Lenovo Yoga Tablet 8 review

SPECIFICATIONS

Inside, compromises have again been made to keep the price down, though they are well considered and don’t spoil the device. It uses a fairly humdrum MediaTek MT8125 quad-core 1.2GHz chipset, which is roughly on a par with the Nvidia Tegra 3 chipset we saw in the old Google Nexus 7, and the same chipset as in the recent Asus MemoPad HD 7. It runs Android 4.2 smoothly, and web pages are rendered quickly with a 1,360ms score in the SunSpider JavaScript benchmark. You shouldn’t expect blistering performance in the latest games, as it scored 3,177 in 3DMark’s basic Ice Storm benchmark, and those looking to play the few truly demanding Android games should opt for the far more powerful Nexus 7. For everything else the Yoga Tablet works fine and we had no complaints.

The battery life is a claimed 18 hours for this device, a pretty impressive figure. With a 6,000mAh battery inside and relatively modest hardware, we had little reason to doubt those figures. Our continuous video playback test produced a score of 12 hours and 58 minutes, well short of 18 hours but it smashes the Google Nexus 7’s score of just eight hours.

The 5-megapixel camera isn’t up to much, it’s noisy even in reasonable lighting and the colour tempertaure is often well off the mark. Oddly, the front-mounted camera seems to make a far better job of things, with decent-looking video for chatting face-to-face online.

There’s 16GB of storage inside, but this can be augmented by up to 64GB thanks to a microSD card slot, something the Nexus 7 lacks (a typical 32GB card will cost you just £15 online).

ANDROID CONTORTED

Lenovo has taken the brave mode of messing with Android. It has removed the app tray and gone with an iPad-style system where apps and their shortcuts are one and the same, delete the shortcut and you delete the app. It’s a more immediate way of managing software admittedly, but it’s likely to upset more people than it attracts.

The changes to Android won’t please those who are used to having an app tray

Despite using Android 4.2 as a basis the Yoga Tablet doesn’t support multiple users in the same way as Google’s operating system. This is a bit of a let down as the ability to share the tablet around the house but still have access to your own email, apps and Chrome settings is a massive boon for Android devices.

CONCLUSION

This 8in version of the Lenovo Yoga Tablet looks to be a huge contender in the smaller tablet market. It has a bigger screen and much longer battery life than the Google Nexus 7 (2013). That tablet, though, has a higher-resolution display and a much faster chipset; which makes the two significantly different and gives consumers a genuine choice over what they value more.

It’s great to see some real variation in tablet design for a change

Due to the odd way it deals with Android apps, and the lack of multiple users, it has an operating system that won’t agree with everyone. However, for those who care more about the ergonomics of a device than the details of how it works onscreen, the Yoga is a great choice. It’s a brilliant alternative to the Nexus 7 and so also deserves five stars. If you’re looking to save money, a similar specification is available on the basic-looking, 7in Asus MemoPad HD 7 for a whopping £70 less.