[rwp-review id=”0″]
Lenovo continues to move aggressively across multiple fronts in the tech industry, building on the success of its Yoga lines and functionality in both their laptop and tablet offering.
They released the Yoga Tablet 10 HD+ mid this year (reviewed here), and are now complimenting their offering with a one of its kind Yoga Tablet 2 Pro.
Design
The Yoga Tablet 2 Pro is almost identical to the Yoga Tablet 10 HD+. It uses the same premium aluminum build throughout, same high quality and sturdy hinge which defines how the tablet sits/stands, and the beautifully textured alloy at the back.
It differs from the 10 HD+ in a few critical ways though:
- It boasts a 13-inch display.
- The front dual speakers are larger
- The camera has been moved from the side to the middle at the back
- It comes with a built-in projector!
One thing that immediately stands out with the Yoga Tablet 2 Pro is that it’s big. It’s bigger than your average tablet and it shows when you hold it and it shows as soon as you turn on the stunning QHD display.
The size obviously has its advantages and disadvantages. The large screen definitely makes consuming media, watching movies/videos, playing games, browsing the Internet an enjoyable experience. It’s pretty much comparable to a laptop, which begs to augment the Tablet with a wireless keyboard. If you do that, you’ll have a pretty decent Android-based workstation with its own projector.
On the other hand, the large size hinders portability and makes it harder for the user to make this the go-to tablet for everything. It’s not something you’d carry with you everywhere you go, unless you always carry a bag with you at all times.
With the large size comes the weight. The tablet weighs about 950 grams (2 pounds). In comparison, the iPad Air 2 weighs 437g and the Nexus 9 weighs 425g. Both are less than half the Yoga Tablet 2 Pro’s weight.
For a full set of features you can go here.
Display & Sound
The Yoga Tablet 2 Pro comes with a 13-inch QHD display boasting 2560×1440 pixels. In comparison, the iPad Air 2 and Nexus 9 have a 2048×1536 and 2048×1536 resolution respectively. Clearly the Yoga Tablet 2 Pro bests them both, and it shows. It was important for Lenovo to produce a stunning display to accommodate the 13” size, which as mentioned would mostly be used to consume media. High definition videos are a joy to watch on the large screen.
The Yoga also comes with a unique sound arrangement. In addition to the dual front JBL speakers, which are brilliantly placed and perform quite admirably, there’s a 5-watt JBL subwoofer at the back which helps balance out the mostly shallow yet sufficiently loud sound the front speakers produce. This definitely gives the Yoga an edge over the other tablets out there as their speakers’ performance usually tends to be quite weak, perhaps save for the Nexus 9 which we’re currently also reviewing, full review to come soon. That said, the subwoofer is definitely an added advantage here.
The Projector
This is where this tablet stands out from the rest. A feat only attempted by Promate before, no other tablet comes equipped with such functionality. The projector is capable of casting a WVGA (854×480) resolution picture at up to 50-inches in size. The resolution of the image and strength of light (40-50 lumens) are not on par with your pro HD projectors out there, but it is definitely and surprisingly good enough for something built into a tablet!
The tablet comes with a built in Projection app which when launched prompts you to choose between Cinema, Pictures, Documents & Story. The first 3 are self-explanatory; the Story mode launches a set of predefined pics put together to form a story, something similar to Google’s Auto Awesome and Samsung’s Story Album.
When chosen, the app directs you to a File Manager that filters the content based on the type chosen (i.e. Documents would show only documents stored on the tablet, Pictures would show the gallery, etc). Once a piece of content is chosen, the projector is launched straight away with the chosen content on display. A handy little feature we reckon.
We’ve tested it at home on a wall with the family over a short film. We’ve also tested it in a reasonably lit café. In both cases the projector performed quite admirably well. This is probably the best projector we’ve seen on a device that is non-standalone projector. Well done Lenovo!
One struggle we had was to find the right stand for it. You’ll be forced to use a makeshift stand out of books/box/etc if your empty wall isn’t so empty at the bottom.
Software
Lenovo’s smartphone and tablet software keeps getting better with every iteration. With this tablet, we felt for the first time that we’re going through a unified and smooth experience throughout.
The tablet comes with Android 4.4 KitKat, which has already proven its credentials as far as tablets are concerned, albeit with Lenovo’s custom UI that comes with its own little useful bells and whistles.
Some of these bells and whistles include multi-window support, a shortcut control center accessible by swiping upwards from the bottom, a dedicated Projection app among others. One nice feature we noticed was a pop up window that appears when you install an app prompting you to choose which folder you want the app to be in. You can choose more than one folder at a time if you feel you need the app to be in more than one. The tablet comes pre-populated with the most popular folders like Utilities, Social, Communication, etc, which is also a nice way to preempt people to organize their apps. This is important for Lenovo’s tablets and smartphones since it shares a common feature with iOS in the sense that there is no app drawer. Apps sit on the home screens like they do on the iPhone. Therefore, organization is key here.
Overall experience with the software was pleasant and smooth. We found the keyboard to be somewhat oversized though as it stretches across the 13″ display, perhaps it could have been made smaller, or perhaps more function buttons could have been added to utilize all that real-estate.
Battery
With great sizes come great batteries! The Lenovo Yoga Tablet 2 Pro comes with a Li-ion 9600mAh battery which does the job it’s built to do. Lenovo says it lasts up to 15 hours in usage, we found this to be true. Naturally, it’s highly dependent on how you’re using it though. Graphics intensive games and watching hours of videos using the projector will cut that by half, still great when compared to other tablets out there considering the display size, quality and the processing power under the hood.
Conclusion
The Lenovo Yoga Tablet 2 Pro is one of the best Android tablets we’ve seen to date. It has the beautiful display, large battery, powerful processing, great speakers, flexible stand modes and a projector! While its 13-inch size is a great asset when considering the display and battery sizes, it also hinders portability and practicality.
The Yoga Tablet 2 Pro is a media consumption powerhouse. The QHD 13” display, 2.1 Surround Sound JBL speakers and the unique built-in projector, this is probably the best tablet out there for media consumption hands down.
