List Price: $549.99
Sale Price: $424.99
Today's Bonus: 23% Off
I hope to give the most comprehensive review of this Lenovo Lynx K3011W tablet.
After reading benchmark and reviews about the new Atom processor, I found that the Intel Atom Z2760 would outperform any nVidia Tegra 3 configurations, which is exactly what I wanted to hear since I was extremely tired of the standard tablet OSes; I've owned iOS, WebOS and Android devices for several years and it's always bothered me that I was always limited in productivity. I had always wished that I could have a full x86 environment so that I could install and run every app that I use for work and school while still having a multimedia consumption device that I could hold with one hand. After a couple of weeks of use, I have found that this is the exact device that I needed.
I have compared this tablet in person with the Asus VivoTab Smart, but I would rather have the brighter screen, louder stereo speakers, and the dockable keyboard that offers additional USB ports and its own battery. The Lenovo IdeaPad Lynx K3 has an MSRP value that's about $150 more than the Asus VivoTab Smart and it is also 0.2 pounds heavier. However, I was able to buy it on sale for less than the price of the VivoTab and I felt that the 0.2 pounds in weight was negligible.
I was able to use the HP Envy X2 Hybrid Tablet as well. While the X2 is sold with the keyboard included, the MSRP is $850. It has been sold for $600 on sale recently, which is a good price for these Hybrid Tablet devices if it were to include a dockable keyboard. Unfortunately, the X2 tablet was bulky due to its thickness, and it was approaching the 2-pound mark at a little over 1.7 pounds. The X2 felt more like it was built to be a laptop than a stand-alone tablet. However, the Beats branded audio in the X2 as significantly louder than either the Lenovo Lynx or the Asus VivoTab Smart.
There are other options for Hybrid Tablets. The Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet 2 has firmware, driver and chipset issues, and it is more expensive than the Lenovo IdeaPad Lynx. The Acer W510 is much heavier than the IdeaPad Lynx. Much like the HP X2, the Samsung ATIV is bulky and heavy. The AsusVivoTab full version is much more expensive than its counterpart of the VivoTab Smart. The Microsoft Surface RT has the restricted "Windows RT" system that will not allow the user to install their own programs, as well as having the slower nVidia Tegra 3 quad-core processor. I considered purchasing the full Windows Surface Pro tablet but due to its thickness and weight, it would have made more sense to purchase a Lenovo Twist at that point. Therefore, it was an easy choice for me to purchase the IdeaPad Lynx over any of the other offerings in this category.
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CONS
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I'll start the formal review with a list of negative aspects of this tablet. The worst physical aspect of the tablet is that the volume rocker on the side of the tablet. It rattles because it sits loose in its housing; this doesn't seem to be a defect but a design choice. Also, since it sits nested (inset) instead of sitting flush at the edge, it's extremely hard to push the buttons with your fingers. You will need to use your fingernails to reach in and push the rocker buttons.
I wish the microphone was better at picking up my voice. When placing it two feet away from me, it picked up my voice and cut out background noise, but my voice sounded whisper-quiet. If I tilted the tablet's top edge toward me, it picked up my voice clearly. If Lenovo had intended the microphone to be directional, it would have made more sense to find a way for Lenovo to mount the microphone port facing the user.
Other users complain about the edges of the tablet but I didn't find it an issue; it didn't cut into my hand, doesn't feel uncomfortable after hours of holding it, etc. I wish the back didn't feel like hollow plastic, but since there isn't much 'give' to the plastic, it's just a superficial nitpick. However, I can imagine that accidentally putting weight on this device will destroy the screen since it provides the structural integrity. In comparison, the Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet 2 or the HP Envy X2 have either metal housings inside or are constructed of aluminum on the outside so that there is some support other than a flimsy plastic casing. I don't imagine I'll leave my tablet lying around on benches, so I am not worried that I'll crack the screen at any point during my ownership.
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UNBOXING
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The tablet comes with a manual, AC adaptor, USB charger, microUSB-to-USB male-to-female adapter, and a "specialized" paperclip that will fit in the "CTRL + ALT + DEL" hole (a 'hard reset' pinhole is available on device in case the screen becomes unresponsive). The USB charger is fairly short at a little over a yard, so you may want to pick up your own microUSB-to-USB cable. The box itself is sealed with a specialized anti-tamper tape that will leave a 'lenovo' logo on the box if the tape is peeled to open the box.
