Buy[Lenovo Yoga 10 HD+ 10-Inch Tablet (59411051)]with credit card
Great portable computer, good performance and value,
Tablet style and build quality
There are two unique features: the tubular battery compartment that also serves as a handgrip, and the folding kickstand. I really like both features.
I am a little hesitant to firmly grab delicate touch-sensitive devices, and the handgrip is a great way to securely grab the tablet without interfering with the touch screen. I have picked up and carried the tablet many times, with never a worry of having it slip out of my fingers, or having screen commands occur willy-nilly. The handgrip also contains a big battery, another big plus.
Despite the great handgrip, it’s hard to consider the tablet a truly comfortable handheld device. For example, the tablet Kindle Reader app gives a gorgeously bright, colorful, and crisp screen presentation, especially compared to a real Kindle like a Paperwhite (which I have, and use a lot). I like to read in bed, hand-holding the device. At 7.3 oz, the Kindle Paperwhite is easy to hold for a long time. As nice as the tablet display is, and as secure as the handgrip feels, the tablet is three times as heavy as a Paperwhite (1.38 lbs, which is 22 oz), so it’s tiring to hold for a long time.
I use the folding kickstand all the time, since it always makes the tablet more user-friendly than just having it lie flat on the table. I most often use “Tilt” mode, where the unfolded kickstand props up the tablet a few inches to make the viewing angle better for desktop use. I also use “Stand” mode, where the tablet stands upright on the kickstand. There is only one stiff detent in the kickstand adjustment, which holds the tablet almost vertically. In Stand mode, I like to tilt the tablet back a little farther, but since there is no other detent, tapping on the screen will increase the tilt angle, little-by-little, until I have to readjust the kickstand. It would be nice to have a few detents.
The build quality, in my opinion, is quite adequate. Although the kickstand is a little stiff to operate, I don’t find it to be a problem. The plastic cover over the SD card slot is a little cheesy. Because of the handgrip and kickstand, it can be hard to find a decent case for the tablet, at least the kind that stays on the tablet all the time. I wound up buying a generic neoprene sleeve (Evecase 10.1″ Super Soft Vertical Sleeve) as a carrying case, then I take the tablet out and use it bare.
Display
With a resolution of 1920 x 1200 in a 10.1″ (diagonal) display, the screen is very crisp with no readability issues even with very fine text. Colors are crisp and bright, although the saturation, especially reds, can be excessive at times (not adjustable). Contrast is also very good, with deep blacks. Because of the IPS display, viewing angles are great, both horizontally and vertically. For indoor use, screen brightness is just fine (I usually set it to about 50%). Outdoors, readability is a problem mostly due to reflections from the glossy surface.
The tablet seems to have a software bug causing it to auto-dim the display, even if that feature is disabled. But as pointed out in the Lenovo forum, switching to “Stand” mode bypasses the problem (swipe down the quick settings, tap “Sound and Visual”, tap “Stand Mode”).
Touch screen
The touch screen works pretty well. I sometimes have trouble getting the “Back” screen icon to work, and have to try several times or press harder. I also sometimes have difficulty tapping a link on a web page. You have to tap straight up and down. If your finger has any horizontal movement when it touches the screen, the touch screen thinks that you are scrolling or dragging rather than tapping. I like using the big touch screen a lot better than using the small touch pad on my Windows netbook (which doesn’t have a touch screen).
The standard Android touch-screen keyboard works surprisingly well. Due to the big screen, it’s easy to read, and easy to type quickly and reasonably accurately. Unfortunately, the Lenovo keyboard does not make good use of long taps on the letter keys, which on my Samsung smartphone, let you type most punctuation and special characters without having to shift the whole keyboard into punctuation mode. Since I frequently use both the tablet keyboard and the smartphone keyboard, I find the reduced capability of the tablet keyboard to be a little annoying.
Multi-windows
The Lenovo tablet has a unique software feature, multi-windows, which lets you view up to four apps on the screen at once, although not all apps support this feature. To use multi-windows, tap the “Recent Apps” icon on the bottom, then drag one of the recent apps up into the main screen area. It will warn you right away if the app doesn’t support multi-windows. Otherwise, this first app will appear full screen. Now tap Recent Apps again and drag another app upwards, which will split the screen to show two apps. There is a button on the split-screen divider that you can drag left or right, to adjust how much screen space each app gets. With two apps, they are always side by side, and can not be top and bottom. You can drag up to two more app icons to have a four-way split screen. When you tap the control button, it displays a small “X” in each quadrant of the screen, which you can tap to close that portion of the multi-window display.
