Lenovo introduced three new products at an event in Delhi with the highlight being the Yoga Tab 3 right next to the Phab Plus. The Yoga Tab 3 is part of the company’s uniquely designed tablet range that takes a very different and unique approach towards hardware design. We go hands on with the company’s newest product launch in India.
Lenovo Yoga Tab 3 (8-inch) specifications
- 8-inch (1280 x 800 pixels) HD IPS display with 10-point multitouch, AnyPen technology
- 1.3GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 212 (APQ8009) processor with Adreno 304 GPU
- 1GB RAM, 16GB internal memory, expandable up to 128GB
- Android 5.1 (Lollipop)
- 8MP auto focus rotatable rear camera
- Dimensions: 210 mm x 146 mm x 3.0 – 7.0 mm; Weight: 472 grams
- 3.5 mm Audio jack, Dolby Atmos
- 4G LTE / 3G, WiFi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0, GPS+ GLONASS
- 6200mAh battery with up to 20 hours of usage
Video Hands On
Hardware Overview
As you would have noticed already, the distinct hardware design is a very intrinsic part of the Yoga Tab 3. For someone who is very particular about symmetry, the Tab 3 is going to be a bit of a shock. Dig beneath though and you’ll see some very sensible and smart tweaks. But first, the display. You’ve got an 8 inch panel up there with a resolution of 1280 x 800 pixels. This isn’t anywhere close to being competitive and the slightly blurred out edges on text and icons prove to be a disappointment. Additionally, the color reproduction is just about average.
The display is flanked to the left and right by a large bezel while the top and bottom have a narrow, wide bezel respectively. Let’s dissect the reasoning behind this. Having a large bezel on the left and right allows the user to hold the tablet easily while watching content without covering the display itself. However the top isn’t really designed to be held and so Lenovo has bestowed it with a narrow bezel. On the other hand, the wide bezel at the bottom means that you can hold the tablet like a book. The bezel also merges with another very distinctive hardware feature of the tablet.
Not new to the Yoga Tab 3 but welcome still, the large cylindrical object fused to the bottom of the tablet indeed houses a large battery as well as a kickstand. Intelligently the power button and 3.5mm audio jack are integrated on either side of the cylindrical edge. You’ll also find the microUSB port and the volume rocker at the left edge. The tablet is equipped with an 8MP camera that has the added benefit of being able to rotate. Need a high quality selfie? Turn it up front. Shooting a landscape? Turn it the other way around. There’s a lot of flexibility here and like the rest of the tablet, the assembly is very robust. The actual camera quality on the other hand seemed just about alright and we’ll have to test it out a lot more to give it a verdict. Nonetheless, a camera on a tablet isn’t a key selling point.
So what’s the deal with the internals? The tablet is surprisingly underpowered for a mid range device. It is powered by a 1.3Ghz Snapdragon 212 processor which is a Quad Core chip. This is paired with just 1 GB of RAM and 16GB of storage. These are astonishingly poor specifications for a modern tablet. While the interface was smooth enough, the amount of RAM and the low end processor means that you won’t be doing much of multitasking or high end gaming on this tablet. The battery is a 6200mAh unit which Lenovo says will deliver about 20 hours of battery life and we’ll just have to test out that claim for ourselves once we have a review unit with us. For what its worth, the tablet also packs 4G LTE capabilities which make us further question the poor specifications as the Lenovo Yoga Tab 3 could very well have been a good productivity focussed tablet.
The Lenovo Yoga Tab 3 is in a very peculiar position. It merges really well built industrial design and genuinely useful, thoughtful ergonomics with very low end internals. The competition far outpaces what is offered by the Tab 3 and makes us hard to recommend this product. The internals might be sufficient today but are far from future proof or whatever stands for future proof in the mobile computing space these days. The Lenovo Yoga Tab 3 is priced at Rs. 16,999 and is powered by Android 5.1