Lenovo has expanded their successful business-oriented line of computing
devices to include tablets. The company introduced two new slates
earlier this year – the consumer-oriented IdeaPad K1
and the business-minded ThinkPad Tablet that we are examining today.
Sure, Lenovo has been producing Windows-based tablet PCs with
touchscreen functions for quite some time, but the ThinkPad tablet isn't
any of those.
We've come to know Lenovo as one of the premiere business notebook
manufacturers over the past years. Having worked with several ThinkPads
during my time at TechSpot, aside from a few small quirks, each unit
left me looking forward to the next. The foundation for Lenovo's
ThinkPad line has been a uniform style that's stood the test of time
quite well. It's simple, practical, recognizable and instills the value
of quality in the minds of many. It'll be interesting to see how that
tradition has carried on to their first ThinkPad tablet running Android.
Lenovo's ThinkPad Tablet is powered by an Nvidia Tegra 2 dual-core 1GHz
processor, 32GB of internal storage, 1GB of DDR2 system memory, front
and rear cameras, 8.02.11 b/g/n/ Wi-Fi connectivity and a 10.1-inch WXGA
(1280 x 800) IPS display with Corning Gorilla Glass. Our evaluation
unit shipped with Android 3.1 Honeycomb and included the optional stylus
pen with a retail price of $530. Both 16GB and 64GB variants are also
available, priced at $430 and $630, respectively.
Lenovo's Android tablet is ever so slightly larger than the Acer Iconia Tab
that we looked at back in August, both in thickness and height; width
is virtually identical. According to the official spec sheet, the
ThinkPad Tablet measures in at 260.4mm width, 181.7mm depth and 14.5mm
thickness. The unit is listed at 742.2 grams with Wi-Fi only and 756.1
grams with a 3G radio.
The first thing you will notice about the tablet is the four buttons
across the bottom of the display (when in portrait mode). From left to
right, these allow you to lock or unlock auto screen rotation, launch a
web browser, go back to the previous page and go home. The buttons are
centered along the bezel but they look a bit odd because only two of the
buttons are the same size. Additionally the buttons are rather stiff
and nothing like the great buttons that Lenovo uses as mouse click
buttons on their ThinkPad notebooks. Perhaps the added stiffness was
introduced to prevent accidental button presses when using in landscape
mode.
After using the tablet for a good while, I wish Lenovo had added a
subtle backlight to these buttons as they are next to impossible to read
in low light situations. Of course, there are only four buttons and it
doesn't take long to memorize their functions, but I digress.
Unlike most tablets on the market, Lenovo's unit looks more natural when
held vertically due to the aforementioned buttons across the bottom as
well as the Lenovo and ThinkPad branding just above them. The entire
front side is solid black with the display slightly inset around a
matching bezel. The front-facing 2MP camera and ambient light sensor can
be found at the top right side of the bezel.
The quality of the display when powered off appears much higher than what we found on the Acer Iconia.
If you recall in that review, the touch panel of the Acer displayed an
obvious gridline pattern that looked cheap and was distracting. The
grid, while somewhat visible on the Lenovo, isn't nearly as distracting
and you really need to be looking for it to see it.
On the left side of the tablet is a single speaker positioned about ¾ of
the way down the edge followed by a sliding door that hides a single
full-size USB port. Across the bottom we find another door hiding an SD
card slot as well as a SIM card slot, a docking connector, a micro-USB
connector, mini-HDMI connector and a headphone jack. The docking station
connector can be used with Lenovo's optional table dock.
It's worth noting that the door covering the SD and SIM slots is
difficult to open without assistance. I had to resort to an Xacto knife
to pry the cover open. There's only a tiny horizontal slot to open the
cover, meaning you'll need something thin to slide in.
On the right side of the device is a power button and across the top is a
volume rocker, microphone and a slot for the optional stylus pen ($40).
Around back we are treated to a smooth plastic surface that almost feels
rubber-like. Lenovo's trademark reflective nameplate is positioned on
the left with a 5MP camera. The ThinkPad branding is placed on the
bottom right corner and the "i" in ThinkPad lights up red when the
tablet is in use, just like we saw on the outer lid of the ThinkPad
X100e.
Lenovo has added several of their own widgets and apps to the tablet out
of the box. The most prominent is on the home screen called Launch Zone
for quick access to email, music, watching videos, reading and the web.
The Zones are customizable by tapping the settings button on the left
side and you can access tablet-wide settings from the shortcut on the
right. Across the bottom of the screen is a conversation bubble icon
called App Wheel that when pressed pops up a selection of six different
apps which is fully customizable as well.
For the sake of brevity, I'll only highlight a few of the key apps.
Lenovo claims their tablet is the first to come with Netflix
preloaded, even though it's a few taps aways for the rest of Android
users. Documents to Go is another key addition, an app that normally
sells for $14.99 on the Android market. Documents to Go allows you to
view, edit and create Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint files as well
as view Adobe PDF files and attachments. This is a must-have addition
for business use.
Other high-profile apps that don't require an explanation include Angry
Birds HD, McAfee Security, Amazon Kindle, YouTube and Amazon MP3. You
can see a complete list of preloaded apps in the enclosed photos.
Lenovo also includes an app for their own store called Lenovo App Shop.
The company claims their store will eliminate any concerns users might
have about downloading suspect apps from Android's market. Apps here are
sorted by usefulness so you don't have to wade through a ton of junk
apps to find something good.