I have tested most of the apps I use to see if they support multi-windows, and this is what I found:
Support multi-windows: Chrome, Gmail, Calendar, Contacts, Hangouts, Google Maps, Play Store, YouTube, Video player, Settings, Recorder, Security HD, Power Manager.
Doesn’t support multi-windows: File Browser, Adobe Reader, Evernote, Note Everything, WPS Office (Kingsoft Office), MAPS.ME, Maplets, Amazon, Amazon Kindle, Google News, Flipboard, NOAA Weather, Shuttle+, Google Drive, Dropbox, Cloud Print, Skype, Snapseed, Gallery, WiFi Analyzer, AndroiTS GPS Test, Dolby, Gas Buddy.
Performance
I think the tablet performance is quite good, a lot better than my previous travel computer, an Acer 11.6″ netbook running 64-bit Windows 7. The tablet boots up very quickly compared to the Windows netbook, also online browser performance is a lot better on the tablet. Scrolling the screen in long documents or web pages sometimes has short pauses in the response, about equal to the netbook. My netbook has a lot more memory (4gb RAM, 500gb disk), but the tablet is adequately provisioned with 2gb of RAM, 16gb of internal memory (equivalent to a small but fast solid-state drive in Windows), plus a 64gb external SD card that I installed.
Cameras
The quality is OK for typical tablet use, but only mediocre compared to a decent stand-alone camera. The rear camera is built into the back of the handgrip towards the left side , a very odd place, making for awkward picture-taking. You can choose a lower camera resolution, separately for stills and video, but the image doesn’t necessarily look any better. Still pictures lose a lot of fine detail in the shadows. There is no flash, so you must rely on available light. The still camera insists on producing a fairly loud camera shutter sound, which you can not turn off (there is no setting). It doesn’t help to turn the volume all the way down, or even to select the “Silent” audio profile, you still hear the dopey fake shutter click.
Audio
There are two front-facing speakers in the handgrip tube that provide adequate volume for typical tablet use. As expected, there isn’t much bass response, since the speakers are so tiny. The tablet comes with a fairly powerful Dolby audio-enhancement app that is enabled by default. This greatly increases the volume and stereo definition, so I usually let the app do its thing. However, the app also introduces some occasional crackling distortion into loud audio passages, even if I manually turn down the volume, which is quite annoying. You can make the occasional crackling go away by turning off the Dolby app, but then the audio volume is barely adequate, even at maximum volume. The crackling also went away when I used an external bluetooth speaker, so the distortion is probably a result of overdriving the Lenovo speaker circuitry. The Dolby app doesn’t seem to affect music streamed via bluetooth, just music via the built-in speakers or wired headphones.
I have listened to the audio output using stereo headphones that have a standard three-conductor plug (left, right, common) and it worked fine. I thought that the Dolby audio app dramatically muddled the headphone audio, but after turning off the app, the headphone audio sounded fine, if a little quiet (I wound up turning the tablet volume up to maximum). I have also used a PC-style headset that has two plugs, pink for microphone and green for earphones. By using an adapter cable (Headset Buddy PC Headset to 3.5mm Smartphone Adapter) you can combine the two PC-style plugs into a single smartphone/tablet-compatible plug (with four-conductors: left, right, mic, common). This lets you use a PC-style headset for Skype or Hangout calls with some privacy, as well as using the Recorder app to take voice notes (these apps work with the tablet’s built-in mic/speakers, too).
Another minor observation: The way the tablet kickstand works, you can use the tablet in “Tilt” mode, where it is essentially upside down, with the speakers at the top. The screen display automatically rotates so it is right-side up, but the audio left/right stays reversed.
Bluetooth
It generally works OK, but I think there are some performance issues. I tried several bluetooth devices: a Logitech K810 keyboard, a TeckNet BM306 mouse, a Samsung Original S Action mouse, a Photive CYREN amplified speaker, and a Plantronics Voyager Legend headset. The keyboard generally works fine, but has rare repeating keystrokes, not often enough to be a problem. The TeckNet mouse works but has a very slow screen cursor update rate (a couple times a second), making it virtually unusable on the tablet. The same TeckNet mouse works just fine on my Android smartphone and on my Windows 7 netbook. The Samsung mouse seems to work fine, at least as far as mouse performance. The bluetooth speaker works but the audio is occasionally choppy and uneven, unless my music player app (Shuttle+) has screen focus. The choppiness becomes very severe, unusably so, when using a bluetooth mouse at the same time. I either have to turn off the mouse and tap/scroll the screen by hand, or turn off the bluetooth speaker and listen on the built-in speakers or wired headphones. The Plantronics headset seems to work OK, but I don’t normally use this device with the tablet.
