Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet 2 Lenovo's
ThinkPad Tablet 2 is a Windows 8 Pro tablet with its own stylus aimed at
business users and mobile workers.The Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet 2 is the best-looking
Atom Windows 8 tablet yet, and the optional keyboard dock is excellent. All-day
battery life makes it great for travel.
Performance and Battery Life:
Put
a full version of Windows 8 on a tablet you're in for a bit of a juggle, just
ask the Microsoft Surface Pro. You've got two balls to keep in the air:
processing power and battery longevity. While the ThinkPad Tablet 2 often
fumbles with the former, it flourishes with the latter.
Unlike the Surface Pro or the
Surface RT, which are powered by an Intel i5 and an ARM processor respectively,
this tablet has an Intel Atom chip. You may remember this processor from the
netbook era of a few years ago, before tablets came along and cleaned their
clocks. Now the Atom is back to power Windows 8 slates, like this and the Acer
Iconia W510.The ThinkPad Tablet 2 handled web browsing well enough, with
Internet Explorer at least. Sites load at an acceptable speed, and we were able
to begin scrolling down the page almost instantly, before images and video
embeds finished loading. Google Chrome, as well as the Google app, performed
poorly though. There's an obvious need for a patch or two here.
The system had just enough grunt for
some light multitasking. Using Window 8's neat split-screen feature, we could
watch run a YouTube video while browsing news headlines in the Bing Daily news
app. We also enjoyed listening to music via the Music app while playing some
Angry Birds or Cut the Rope.
That's the limit of the ThinkPad
Tablet 2's gaming and multitasking abilities. The low-wattage Atom processor is
meant for battery life, not blazing speeds. Lenovo estimates the battery life
at 10 hours. We generally came in around 8 hours, after taxing it with heavy
web use and streaming video. That's not bad at all, enough to get you through
the average work day, or to watch several movies on a long flight.While we
enjoyed the battery life the Atom provided, it had us wondering why it was
paired up with Windows 8. What's the point of making a device with wide
compatibility if it doesn't have the horsepower to run the most important
legacy apps? Food for thought, especially if you're between this and the more
powerful but not as long lasting Microsoft Surface Pro, or just a regular old
laptop.
But, The Tablet 2 is expensive,
especially considering the small 64GB SSD, lack of USB 3.0, and generally slow
Atom performance.
The bottom line: This Windows 8
tablet from Lenovo scores with great industrial design and battery life, but
adding practically required accessories makes the ThinkPad Tablet 2 very
expensive for what you get.
System configurations Windows 8 (32-bit); 1.8GHz Intel Atom Z2760; 2GB DDR2 SDRAM 800MHz;
737MB (Total) Intel GMA; 64GB MMC SSD Specifications
ProcessorIntel Atom
Operating SystemMicrosoft Windows 8
Display Type10.1 in
Weight1.3 lbs Price: $679.00 VS Apple iPad Air The
Air is a tangible upgrade over the previous, fourth-generation iPad, no longer
in production and so banished to the annals of history. The new iPad slots
right in where its predecessor left off, priced at $499 for a lowly 16GB, $599
for 32GB, $699 for 64GB, and $799 for the maximum 128GB configuration. The iPad
Air delivers more performance and comparable battery life in an attractive and
impossibly thin-and-light package. An improved front-facing camera makes
FaceTiming look better, and the Retina Display still looks great.
But, The Touch ID fingerprint
scanner, introduced on the iPhone 5S, is sadly absent here, meaning you’ll
still have to type in a passcode with every unlock and a password with every
purchase. Starting at $499 for 16GB, it’s still expensive compared with the
competition.
Performance: The iPad Air shares the same processor with Apple’s flagship phone,
albeit with a slight bump in clock speed. While the 5S runs at 1.3GHz the Air
runs at 1.39GHz. It can achieve this because of the increased space and
improved heat dissipation of the Air compared to the much smaller iPhone 5S.
Indeed, before we go into the detail
about performance it’s worth noting that the iPad Air manages to keep its cool
with consummate ease. Even when running intensive 3D games and apps for hours
it barely breaks a sweat and, therefore, neither do your hands.
In practice, the iPad Air is
blisteringly fast. Apps open instantly and games like Infinity Blade 3 look
sumptuous and run smoothly. The benefits of having a SoC means that the GPU can
be used to tackle compute tasks, which makes video editing and compute
intensive apps, like AutoCAD, show no hint of slowdown.
The iPad Air performs 59% faster
than the iPad 4 in the 3D Mark Ice Storm Unlimited CPU and GPU test and 91%
faster in Geekbench 3 tests. The Peacekeeper browser test, which assesses web
browsing performance, shows that the Air trounces its predecessor by being more
than twice as fast. It's also faster than the stonking Snapdragon 800 processor
on the likes of the Sony Xperia Z Ultra and Google Nexus 5. We're talking matter
of degrees here, but the difference is there all the same.
Battery life: Battery life on the iPad Air is quoted at "Up to 10
hours of surfing the web on Wi-Fi, watching video, or listening to music".
We would say that's actually not a bad estimate, although the drain was closer
to 2% every 10 minutes in general use, which equates to around nine hours' use.
Standby time is much, much better
though. We found that we could stick the iPad Air in a bag, taking it out for
the commute and messing about with on the sofa at home, for at least three days
before it began to get low on battery.
In fact, the only real task that
killed it was connecting to our amplifier via Wi-Fi while simultaneously
streaming music to the same device through Bluetooth. It's doing things like
this that make you realise that this is the kind of thing that we envisaged at
the turn of the century, a tablet that has the brains and connectivity to do
all the tasks we could want.In terms of connectivity, we've already mentioned
the excellent Wi-Fi performance (in terms of distance from router, rather than
improved speed) through the Multiple In, Multiple Out (MIMO) technology.
4G bands are now covered throughout
the globe, and low power Bluetooth is also on board as well, making it an
incredibly well-connected device.
The bottom line: Functionally, the
iPad Air is nearly identical to last year’s model, offering only faster
performance and better video chatting. But factor in design and aesthetics, and
the iPad Air is on another planet. It’s the best full-size consumer tablet on
the market. Specifications
Release date11/1/13
Display type9.7 in
OSApple iOS
ProcessorApple
Wireless connectivityWi-Fi
Dimensions (WxDxH)6.6 in x 0.29 in x
9.4 in
Weight1 lbs
Price:$479.00
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