Techcitement Review: Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet

My last experience with a Lenovo tablet left something to be desired. Fortunately, it seems like the IdeaPad K1 was far from the best the PC manufacturer could manage. The company’s business-focused ThinkPad line held something far better.

Before anything else, I should say that my favorite feature of this tablet is the name. That’s in no way a criticism of the device, however. I simply love the simplicity of it. The Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet. It tells you everything you need to know about it. The Apple iPhone is a phone, made by Apple, from their iOS line of devices. The Apple iPad and iPod give you the same information the same way (though admittedly the iMac breaks the convention). Lenovo’s tablet has a longer sounding name, but it gives you the same simplicity. Manufacturer, product line, device. I wish more device makers would keep their naming schemes that simple (I’m looking at you Samsung Galaxy S II, Epic 4G Touch, whose name really could have ended at the comma).

Part I: Look and Feel

The Tablet is a sturdy piece of equipment, representing the fine build quality we’re familiar with from Lenovo’s ThinkPad laptops. The familiar black plastic shell is solid, and all the hardware buttons feel like they’d survive a thousand clicks and even a few good drops without any trouble.

That sturdiness comes with a cost, however. The Tablet is one of the heaviest models on the market at 1.65 lbs, and is quite thick as well. The nearest competitors in size that I’ve seen are the HP Touchpad and Toshiba Thrive, neither of which is exactly a resoundingly successful example to follow. On the other hand, those are consumer models, whereas Lenovo is clearly targeting business users with this model, and some of the accessory options help the Tablet shine through in ways few competitors can manage. But I’ll get back to those later.

Most of the Tablet’s ports are arranged along the bottom when you hold it in portrait orientation, and there are more than I expected. In addition to the headphone jack and microUSB port, there’s HDMI, a proprietary docking port, and behind a concealed door, a full SD card slot, plus a SIM card slot for 3G models. On the left side is a full USB port, on the right is a power button, and on top is a volume rocker, and a storage slot for the stylus.

Lenovo has also added a series of buttons to the bottom edge of the bezel. There are buttons for Home, Back, Browser, and Rotation Lock. I find this somewhat incomprehensible, since the result is a bunch of things you can accidentally activate when you hold the Tablet in landscape orientation, most of which take you right out of the experience of using the device. The experience is definitely still an improvement over the K1, since these are physical keys that require a fairly solid press, rather than capacitive buttons, but the general problem remains. And the worst part is, the outrageously large Home and Back buttons are a totally unnecessary addition. The Tablet runs Android 3.1 Honeycomb, which means those functions are available as on-screen buttons at all times. what’s the point of a physical Back button right underneath the software Back button? The browser button might occasionally be convenient, but personally I’d rather return to the home screen to launch my browser, rather than have to worry about it accidentally starting while I watch Netflix. Only the rotation Lock strikes me as really useful. It’s small, out of the way, and doesn’t take you out of whatever app you’re in if you do press it by accident.

Part II: Getting Started
The ThinkPad Tablet maintains the same user interface as the ThinkPad K1, so the first thing you’ll see is that enormous, space-wasting widget for media consumption. I can only recommend removing it from the Home screen and moving on.

Part III: What I Liked (other than the name)
Some top-notch accessories are available for the Tablet. The first is a capacitive stylus (included with some models, or available as a $30 accessory). There are 2 ways to use the stylus. The first is with the included Notes Mobile app. This app presents you with a simple, ruled notebook. You have the option to just write free-form, but the default setting is a truly excellent piece of handwriting recognition software. Write in your own handwriting, and when you stop, everything you wrote turns into text (though in a handwriting-like font for some reason). You can then export the text to any of your other apps that integrate with Android’s sharing functions.

That still somewhat limits the utility of the stylus, however, since you have to do all your content creation inside Notes Mobile. That’s why Lenovo has included Nuance’s FlexT9 keyboard by default. I took a look at this software for the Great Android Keyboard Roundup, and found it to be extremely flexible, but the Write option becomes a lot more useful with a stylus, instead of a finger. It’s a flashback to writing on an old palm pilot, but FlexT9 gives you the option of writing with the stylus in any text entry field, anywhere in the tablet.

Lenovo also offers a Keyboard Folio case. This is easily the best text-entry option I’ve ever used on a tablet, well worth the $100 investment. The device slides easily into the case, and connects to the keyboard via the USB port. No configuration, no cables, it just works. The keyboard itself lives up to Lenovo’s reputation from ThinkPad laptops. The keys are well spaced, and travel smoothly. Typing feels like working on a good laptop keyboard.

At first glance, I thought the bright red dot in the center of the keyboard was one of Lenovo’s signature track-points, but unfortunately it’s an optical trackpad instead. By default it’s nowhere near sensitive enough for a mouse pointer on a 10-inch screen. Fortunately, you can turn up the sensitivity, and at the maximum setting the trackpad becomes a lot more useful.

Part IV: What I Didn’t Like
The weight. This is a really heavy device for today’s market. And great as the Keyboard Folio is, it adds quite a bit more. The Folio is also quite unwieldy if you ever want to use just the Tablet. There’s just no convenient way to hold the Tablet that folds the keyboard out of the way.

The Folio also lacks a couple of features I really would have loved to see. Connecting the keyboard and mouse via the USB port likely saves power over a Bluetooth option, but it also blocks the only port you could use to plug in a mouse. If, like me, you’re not a fan of the trackpad, you need a Bluetooth mouse instead. A USB port built into the Folio case would have been welcome. So would a battery, like the one in the Asus Transformer keyboard dock. The battery life on the Tablet isn’t the best I’ve experienced, though it should just about get you through the day. A microUSB port for power on the Folio wouldn’t be out of place either. Plugging the Tablet in while using the keyboard is somewhat awkward.

One unfortunate surprise was the way the Tablet handles additional storage. Despite having a full-sized USB port and SD card slot, there’s no easy way to just plug in additional storage. Flash drives, hard drives, and SD cards all went unrecognized by the Tablet until I rebooted the device. That’s not exactly convenient, especially for external devices plugged into the USB port. It was a pretty surprising experience, since it represents a problem I’ve never seen on an Android device before (or on a PC in the last decade or so for that matter).

Part V: Unexpected Delights
Lenovo did an outstanding job of laying out the volume controls. This is a device that just begs to be held in portrait orientation because of the physical buttons on the bottom. But with the Folio requires a landscape orientation. That means volume controls need to be laid out conveniently for both options, and that’s exactly what Lenovo’s done. No matter which orientation you use, the volume keys are always intuitively placed, so that you don’t need to think about which button to press to make the change you want.

Part VI: Stuff That I Didn’t Test
Lenovo has a desktop dock available for the Tablet, that uses the proprietary docking port to add an extra USB port. I’d love to see this device perform with a display, mouse and keyboard attached, but unfortunately this accessory didn’t come as part of the review package.

I also missed out on the upcoming Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich upgrade, which won’t be available until May, but should bring some significant improvements.

Part VII: Wrap it Up Already! Geeze!
The Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet isn’t the thinnest or lightest Android tablet out there. And starting at $500 it’s coming in perfectly average on pricing, but in no way a bargain. But if you’re looking for a tablet with some great input options, it’s a serious competitor. The keyboard is good enough that this entire review was written on the Tablet, and the stylus gives some excellent options for when you’re on the go. If you ask me, Lenovo’s built a device worthy of the ThinkPad name, and business consumers looking for a tablet should definitely check this one out.