Lenovo Tab Excessive First Impressions

I’ve been fascinated by PC alternate options since I used to be fortunate sufficient to fall right into a job that features reviewing {hardware}, masking information, and opining on the private computing business. In my early days—the mid-Nineties—this included the rise of Linux and the decline after which eventual resurgence of the Mac, merchandise that had been clearly in the identical class as Home windows-based PCs. However the previous decade has seen the rise of different platforms and different kind elements. And in these smartphone-influenced units, we see a brand new technology of competitors, with totally different benefits and drawbacks.

I lump ChromeOS into this class, although I do know the plain arguments towards it, key amongst them is that it’s based mostly on Linux and that the units themselves are acquainted and conventional PC kind elements. I hear you. However ChromeOS is totally different as a result of it’s so small and light-weight, so easy and simply managed, that it’s in some ways a contemporary retort to the kitchen-sink method we see from Home windows PC makers. It’s ChromeOS’ distinctive differentness, if you’ll, that I perceive makes it particular to some however so limiting to me. The notion of a premium Chromebook, for instance, is one thing I nonetheless wrestle with, regardless of the inherent excellence of the HP Dragonfly Professional Chromebook I’m nonetheless struggling to jot down about in any significant method.

No matter your tackle that, ChromeOS exists in some unusual center floor between PCs and units. And it’s the pure units—these based mostly on the Android and iOS/iPadOS cellular platforms—that signify a real break with the previous. Watching Google and Apple respectively advance their cellular techniques past the confines of content material consumption and into the extra sophisticated world of productiveness, by way of a gentle stream of software program and {hardware} updates, has been fascinating. As with ChromeOS, I nonetheless discover these platforms to be limiting and thus irritating from a productiveness standpoint, however then I’m coming at this with a long time of now deeply rooted workflows and expectations. These with fewer of my particular wants very properly won’t, simply as is the case with Chromebooks and different ChromeOS units.

I’ve written this earlier than, however this struggle comes all the way down to only one factor, whether or not it’s simpler to take an enormous, advanced, and legacy desktop platform like Home windows and make it less complicated, or whether or not it’s simpler to take an easier, new cellular platform and evolve it over time so as to add advanced however elective productiveness capabilities. To be clear, this isn’t an ideological struggle: Microsoft, Apple, and Google are the place they’re at present in shopper computing out of necessity. Microsoft has contorted Home windows to work on tablets and different contact units, for instance, whereas Apple, unable to make the Mac a dominant platform, noticed a lot, way more success in units, particularly the iPhone. And so right here we’re.

(Sure, I do know that Apple took the macOS platform, simplified it, and added touch- and different device-based capabilities to it in creating what we now name iOS. However that occurred over 15 years in the past, whereas Microsoft’s initiatives, skunkworks and public, to simplify and adapt Home windows to new kind elements over this similar time interval all failed. The world of at present is just the results of these and different successes and failures.)

I’m as fascinated by the inroads that Microsoft and PC makers have tried (however principally failed) to make within the pill market as I’m by the evolution of “true” tablets—Android, iPad—within the reverse instructions. Apple, the chief on this market, has contorted the iPad, as soon as a quite simple product line, into a number of fashions, together with Professional variations with large screens and complicated {hardware} options just like the Magic Keyboard, backed by software program in what’s now referred to as iPadOS to deal with keyboards, mice, and multitasking.

The Android aspect of this fence is much more screwed up, partly as a result of there’s no single commonplace that crosses the {hardware}/software program divide as there’s over in Cupertino. Builders are much less more likely to adapt Android apps to greater screens than is the case with the iPad, although that state of affairs is getting a bit higher this yr, because of Google’s outreach efforts and Android enhancements. However Google can be a part of the issue: over the previous a number of years, it has foisted Android tablets, Chromebook laptops, Chromebook 2-in-1s, and now Android tablets once more. And its newest effort, the mostly-great Pixel Pill, is a pure consumption machine that’s attempting to compete with the iPad’s previous. These keen on Android-based productiveness tablets have just about had just one choice, in Samsung.

However Samsung isn’t alone. Amazon simply launched a Hearth Max 11 pill, which may be optionally outfitted with a kickstand case, keyboard with an built-in touchpad, and a smartpen. And Lenovo, that the majority experimental of PC makers, has lengthy provided Android tablets of varied sizes and kinds. And this yr, it’s taking its most radical step but within the nascent marketplace for productivity-focused tablets with the Lenovo Tab Excessive pill. And I’m nonetheless attempting to wrap my head round this.