All these issues seem to indicate performance problems with the bluetooth software in the tablet, which might be a Lenovo problem or a general Android or KitKat problem, it’s hard to say (I’m using KitKat 4.4.2). It would be fair to say that bluetooth works, but with some significant issues, that hopefully will get better if and when the software gets updated.
GPS
The Lenovo tablet has a real satellite GPS built in, which works well. Quite a few wi-fi-only tablets do not have a real GPS. This is a big plus when using map or navigation apps, since the apps can get a very accurate position fix from the GPS. Since you likely won’t have an internet connection during real-time travel, you need to use a map app that can work offline with previously downloaded maps, like MAPS.ME. Google Maps will also work offline to some extent, see their website for instructions.
SD card slot and memory usage
I installed a 64gb micro SD card in the rear slot, which formatted fine. I configured the tablet to use the external SD card for pictures and videos taken with the built-in camera, all my MP3 music files (17gb worth), and downloaded map files for MAPS.ME (over 4gb), leaving almost 40gb remaining. I didn’t put any apps on the external SD card, since that is sometimes a problem with KitKat, so all my apps are on the internal memory. Even with about 20 additional apps installed, I still have almost 10gb of internal memory remaining, so the basic 16gb internal memory size doesn’t seem to be a serious limitation.
USB interface
The tablet can be connected to a PC to transfer files back and forth. The tablet also supports USB OTG (On-The-Go), which lets you connect other devices, too. A tablet usually acts as a USB slave device, to be plugged into a USB master device like a computer. But tablets that support USB OTG can also act like a USB master device, allowing you to connect a USB slave device like a USB thumb drive, to do file transfers between the thumb drive and tablet.
The main problem is that the tablet has a micro USB jack and the slave device has a full-size Type A USB plug, so you need an adapter cable. Using a Cable Matters Micro USB OTG Adapter cable, I have connected the following USB devices to the tablet:
– Several USB thumb drives, all formatted FAT32: Sandisk Cruzer Micro 4gb (USB 2.0), Patriot Supersonic Rage 32gb, Patriot Supersonic XT 16 gb (the Patriots are both USB 2.0/3.0).
– Panasonic LX7 point-and-shoot camera. The camera has a non-standard USB connector, so it requires a special camera cable (which came with the camera), plus the camera must remain powered-on.
– Sandisk ImageMate All-in-One memory card reader (USB 2.0/3.0), to access the files on an SD card plugged into the reader, FAT32 format.
– NEXTODi external hard drive, FAT32 format, using the drive’s “wall-wart” external power supply.
– PC wired USB keyboard, PC wired USB mouse, at the same time, via a powered USB hub. This worked fine, although Android does not recognize a lot of the special editing and Windows keys on the keyboard.
– I tried two different external hard drives with NTFS format (one WD, one Seagate), neither of which worked, either directly connected or via a powered hub.
A couple of important points:
– When you are done using an attached mass storage device, be sure to “unmount” the device via software before physically unplugging it from the tablet. On the Lenovo tablet, go to Settings->Storage, scroll down to “External USB Storage” and tap “Unmount external USB storage”, then you can unplug the device.
– Whenever you have an external USB device attached to the tablet, the tablet’s internal battery is providing power to the attached device. Therefore the tablet’s battery can be depleted much more rapidly than normal. For any significant usage, you should consider attaching the external USB device via a powered USB hub, which provides power to the attached device rather than draining the tablet’s battery. Even so, the battery is still powering the tablet, since you can’t hook up the charger, plus a powered hub requires more gadgets and wires to be toted around.
Charger
The tablet comes with a chunky rectangular charger with detachable USB cable. The charger is rated at 5.2V / 2.0A output, which is pretty beefy, with universal AC input. The supplied USB cable is quite thick and only a stingy 3′ long. Since I use the tablet as a travel computer, I usually have other devices charging at the same time. I wind up bringing a 6′ long standard AC extension cord, and plug the tablet charger (and others) into the extension cord.