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PHYSICAL APPEARANCE
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The tablet itself is a bit thinner in width than an iPhone 5. While weighing in at less than 1.5 pounds, this tablet "feels light as a feather" when compared even to the netbooks of yester-year. It's about 0.3 pounds lighter than my HP Touchpad and MUCH thinner. To put it into perspective, it means that the Lenovo Lynx is 6 times as heavy as an iPhone 5, or 3 times as heavy as a Kindle Paperwhite.
The top edge of the tablet has a power button with a charge indicator light next to it. The light is a very small LED that glows orange during charging and white when it's fully charged. It only glows when it's plugged into a power source. There is a microphone array as well, one in the top middle and one towards the right side. There is also a microSD slot which is covered. The cover comes off easily if you use a paperclip to lift it; it's near impossible to pry it up with your fingernail. The cover has a rubber tether that keeps it from fully detaching from the tablet, meaning that you won't lose it while you're inserting or removing an SD card. The microSD slot is fairly deep inside, so you will need to use a paperclip to push it in. It will click in, and if you press down again, it'll pop up but will not pop up far enough. I found that I needed to use tweezers to pull out the microSD card since it wouldn't stick out past the inside lip of the housing. There is also what appears to be a non-removable molded cover for another port, about the size of a nano-SIM card. Perhaps international versions will allow 4G data connectivity through this port, but it is blocked off by plastic molding on my device.
The right edge of the tablet has a microphone/headphone combo jack, the type that accepts the iPhone earbuds that has the line-in mic (three bands on the jack). There is also a microHDMI port. Both of these ports are uncovered. There is also a slit for the right-side speaker port which is situated closer to the top of the device so that your hands won't block the speaker port if you're gripping the edge towards the middle/bottom.
The bottom edge of the tablet has two docking slots and a microUSB port square in the middle. The microUSB port is used for charging as well as the tethering of other devices. The microUSB-to-USB dongle that came in the package can be plugged in here; I've successfully connected a 32GB USB flash drive and a USB dongle for a wireless mouse. Since this port offers less than 1A of power, bigger devices such as full HDD or CD burners will not run off of this USB port. However, if a powered USB hub is supplied, it will work without issues. There is also a barcode and serial number sticker next to the microUSB port with markings that this device itself was manufactured on 12/11/2012.
The left edge of the tablet has left-side speaker port to provide stereo sound. There is a dedicated rotation lock button and a volume up/down rocker. These buttons are nested in a bit so that it is not flush with the edge of the tablet, and it is hard to push them due to this fact. As stated earlier, fingernails are needed to use the volume rocker.
The front face of the tablet has one physical button. It is a Windows button that can be used to wake the tablet up from sleep or bring you to the Windows 8 menu. The button is nestled slightly in so that it's not flush with the face of the tablet. There is a chrome "Lenovo" logo that is embedded in the bezel underneath the edge-to-edge glass. Also embedded underneath the glass at the top of the bezel is the front-facing camera, a power LED and the ambient light sensor. All three of these items are next to each other, with the camera in the top middle and the other two items to the right of it. The power indicator is a very small green LED that flashes for half a second every time the power is turned on or off on the device. The ambient light sensor cannot be seen during regular use since it's covered by tinted black glass. However, if you shine a flashlight directly onto the glass (or put it in direct sunlight), you can see past the black tinting of the bezel and see a round hole with a green microchip of the ambient light sensor. The edge-to-edge glass on the front is set slightly inside of the plastic casing of the tablet so that there is a barely noticeable ledge around the entire face. The slab of glass is not oleophobic and easily attracts fingerprints and oils.
The corners of the tablet are slightly rounded. There is a clear seam that splits down the middle of the entire edge where the gray backing of the case is attached to the black plastic that holds the front glass face. However, I cannot pry between the seam and it does not feel as though the device is structurally weak. The back of the device is gray texturized hollow plastic. There is a slight 'give' in the plastic if you push hard enough, but it's barely noticeable. Holding it one handed will not push/bend the backing of the case. The back plastic has three stickers; an Intel Atom sticker, a Windows 8 sticker and an FCC sticker. Fingerprints or oils do not show up on the back plastic at all.
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SPEAKERS, HEADPHONES AND MICROPHONES
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The speakers on this tablet are truly stereo. Listening to the opening score for the TV series "Archer" showcases that there is a stereo effect and it's quite easy to hear it. In comparison to the one speaker port in the iPhone 5, one speaker port on the Lenovo Lynx will max out to about 80% of the speaker volume on the iPhone 5. However, since there are two speaker ports, it can get louder than the iPhone 5 speaker. It is multitudes louder than an iPod Touch 4th Gen. speaker. I cannot get the device to distort sound even at 100%, although the entire tablet will vibrate if the speakers are turned up during loud music. It's definitely loud enough to watch Netflix movies in bed even at 60% volume.
