything else, were interesting enough owing to how flexible their form factors were.

It’s a good thing then that they have continued to build upon these series with a range of hybrid PCs and tablets, the latest being the Lenovo Yoga Tablet. The tablet comes in two sizes, and we got our hands on the 8-inch one (the other is a 10-inch tablet) to see how the Yoga series is evolving.

First Impressions The first thing that strikes you when you see the Lenovo Yoga tablet is that you’ve seen something really similar before. Chances are you have. It looks a lot like the Apple wireless keyboard, with the body slanting towards the cylindrical top. Strangely, even the Power button to switch the tab on reminded us of Apple.

The cylindrical base has been built into the tablet so it’s easy for you to let it slant while you type on it. You can pull a small panel out that helps prop the tablet on its base. This is designed to be optimal while viewing media such as movies or just having a Hangout with someone.

The 8-inch tablet looks like it has a marginally smaller screen because of the wide bezel around the display. The screen itself is nothing worth writing home about – it has a pretty average display especially when compared to most other tablets which now sport HD displays. You can tell when you are trying to stream HD videos on this or checking out some high-res pictures on the tablet. The screen just isn’t as sharp as it is on many other rival tablets in the market. And for most people looking for a great multimedia experience this might just end up being a deal-breaker.

On opposite sides of the tablet rest the hard-to-ignore power button and a 3.5 mm jack. The power button goes in quite a bit when you press it. It’s probably to prevent you from activating it by mistake while you’re turning the tab around or something. There’s also a volume rocker next to the headphone jack, which we weren’t kicked about using because most of the time you can’t tell which one Up/Down without having to pause and look.

One of the absolute best things about the Yoga tablet is its battery life. At a time, when we start palpitating towards the end of the day knowing fully well our smartphones are going to die if we don’t plug them in immediately, the Yoga tablet comes as a rather pleasant surprise. We don’t get to say this about many tablets but we went about three days before re-plugging the Yoga tablet after a full charge. This was mostly with some obsessive bouts of Candy Crush Saga, constant email updates and once-in-a-while Twitter and Facebook tracking. Not bad at all!

Multimedia & Apps Facing the user, there are two Dolby Digital Plus DS1 front-facing speakers. There’s also a 5-megapixel camera on the back and a 1.6-megapixel front camera for video chatting.

What it lacks in display, it tries to make up for in audio quality by integrating Dolby Digital Plus DS1 technology in the stereo speakers. You have the option to keep this on if it suits you or turn it off. You can select sound profiles for gaming, watching movies, or playing music.

The camera is pretty average, while it lets you capture the one-off interesting thing you might come across don’t expect it to take stellar snaps.

The tablet comes with a handful of custom apps from Lenovo, several third-party titles, and the typical Google apps suite. There’s a maps and navigation app called Navigate 6, a voice recorder, and a power management app, which changes settings to keep your battery alive longer. There’s also Norton Mobile Security, Kindle, AccuWeather, and Skype.

The Yoga tablet has a special Timeout schedule that lets you decide when you want the tab to switch to sleep mode, beforehand.

The pull-down notifications are a bit unusually arranged. If you drag down the right side of the screen you’ll get access to shortcuts for WLAN, Bluetooth, GPS, Airplane Mode and so on. But all your email or SMS notifications or current playlist can be accessed if you pull down the left side of the screen.

Lenovo also includes on the Smart Bar three viewing modes which change the display and audio settings to fit the activity: Hold, Stand, and Tilt. Hold mode enhances the audio for music, Tilt changes the sound and video settings to ones best for gaming, and in Stand mode, the settings adjust for playing video.

The Lenovo Yoga tablet’s performance is neither lightning fast nor is it particularly sluggish. For the price, the tablet packs a Quad Core 1.2GHz processor decent enough to handle basic tasks and apps with ease. If you load anything heavy-duty like a graphic-heavy mobile game, be prepared to twiddle your thumbs a bit waiting for levels to load.

The tablet scores when it comes to ergonomics but when it comes to display and multimedia it loses out to a bunch of better options in the market. The only buyer profile this would be a perfect fit for is for business travellers who need their tablets powered on for long periods of time and can’t be bothered much about an inferior display or camera.

Rs 22,999

Love – Convenient hinge, excellent battery life

Hate – Overdone UI customisation, low-res display

mahananda.bohidar@thehindu.co.in

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