Again, Lenovo markets this tablet as business-oriented so naturally
there are a few apps geared specifically towards IT professionals. The
first is Absolute Software's Computrace, which provides a persistent
connection back to the device in the event it is lost or stolen. The
administrator can freeze the tablet, delete data and perform other
management functions remotely, even if the tablet has been factory
reset.
Citrix Receiver is an enterprise app that allows IT to securely deliver
data and apps directly to the tablet. Furthermore, tablet users can
access their work applications and desktops from anywhere.
Lenovo also includes a trial edition of McAfee VirusScan Mobile which
includes WaveSecure and SiteAdvisor for Android. The description for
this app says it protects your data if your tablet is lost or stolen and
can back up and restore information in addition to safeguarding against
viruses and spyware. We certainly don't like trial stuff making it into
the tablet, but hopefully certain kind of users will find this useful.
Finally, PrintShare allows you to print directly from your tablet to
nearby Wi-Fi enabled printers or remote ones shared with PrintShare's
software.
Impressions and Conclusion
I tested the rear-facing camera on the ThinkPad under the same
conditions that I did with the Acer and received about the same results.
Simply put, tablet cameras aren't very good; none of them. You'd have
similar or better luck with a basic smartphone camera. Something like
Apple's iPhone 4 would easily put these to shame. The same goes for
video recording quality – it's just not a high point for the ThinkPad.
Lenovo sent along the optional pen ($40)
for our evaluation, which works with the N-Trig DuoSensor digitizer.
The first of only a few possible places to use the pen is in the
pre-installed Notes Mobile app. This app essentially turns the tablet
into a notepad, allowing you to use the pen to take notes or draw
directly onscreen. You can elect to keep your dictation as-is or have
the app transcribe it into a few different fonts. Icons at the top of
the screen control how you write and allow you to undo, redo and erase
text.
Unfortunately this app still has a way to go before I'd consider taking
it into a meeting. Even when trying to be precise about my handwriting,
the app had trouble and got the translation wrong. Furthermore, it would
draw lines where my palm rested as I was writing, resulting in
undesired lines that would sometimes be translated into random letters.
Overall it's a good concept that works fine sometimes but it's not
reliable enough to replace a pen and notepad just yet (go figure!).
Software updates could change this in the future, however.
Other uses for the pen include drawing apps and editing PDF files but
aside from that, the pen likely won't get much use as it's easier to
navigate the tablet using your fingers. If you opt to not buy the pen,
you're left with a rather odd looking hole in the tablet where the pen
would normally be stored.
The ThinkPad Tablet's display operates at the same resolution as the
Acer Iconia Tab we tested a few months ago. Both displays showed about
the same quality of color reproduction, viewing angles and brightness
but the ThinkPad did not have the distracting gridlines of the Acer,
especially when using it in direct sunlight.
Although it won't be as big of a concern for business users, one area
that Lenovo clearly dropped the ball is audio. The single speaker is
positioned on the edge of the tablet where, when holding the unit in
portrait mode with my left hand, blocked the port. If that weren't bad
enough, the speaker itself is the most underpowered speaker I've ever
used on a tablet or notebook. When watching a TV show on Netflix, I
could barely hear the audio even when the system was at max volume.
During our battery test which consisted of running the movie Inception
until the battery died, the Video Player application wouldn't even pick
up voices in the film – only occasional loud noises or background music.
Things were slightly better in YouTube but not by much. If you plan to
listen to music or watch videos on this tab, a set of headphones are
virtually a requisite.
One other thing I want to mention is the full-size USB port which is
tucked away behind a sliding door. Initially I thought this was a great
idea until I tried to use my MSI flash drive with the port. Because the
port is tucked so deeply into the tablet, the flash drive wasn't fully
able to plug into the port and I couldn't use it (an extension would be a
less than ideal solution). One could just blame the flash drive's
design but this is the first time I've had a problem with this thumb
drive on any system.
To test the battery on the ThinkPad Tablet, I set the screen brightness
to roughly 70%, disabled auto-brightness and loaded a 720p rip of
Inception for continuous playback until the battery expired. The
ThinkPad was good for 5 hours and 42 minutes of usage. In contrast, the
iPad 2 lasted 10 hours and 25 minutes under the same test conditions and the Acer Iconia Tab was good for 6 hours and 18 minutes.
Aside from the pen and a few key Lenovo apps and UI changes, the
ThinkPad tablet isn't very different than other Tegra 2 Android tablets.
Much like I concluded with the Acer Iconia, it's not a bad tablet at
all but either the Tegra 2 processor or its combination with Android
Honeycomb are showing some age at this point. Apple's iPad 2 is smoother
all around, from navigating the web to scrolling through menus and
launching apps.
There are things that Android does better than Apple. Connectivity on
the ThinkPad Tablet is good, with both an SD card slot and the USB port.
There's also the micro USB connector and mini HDMI port, neither of
which are found on the iPad.
If you are dead-set on the stylus pen, the ThinkPad Tablet could be the
Android tablet for you. If you are an IT professional or a ThinkPad fan,
again this could be worth your consideration. But if you can stand to
wait a bit longer for Tegra 3, I think the performance benefits of four
processing cores, improved graphics and Ice Cream Sandwich will be worth
the wait.
source:http://www.techspot.com