Plugging in headphones will automatically cut the speakers and send sound to the headphones. However, the device does not have different profiles for speaker volume and headphone volume; whatever volume level you have set will carry over whenever you plug/unplug headphones. This is different than iOS or Android devices that will allow you to have your speaker volume set to a different levels than your headphone volume, and will auto-switch volume levels as you plug/unplug your headphones. Headphones sound crystal clear.
Testing the built-in microphone with Skype showed that unless you speak loudly or towards the top edge of the tablet, the microphone struggles to pick up your voice. While holding the tablet two feet away from myself, the microphone picked up whisper-quiet voice levels from me while I spoke in an "indoor" voice. However, I usually speak a bit louder when I chat on the phone, so trying a louder voice registered better with Skype, but the best result was actually to tilt the tablet's top edge towards me while I spoke. This seemed a bit impractical. I found that the audio mixer allowed me to "boost" the microphone sensitivity an extra 36dB. However, it would start to pick up the pops and creaks from my handling of the tablet.
When I used my V-Moda Vibe Duo earbuds with built-in mic, everything went MUCH better than expected. The sound of my own voice was crisp, clear and loud.
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CAMERA
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While using the Windows 8 camera app, it allowed me several settings. The still-image camera allowed resolutions of 0.3MP (4:3), 0.9PM (16:9), 1.2MP (4:3), and 2.1MP (16:9). When I switched to Video mode, it allowed the resolutions of 252p (16:9), 360p (16:9), 480p (4:3), 540p (16:9), 720p (16:9) and 1080p (16:9). Unfortunately, the picture quality is pretty grainy like any standard $20 webcam. It is grainier than the iPhone front-facing camera.
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AMBIENT LIGHT SENSOR
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Since this is a full-fledged version of Windows 8, power adjustment and screen adjustments are taken care of through the usual Power Options in Windows. Lenovo does NOT run their own software on top of Windows, unlike Asus or Samsung. That means that there are less errors and less issues. The Ambient Light Sensor is embedded underneath the glass of the front-facing bezel. It's pretty responsive; holding your thumb over the sensor will force the screen to dim within a second. The dimming is gradual, rather than step-wise so that you see a nice fading in brightness.
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OS & SOFTWARE
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This is what it all comes down to. The reason I want a tablet is because it is easy to carry with me, whether I'm knocking out e-mails at the coffee shop or watching movies in bed. However, I needed a full-fledged operating system to run my suite of Microsoft Office, CodeBlocks, NetBeans, Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, Cool Edit Pro, Acrobat Pro, Oralce Database, Filezilla, etc. That was the limitation with iOS/Android: you can try to cobble several apps together and bridge their outputs to get your desired workflow, but it would always fall short.
I'm glad to say that this tablet exceeds my expectations by leaps and bounds. I owned a netbook several years ago and have had experience with the "Intel Atom" chipsets. They are ungainly slow and netbooks back in the day had limitations of supporting only 1GB of RAM. One of my major concerns was that these new hybrid tablets with Intel Atom are only meant to address 2GB of older DDR2 architecture RAM. In a typical day, my home or work computer is usually tying up 6 to 7GB of RAM between its programs, with the Windows 7 OS taking about 1.5GB of it. I'm happy to say that Windows 8 standard on this Lenovo Lynx tablet only uses 0.9GB, of which I can probably cut down to 0.7GB if I turn off some unneeded services. Even after a full day of use, if I close all of my apps, it will go back down to 0.9GB of RAM usage by the OS.
The tablet itself is delivered barebones. Other than the OS, it only has a PDF editor, a trial edition of Microsoft Office 2010 and a trial edition of Norton Security. Windows 8 now includes antivirus protection as part of the "Windows Defender" software that comes pre-installed with the OS, so I deleted the Norton security since it had too many processes and plug-ins associated with it.
Since the tablet uses eMMC solid state drives rather than the standard SATA drives, writing to the drive is slower than laptops or desktops that have SATAIII SSD drives. However, it is still noticeably faster than a 7200RPM HDD. The eMMC solid state drive may not be as fast as consumer SSD drives, but it's read times are still faster than the traditional hard drives inside of laptops.
After installing about 25 programs and configuring them, I was surprised by the start-up time. During the first half-dozen restarts while the tablet was setting itself up and downloading updates, start-up times were about 1 minute and 30 seconds on average. Fortunately, after running all of the updates and installing all of my apps/programs, the tablet does a cold boot in about 20 seconds! That's perfectly acceptable to me since my quad-core Core i5 3570k over-clocked desktop at home takes about 15 seconds to boot up in Windows 7. I'm extremely impressed with the boot-up time on this device. Wake from sleep is, in fact, instant. The OS is responsive the second you hit the "Windows" key to wake it up from sleep.
