After the successful purchase of IBM’s laptop business unit, the Chinese firm Lenovo has set about turning heads by consistently creating top quality, no nonsense computers focused towards business users. As with so many other portable companies, the K1 Ideapad marks Lenovo’s first attempt in the world of Android-based tablets and given their very competitive price point they may have come up with a winner here.
The display size is 10.1 inches with a 1280×800 resolution and runs Android 3.1 (Honeycomb) which places it squarely as a rival to the Samsung Galaxy Tab and Motorola Xoom. It sports very similar hardware too – an accelerometer, digital compass, GPS, a 1GHz dual core Nvidia Tegra 2 processor and 1GB RAM but ups the ante with 32 GB of storage compared to other tablets who offer just 16GB in their basic models. Perhaps it is something to do with their laptop heritage, but just like Toshiba and Asus, Lenovo appears to really understand the tablet market and you will find a mini HDMI out port together with a microSD card slot and a docking port to attach a physical keyboard. Just read any user reviews about the Galaxy Tab or Motorola Xoom and you will find folk moaning about the lack of ports.
Lenovo has attempted to push the envelope with their tablet and you will find dozens of premium programmes preloaded out of the box, plenty of which you would normally need to pay for like Documents to Go and Angry Birds and you also obtain access to their cloud storage service where youget a free 2 GB to store films, music, pictures and other files which you can get access to from where ever you are. We fully expect to see more manufacturers offering cloud storage solutions and as such the initial price of the tablets will come down as the companies can make their profit from the after sales services.
Access to the Android Marketplace gives you the opportunity to download literally many thousands of applications and since it’s Android, you can even download apps that haven’t been accepted by Big Brother so you can help out app developers test their new ideas and get involved with the community. Using applications like NetFlix gives you access to one of the world's largest digital media libraries and you can stream films all day long if you’d like!
One of the deal clinchers for many individuals, particularly when the hardware is all so alike, is the battery life-span and the K1 Ideapad excels in this area. While other (though admittedly dearer) tablets can manage up to 7 hours of battery life-span, many customers are reporting that the K1 Ideapad is good for about 10 hours of usage which places it in the same league as the iPad 2.
One area many veteran tablet users will tell you to take a look at is the ergonomics of the device and while the K1 Ideapad isn’t the fattest of devices out there, it can’t compete with the sleek lines of the Galaxy Tab. It is nearly twice as thick and a full 4.5 oz heavier which becomes obvious after thirty minutes of holding the device. Some users have also reported that the wifi reception isn’t great and while other devices will pick up a full signal, the K1 Ideapad is only able to manage a fraction below that which can potentially make a difference with browsing speed.
At the price Lenovo is offering their K1 Ideapad and with the long battery charge lifespan it makes for a superb media consumption tablet, excellent for the long work commutes or sitting on a plane watching films you would like to watch instead of what the airline thinks you need to watch!
James Perron enjoys writing about technology at e learning uf. Check out his website for more great articles.
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