The Lenovo IdeaTab S1209a is quite obviously Lenovo’s answer to Apple’s iPad. The IdeaTab has a 9.7 inch screen with a resolution of 1024 x 768, identical to the original iPad and iPad 2. Lenovo’s tablet is sleek at a thin 0.35 inches and a light 1.3 pounds, lighter than Apple’s new iPad and on par with tablets in the market. This tablet, priced competitively at $349 and seen online for cheaper, is targeted at the consumer who wants a full 10 inch tablet a cheaper price than either the iPad or higher-end Android tablets, like the Asus TF700 Transformer Pad Infinity, with a higher resolution screen and aluminum design.
First Impressions
Upon removing the IdeaTab S1209A from Lenovo’s stylish red and white angled box, I immediately notice how sleek it looks and how light it feels. Not in a cheap way, but light nonetheless for a tablet in this class. Lenovo oddly decides to have the logo in landscape, while the front-facing camera (which happens to be the only one) is optimized for portrait. Very confusing.
Furthermore, upon turning the IdeaTab on, it’s quite clear the display is not up to par. In an age of 2048 x 1536 displays (i.e. the iPad) and 1920 x 1200 (Asus Transformer Pad Infinity), 1024 x 768 is simply unacceptable. Images are grainy, colors appear washed out, and video seems dull and lifeless.
What I did notice, however, are the simply excellent Dolby surround sound speakers located on the back of the device. They pump out strong and accurate sound, whether the audio is local or pulled from Pandora or Spotify. The speakers on the IdeaTab S1209a put Apple to shame for what it includes in the iPad.
Software Experience
Running a stock Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0), the IdeaTab seems relatively free of bloatware, though it comes with Norton Security, Docs to Go, Evernote, and other useful apps. What’s there can be easily hidden, if not uninstalled. There is a noticeable amount of lag when performing any moderate multitasking or even when switching quickly between home screens. In order to compete with the aforementioned tablets, this isn’t acceptable.
All of the apps from my Google account download easily enough, and most run fine even though they aren’t necessarily optimized for tablets. Google’s software easily stretches apps to display at the correct resolution without too much trouble. Lenovo, in addition to the Google Play Store, also includes a Lenovo App Shop, which has few, if any, useful offerings. Ice Cream Sandwich in general seems to run well on the IdeaTab, but the lag leaves me wanting for Jelly Bean (Android 4.1), complete with Google’s Project Butter software enhancements, which make the OS even faster, maintaining a 60 fps rate at all times.
Performance
Unfortunately, Lenovo’s IdeaTab S1209a features a 1 GHz dual-core TI OMAP 4430 coupled with 1 GB of RAM, comparable to what Verizon’s DROID RAZR runs, albeit clocked at a lower speed. What this means for actual performance though is that the IdeaTab is slow more often than not. Tasks take much more time than with a Galaxy Nexus or iPad, and apps open a few seconds slower as well. Given many tablets these days run nVidia’s quad-core Tegra 3, including the $199 7-inch Asus Nexus 7, it really feels like Lenovo skimped here.
Additionally, WiFi performance is abysmal. Moving more than 20 feet away from the router yields little to no WiFi reception and was slower than other devices on the same network.
Battery life is decent, often getting me through the day, but seemed rather short compared to the marathon run time of my iPad. Oftentimes, especially if playing streaming video, the IdeaTab guzzles battery life, depleting itself in six hours or less. Even playing audio through the excellent Dolby speakers sucks battery life like a vampire.
The Strengths
The IdeaTab S1209a’s greatest strength is its speakers. They are fantastic, capable of filling a normal sized room with sound, and offer accurate and clear-sounding music. Also great is how light and thin the tablet is, but it’s nothing fantastically remarkable. While essentially stock Ice Cream Sandwich is a plus, this should have been released with Jelly Bean, if not updated in the near future.
The Weaknesses
The display. It’s terrible. It’s the reason, other than the mediocre processor, not to buy this tablet. After you go Retina (Apple’s word for displays that meet a certain threshold of pixel density), you just can’t go back. The IdeaTab’s display is not only low resolution, but appears grainy and has an odd color temperature. At $349 for 16 GB, the IdeaTab 1209a is pricey for its class of budget tablet. At $299, it might be worth looking at, but there are better tablets in this size and price range, like the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 or Asus’s Transformer Pad TF300, which offer higher resolution screens, better processors, and an overall better package (minus the speakers)
Wrap Up
Unless you find the Lenovo S1209a at some fantastic price under $299, I hesitate to recommend it when there are better tablets on the market and it has so many flaws. If I could transplant the speakers onto another tablet, I would, but for now, Lenovo needs to work on several issues to create a budget-minded consumer tablet I can get behind.
Comments are closed.