Speaking of sleep, I am monitoring the device over my WiFi network. I can see the tablet pop-up on my WiFi network every 5 minutes even when it's supposed to be asleep: it seems to wake itself up from sleep every 5 minutes to check for new e-mails and beeps to notify me (the screen does not turn on, but it will beep when new items come in). I have apps such as Skype, GMail, Yahoo Mail to auto-refresh while the computer is locked and asleep. When I wake the computer and look at the lock-screen, it gives me notifications about how many e-mails I have received, any calls that I have missed, etc. This is a setting in Windows 8 that can be turned on/off.
I have not found a day where I have run out of charge for this device. I have used it on the road to surf the internet and answer some e-mails while tethered over Bluetooth to an access point. After 3 hours of use in this manner, I had about 75% of battery left (the power plan is set to "Balanced" mode with the screen brightness about 3/4 of the way up). I have used this device with the WiFi and Bluetooth on for about 5 hours while streaming Netflix, and it had about 45% battery life left at that point. I've never let the battery run all the way down, but I wouldn't doubt the quoted 8+ hours of battery life.
The tablet itself is extremely responsive and snappy. When using the official Windows 8 apps that can be purchased from the Windows App store, the apps take the entire screen. You never see the Windows desktop or the taskbar. In this "Metro UI" or "App" mode, there are some nifty tricks that you can pull. Rather than hitting the physical Windows button at bottom of the tablet, if you slide your thumb from the right bezel inwards, a menu pops up that gives you the option to run a search for programs/documents, go the Windows menu, or open settings. If you slide your thumb in from the left bezel, you will cycle through Windows 8 apps and programs running in the background (same as the "ALT + TAB" shortcut on the keyboard). If you slide your thumb in from the left bezel and immediately slide back out to the bezel, you can see a thumbnail preview of all of your running programs. From there, you can drag a program to the left or right-side of the screen, and it will split your window so that you have two apps open in a 1:5 ratio. The surprise here was that the Intel Atom Z2760 processor is strong enough to run two 720p YouTube videos simultaneously in that odd picture-in-picture type of way. There was no noticeable lag or stutter; everything ran buttery smooth with one window in FireFox and the other in Internet Explorer.
Just to give you some numbers, Adobe Photoshop CS6 takes about 15 second to launch. Microsoft Office 2013 Word takes about 4 seconds to launch. Memory management seemed to be fine. For example, I was running Photoshop, Word, Excel, and 5 tabs in Internet Explorer and everything was running fine with only 1.6GB of RAM taken. After installing my suite of apps, 27GB of free space was still left on the internal storage. I have found a method of storing my Dropbox files to the micro SD drive by formatting the micro SD as an NTFS drive and setting a mounting point in a folder of my creation on the C:\ drive. This was necessary since my Dropbox contains several gigabytes of data that I did not want to waste on the internal drive of the Lenovo Lynx, and the Dropbox app will not allow storage on a removable drive (so I had to trick the program).
There is a Windows 8 app called "Fresh Paint" and I decided to try it out. It allows drawing on the screen. Since the Lenovo Lynx does not support a pressure-sensitive digitizer, it should only be able to see 5 finger gestures at once without being able to distinguish pressure sensitivity. I found that the Lynx performed sub-bar in the Fresh Paint application. If I picked a paintbrush and swiped across the screen, there would be a one-second delay before I saw the results. The resulting swipe would show up a block at a time rather than being a fluid brush stroke. The app was able to distinguish speed: a slow, deliberate drag would generate a solid ink line while a quick brush across would fade the brush stroke as it would on a real canvas. However, the app was completely unusable due to the delay. I wanted to open Photoshop and use the touchscreen to make a comparison, but Photoshop would not register the touchscreen as an input device. Upon installing Skitch, I was able to draw freely and annotate my photographs without delay. I would be inclined to conclude that perhaps input-heavy apps such as Fresh Paint may be the only apps that suffer from lag/delay from the Touchscreen as it is not optimized for this simple touchscreen.
Speaking of the touchscreen, it is extremely responsive and accurate. Even at full resolution, you can accurately click on a 9-point font link amidst a sea of links. When you touch the screen or move your fingers around the screen, you are greeted with a 20% faded gray circle that encircles your finger to show you that your touches are registering.