Documentation and support
I was disappointed by the limited amount of user documentation. I like to read manuals, but the provided on-device documentation is very basic, and you will hardly feel like an expert after reading it. Unfortunately, there’s not much formal documentation anywhere else, even on the Lenovo website. I also find that many of the apps are hard to figure out. There is little if any in-app documentation, and every app seems to have a completely different user interface, with its own set of curious icons and mysterious doo-dads. This is really an Android ecosystem problem and not a Lenovo problem, but as an end user, it’s still disappointing.
KitKat upgrade
The tablet came with Jelly Bean 4.3, and I could get an immediate upgrade to KitKat 4.4.2. This upgrade is a very large download, but everything worked for me and I had no problems. I made the mistake of organizing all my desktop screen icons and wallpaper before upgrading, and found that I had to do it all over again after the upgrade. I also found that the default Android browser app went away after the KitKat upgrade, leaving you only with Chrome, but that was OK with me since I use Chrome anyway.
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These Lenovo tablets have had some KitKat problems in the past, especially with apps that were installed on the external SD card. To avoid these problems (which I think are mostly fixed), I have not installed any apps on the external SD card. I haven’t had any problems with apps breaking, although a bunch of apps auto-updated after I installed KitKat.
Some days later, there was another upgrade available, a much smaller download, but this didn’t change the Android version number and only seemed to install a new File Browser app (plus change the Android logo during boot-up). Strangely, the original File Browser app would work in multi-windows, but the new app doesn’t. I hope they fix this, because it was a useful feature.
Default apps
There wasn’t too much bloatware. The tablet came with a few additional apps that I already use, like Evernote, Skype, Kingsoft Office, Flipboard. It also came with a map app and a weather app that I easily uninstalled, replacing them with other apps I like. It has the usual collection of Google-related apps, some of which I use, some of which I don’t use.
Like other Android devices, the Lenovo tablet doesn’t have built-in Adobe Flash support, so websites that use Flash might not work properly (my crossword puzzle sites don’t work, boo-hoo!). The app store claims to have Flash replacements, but I haven’t tried any.
Dolby – A powerful app that alters the audio output characteristics to suit your preferences, with many user adjustments possible. When this app is enabled (the default), things generally sound better when using the speakers, but not when using wired headphones (turn the app off using the quick settings panel).
Power Manager – A reasonably thorough app to monitor and maximize your battery run time, but with such a big battery, it might not be necessary.
Video, Gallery, and Recorder – I thought these were extremely basic apps with no frills, so you might want more powerful replacements.
They have a small suite of Lenovo apps installed, I’m not sure if you can uninstall them:
Share It – Useful to transfer files from the tablet to/from another Android device or a PC. The app must be installed and running on both devices when you want to transfer files, and it uses the device’s built-in wi-fi to set up a temporary device-to-device network, without requiring an external router or internet access. It worked for me transferring files both ways between the tablet and a Samsung Galaxy Express smartphone. If you have trouble getting this to work, try turning off the setting for “prefer hotspot network”.
Sync It – Syncs various data items with the cloud. I don’t use it, because there are already so many other ways to sync information with the cloud, I don’t need one more way.
Security HD – An odd app that can clean up RAM, block ads, manage apps, and manage app permissions. It’s permanently installed and always shows up in the notification bar. It wasn’t particularly clear how to use it, and there aren’t any help screens. I scoured the internet including the Lenovo site and didn’t find any useful information whatsoever – it’s not even listed in the Google Play store. That, for me, counts as “poorly supported”.
App suggestions for tablet
The defult apps are only a starting point for making the tablet useful. There are many additional apps available with enhanced and extended features. I have some suggestions below for useful apps that work well with the Lenovo tablet.
You should only download apps from the Google Play store, by using the preloaded tablet app called “Play Store”. Apps from the store are screened for malware and have publicly available installation notes, reviews, and contact information (via the app’s page on the Google Play website). Also, if you have already purchased apps for another Android device (like a smartphone), you can install those same paid apps on the tablet without having to pay again. Note that some free apps are supported by ads that appear while using the app. Usually, you can buy a paid version of the same app that eliminates ads, which I recommend.