The Tab Excessive is a 14.5-inch “on a regular basis pill,” Lenovo says, alluding to its consumption and leisure capabilities, that are backed by its gorgeous 3K OLEN show panel with Dolby Imaginative and prescient HDR and its 8 JBL audio system with Dolby Atmos immersive sound. However there’s one other half to the Tab Excessive, and it’s all about productiveness and creativity: customers can multitask throughout as much as 4 cut up screens and 10 floating home windows, can write or draw with the bundled smartpen, and might compute in a semi-traditional vogue utilizing the Tab Excessive Keyboard, a floating keyboard with built-in touchpad that comes with choose fashions and is out there individually. Your rapid response, that this very carefully resembles an iPad Professional with a Magic Keyboard, is the right one.

Then once more, the “on a regular basis pill” bit is maybe a clue that this machine doesn’t exist within the rarified air—and heady worth factors—of the iPad Professional (or of Samsung’s large premium tablets). It’s not constructed round an costly and highly effective Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip, like that within the Samsung Tab S9 Extremely and Tab S9+. As a substitute, it makes use of an octa-core MediaTek Dimensity 9000 chipset, which I needed to lookup: it’s OK, however it suffers most clearly in GPU efficiency when in comparison with the Qualcomm flagship chipset. It’s additionally not as power environment friendly.

Past that, the specs look strong sufficient: 12 GB of RAM, 256 GB of storage, and a 12,200 mAh battery that Lenovo claims is nice for 12 hours of battery in superb video playback situations. (Within the PC house, I’d guess the real-world battery is about half that. Right here, I’m not so certain.) Nevertheless it’s not simply the battery that raises questions right here. 12 GB of what kind/velocity of RAM? Ditto for storage: is that this UFS, and, in that case, of what technology? I don’t know but.

We have to deal with the display screen: this OLED touchscreen panel is gorgeous, with a 3K (3000 x 1876) decision, 500 nits of brightness, a 120 Hz refresh charge, and that Dolby Imaginative and prescient/HDR 10+ goodness. It’s TUV-certified for serving to cut back eye pressure, which is nice, however it additionally has a really extensive side ratio that makes it extra suited to panorama orientation, which is nice for productiveness work and movies and never so good for studying.

The bezels are fairly small, just like these on my iPad Air.

We additionally want to handle the modular Tab Excessive Keyboard case. It’s, on the one hand, a duplicate of what Apple did with the Magic Keyboard in that it makes use of magnets to droop the pill in house, creating a well-recognized laptop-like use case.

However it’s also distinctive: there’s a big rectangular gap within the a part of the keyboard stand that sits behind the pill, and Lenovo provides a detachable piece that matches proper in there. I wasn’t certain what this was at first—an exterior touchpad? A battery of some form?—however finally discovered that it was a magnetic kickstand.

It attaches to the center again of the pill, filling the opening within the Tab Excessive Keyboard, and you’ll place it to be used in both panorama or portrait mode, that means that it may be used to prop up the pill (in portrait) whenever you’re studying or in panorama when watching a video with out the Tab Excessive Keyboard. Good. (The Tab Excessive Keyboard doesn’t have a battery.)

Like many computer systems, the Tab Excessive comes with a number of USB Kind-C ports, on this case two, each on the proper aspect (in panorama). The topmost port, on this utilization case, is USB-C 3.2 Gen 1, whereas the underside port is USB-C 2.0. Each assist Show Port out, charging and wired earphone connections.

There’s additionally a microSD slot on the left aspect, which in choose fashions features a 5G nano-SIM. In any other case, you get Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3, so it’s fairly fashionable. And for many who like cameras of their non-smartphone units, the Tab Excessive offers twin rear cameras—a 5 MP wide-angle lens and a 13 MP auto-focus lens—along with its front-facing 13 MP digital camera.

From a software program perspective, the Tab Excessive comes with Android 13, which remains to be barely the newest model, and Lenovo guarantees annual OS upgrades by way of Android 16 (late 2025), with 4 years of safety updates. The true trick on the software program aspect, after all, is what Lenovo places on prime of Android to allow its distinctive productiveness options. However I’ve solely simply set it up and haven’t had time but to analyze. That may occur subsequent.

And that’s the factor. I’ve solely simply began seeing how this curious mixture of {hardware} and software program advances works, and whether or not Android, or no less than this custom-made model of Android operating on distinctive {hardware}, represents an advance for Home windows’ cellular opponents or is simply one other experiment that doesn’t reside as much as the guarantees.

Extra quickly.