Techcitement Review: Lenovo IdeaPad K1 May Need To Think Again

The high-end tablet market is mainly dominated by players we’re familiar with from the mobile industry. Apple, Motorola, HTC, Samsung, RIM, they’ve all made smartphones for years. Moving to tablets basically meant putting the same components those companies are familiar with into a larger case. By contrast, PC manufacturers haven’t had any noted success in this field just yet. The only major contender has been HP, and that little experiment hasn’t gone so well. Now, Lenovo has stepped into the ring with the IdeaPad K1. With Lenovo’s laptops noted for outstanding build quality, I personally greeted this news with some excitement. I had images of slim, sturdy, black tablets primed to draw in business users and challenge the iPad. Silly me.

Look and Feel
This K1 looks like a pretty standard Android tablet at first glance with its 10.1” wide-screen and a black bezel surrounded by an aluminum rim. But the curved back hides a much thicker body than comparably priced competitors like the iPad 2 and Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1. It’s also surprisingly hefty at 1.6 lbs. Normally, a heavy device like this at least has the virtue of feeling solid and well-built, but surprisingly, Lenovo dropped the ball on that sturdy feel completely. The rear of the K1 is dominated by a colored backplate (comes in red, black, or white) that flexes to an alarming degree under any sort of pressure. Hold the tablet one-handed and the cheap plastic feels like the entire device is bending in your hand. The bezel is nearly as bad, bending noticeably all around the screen under an even mildly firm grip. Even the aluminum rim has a noticeable seam in it where the ends meet that looks like it can shift over time.

Lenovo placed a power key, volume rocker, and microSD card slot along the left side of the K1, along with a switch to lock screen rotation. I found the switch unnecessary, because it’s not easy to turn a tablet this big by accident. The bottom of the device holds a micro HDMI port, headphone jack, and proprietary (boo!) charging and data port.

Getting Started
After the standard Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) setup process, the K1 greets you with a main home screen dominated by a single, large, finger-friendly widget. Options for Watch, Listen, Read, and Email surround a browser button, giving users convenient access to some of the most common media consumption apps, as well as device settings.

The Good Stuff
Lenovo put some thought into conveniences when designing their hardware and UI. An extra physical button on the right side of the bezel is also touch-sensitive, allowing for simple swipe gestures to go back or launch menus. It’s far easier to reach than the standard Android 3.0 soft keys along the bottom left edge of the screen. Likewise, the favorites app wheel that can be opened in the bottom-right corner of the screen is convenient for one-handed operation.

Angry Birds are angry everywhere.

Lenovo has also included a wide variety of media options pre-installed, ranging from mSpot Movies to the Zinio magazine app. Those home screen widget buttons are set up to let users take advantage of these apps without having to know their names or what they do the first time they turn on the device. Impressively, the K1 comes with 32 GB of internal storage, giving it double the capacity of the iPad 2 and Galaxy Tab 10.1 at the same price. And unlike those competitors, Lenovo has included a microSD card slot to expand that storage if you need more.

The Not So Good Stuff
Unfortunately, what I like about the K1 are mainly things that Lenovo only got half right. That giant home screen widget is extremely convenient and finger-friendly, but it also takes up over half of your available screen real estate (it’s a 6×5 widget on a screen with room for 8×7 icons). The physical home button is nice enough (if unnecessary), but it’s positioned in a way that makes accidental activation of its touch-sensitive features far too easy. The favorites wheel was set up in a way that I find maddening. It’s conveniently designed so that you never need to take a hand off the device to operate it, but you can launch the wheel by touching an icon out in the center of the screen, well out of reach of the hand that you were hoping never to move in the first place. If the physical home button activated that favorites wheel instead of taking you to the home screen, it would have been a lot more useful.

Why can't I use all that empty space?

All those media options Lenovo included are great, but only to a point. The designers clearly don’t know where that point is, because the K1 has more bloatware than any device I’ve ever seen. It comes with five pre-installed apps for music alone. Slacker Radio was a nice choice, and Google Music is a must on a Honeycomb tablet. I even get including Amazon MP3, because Google Music didn’t have a store when the K1 was released. Why include mSpot, which does exactly the same type of music-locker storage as Google Music and Amazon’s Cloud Player? What include a separate Lenovo-designed music player on top of all those other options (mSpot, Google, and Amazon can all play local files as well as those in the cloud)? And this wasn’t just about music.

All told, Lenovo pre-installed over 30 apps on the K1 (they actually promote that number on their product page as though it was a good thing), most of which the average user will never touch. Unimaginative choices of games like Solitaire, Hearts, and Spades. Amazon Kindle, Google Books, and a generic eReader app for reading (none of which get the “Read” position on the home screen launcher, which opens Zinio instead). There are even two photo gallery apps, the stock Android one, and the Lenovo one. I’m not a fan of manufacturer UIs in general, but if you’re going to create your own version of something Android already does, replace it, don’t duplicate it. The whole mess looks like Lenovo tries to stand out by having more pages in your app drawer filled on day one than any of their competitors.

It's full of apps.

On the hardware side, there are two concerning issues. The first was sound. The speakers on the K1 offer decent quality for a tablet, but I wouldn’t try to use them in anything but the quietest of environments. The volume was seriously unimpressive. That can be handled with a decent set of headphones, an important accessory for most tablets anyway. What can’t be fixed so simply is the screen. The resolution is fine, 1280×800 like all the other 10.1″ Android tablets out there, but the brightness was annoyingly low. Colors look washed out, and the display virtually disappears completely in bright sunlight. Another surprising failure out of Lenovo’s usually stellar hardware team.

You may notice a review of the IdeaPad’s social app function is missing. There’s a reason for that besides the fact that I’ve never been a fan of the social network integration apps included by manufacturers. Lenovo included their Social Touch app for integrating your calendar, email, Gmail, Facebook, and Twitter, but one look at the cluttered interface and a giant square advertisement are enough to convince me not to use this one.

Unexpected Delights
The inclusion of mSpot movies was a nice surprise. It’s a really great video rental service that doesn’t get a lot of attention compared to Netflix or Google’s own offering.

Battery life was solid. While I didn’t do any exhaustive testing, I used the K1 on-and-off for two days straight without needing a charge. I can’t tell you how many hours it can last, but I can say for sure it will last through my real-world use without any problems.

The Wrap Up
The Lenovo IdeaPad K1 brings some interesting innovations to the table. Unfortunately, we only get to see early concepts of those ideas. Hopefully, Lenovo refines them by the next generation. The tablet’s specs are pretty standard for an Android tablet of 2011, but combined with its thickness, heavy weight, and cheap build quality, the $499 price tag doesn’t seem like a bargain.