Here are some apps that I’m using on the tablet, you can check them out if you’re interested:
Evernote (terrific to-do list organizer and more), Note Everything Pro (note-taking, checklists), WPS Office a.k.a Kingsoft Office (office suite), Shuttle+ (music player), Alarm Clock Plus, RealCalc Plus (powerful calculator), MAPS.ME (downloadable maps of the world), Maplets (specialized maps), Snapseed (photo editor), Dictionary by Farlex, Amazon Kindle (reader app), Amazon (store app), NOAA Weather, Flipboard (news magazine), Google News (news reader), Dropbox and/or Google Drive (cloud storage), Cloud Print (print to your home printer via Google).
I have a some specific comments about a few apps for the tablet:
Hangouts Dialer - The basic Hangouts app is like the Google version of Skype. Once you download and install the separate Hangouts Dialer app, you can now use Hangouts to make telephone calls from your tablet to any telephone number in the U.S. or Canada for free. And if you get a free Google Voice telephone number (via the Google Voice website, use your PC to set this up), you can now receive telephone calls on your tablet for free. These features cost money on Skype. Naturally, you need to be somewhere with wi-fi and have an active wi-fi connection. It’s somewhat complicated to set up, but I verified it works. It’s pretty cool to dial your Google voice telephone number from a regular landline phone, and have your wi-fi-only tablet ring!
Alarm Clock - I have tried two alarm clocks, the default Clock and a purchased app Alarm Clock Plus. At one point, I verified that both alarm clocks would wake up the tablet if it was sleeping (quick press of the power button to make it sleep, or to wake it up). But when I repeated the tests a few days later, the alarm clocks would not wake up the tablet if it was sleeping. The alarm would only be announced when you woke up the tablet manually. Since that feature seems to be “iffy”, you should keep the tablet awake all the time if you set an alarm (Settings->Display->Sleep->Never).
MAPS.ME - A wi-fi-only tablet does not have internet access all the time, so when you are away from wi-fi, the typical Google Maps app won’t work. You can set up the MAPS.ME app when you have internet access, and download detailed maps of anyplace in the world (the external SD card works fine for storage). Later on when you are away from wi-fi, you can use the app to get a real-time view of exactly where you are, using the tablet’s built-in satellite GPS. MAPS.ME does not do routing or navigation, so if you need help with routing, use Google Maps when you have internet access.
Hints and tips
Chrome - The browser usually goes full screen shortly after opening a web page, then you can’t see the browser tabs for other web pages you may have opened. Drag your finger down, and Chrome will scroll down and show you the browser tabs. When you drag, don’t start at the very top of the screen, because this will open the notifications panel or the quick access panel.
Android app tray – Other people have noted that Lenovo has removed this feature from the tablet software. Instead, you can drag all of your unused app icons to a separate page on the desktop, to get them out of the way. Or you can create a folder on a desktop page and put the unused app icons in the folder. This condenses down all the unused apps to a single folder icon, which you can rename “Unused Apps”.
You initially create an app folder by dragging one app icon on top of another app icon, and dropping the first icon into the second icon. The second app icon changes into a folder icon, which now has the two app icons in it. I had a hard time initially creating the folder. If you drag an app icon over to another app icon, the second app icon just moves out of the way. So instead, what you do is “flick” the first app icon on to the second app icon, and take your finger off the first icon as your flicking motion gets the first icon close to the second icon.
Black wallpaper - I happen to like a plain black wallpaper, and the wallpaper selector doesn’t have plain backgrounds. To create one, put your hand over the tablet’s camera lens and take a picture, which will be all black, then use that picture as your wallpaper.
On-screen keyboard punctuation - You can hold down the period key and it will pop-up a few other punctuation choices, which saves having to shift the keyboard to all punctuation.
KitKat desktop control - Tap the three dots in lower right corner for desktop screen control. This is different from the Jelly Bean documentation.
Recently-used app list - The recently-used app list (tap the right-hand icon all the way at the screen bottom) is sometimes useful, but the list can get cluttered. To remove an icon from the list, drag it down off the bottom of the screen.
Summary
The Lenovo tablet is a great “travel” computer. With a 10.1″ high-resolution screen, there’s plenty of screen real estate to be very productive with your apps. The performance is quite decent, it is so very portable, and the handgrip and kickstand provide great flexibility. Compared to my old “travel” computer, an Acer 11.6″ netbook running Windows 7, the Lenovo tablet is better in so many ways. In fact, even at home, I wind up using the tablet instead of my desktop computer for many computer activities. Even with all of its plusses, the price is still very reasonable, making it a good value.
I would Highly recommended my Subscribers to buy this new product!
Lenovo Yoga 10 HD+ 10-Inch Tablet (59411051)
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