One of the biggest necessities with these tablets is a good on-screen keyboard. Microsoft did a good job with Windows 8; apps in the Metro UI will automatically force the keyboard to pop-up as soon as you touch a text-input area. Outside of the Metro UI or "App" mode, there is a giant keyboard icon on the Windows Taskbar that will pop up the keyboard when you need it. They keyboard takes nearly half the screen (vertically). Since I have been using touchscreen devices for nearly 6 years, and since this is an 11.6" touchscreen, I can actually lay the device down on a surface and type at about 35 words per minute. The keyboard has different settings as well, allowing you to use the regular keybaord, a split keyboard that allows you to type on half the keyboard using just your left thumb and the other half using your right thumb, or go into hand-write detection mode so you can use a stylus to write directly on the screen and allowing Windows to decipher your writing. As another input method, speech recognition is built-in to Windows 8. However, it was near impossible to get it to work, due to the weak microphone.
Some apps do not seem to cope well with the pop-up keyboard. Windows tries to adjust your working screen by shoving your program's text input box above the keyboard that slides out from the bottom of the screen. In the desktop version of FireFox or Internet Explorer, it means that the web browser would redraw the area to fit the textbox above the keyboard. However, Google Chrome was a disaster. Instead of redrawing the HTML elements, Chrome would attempt to resize its entire window to make it take space on the top-half of the touchscreen. When you hit the keyboard button to hide the large touchscreen keyboard, Google Chrome often failed to go back to full-screen so you end up with a browser that fills only the top half of the screen. On more than half the occasions, Chrome would just crash after a keyboard input. So I ended up using Internet Explorer as my main browser. However, there are two versions of Internet Explorer; the Metro UI touchscreen version and the regular desktop version that comes with all Windows computers. The touchscreen-specific IE is easier to navigate since all of the buttons are huge, and menu items slide in from the top and bottom in large icons. The performance is also better than the desktop/regular version of IE, so I would recommend using this "App" version of Internet Explorer.
As mentioned earlier, I tether my Lenovo Lynx tablet to my iPhone via Bluetooth to share a 4G connection while I am on the road. Unfortunately, starting with Windows 8, Microsoft has removed connectivity to ad-hoc WiFi networks. The usual method of creating a WiFi hotspot will no longer allow you to connect to a shared Internet connection. Ad-hoc networks even fail to show up in the Windows WiFi configuration window. However, if you can create an ad-hoc connection via Bluetooth, this tablet will allow you to choose a "Shared Network" option via Bluetooth to tether to your cell phone's data plan. It also didn't have issues connecting with devices to stream audio via Bluetooth.
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PROS
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I'll finally list the "Pros" of owning this tablet:
*Extremely light compared to carrying a full-fledged laptop, yet can run the same 32-bit applications as any laptop. Lighter than an iPad with 3G chip.
*Very bright and crisp screen. Noticeably brighter than the Asus VivoTab Smart and easily useable in direct sunlight (minus the reflection due to the glass screen).
*No proprietary drivers or necessary accompanying software. Unlike Samsung or Asus tablets, you can upgrade this device to a full Windows 8 Pro or wipe it clean and install an operating system of your choice because it is not dependent on manufacturer-specific applications.
*11.6" diagonal screen adds so much more screen real estate than a 9 or 10" screen that you can type on the on-screen keyboard without issues. Keyboard is responsive without any issues or mis-alignment.
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REFERENCES
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CPUBenchmark has raw PassMark scores that show that the Atom Z2760 actually beats an Intel Core 2 Duo T5270 processor. AnandTech has a fantastic write-up about the Atom processor itself and a benchmark comparison in a dozen categories that show it out-performing the nVidia Tegra 3 Quad-Core processor.
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NOTES
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I have not purchased the dockable keyboard for this device. I will hold out for a price drop since I mainly purchased this device to use in "tablet" mode. I will post any updates at the top of this review in a section marked "UPDATES" if necessary.
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UPDATES
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03/18/2013
1) Certain games, such as Microsoft Mahjong, will run the memory up to 1.9GB used. At that point, a warning pane will pop open on the desktop stating that the system is "running out of memory". This pop-up will not disrupt your open apps and you will only see it once you close your app and go to the desktop. However, I did not experience any issues during game play. I played Mahjong for about 4 hours straight before I closed the app, only to notice that pop-up warning message. 2GB of RAM may be troublesome for some people.
2) Although I initially wrote that the desktop version of Internet Explorer was my preferred browser, I have found that having 2 or more Flash-heavy websites will make the browser freeze for a few seconds upon loading. The Metro UI "App" version of Internet Explorer does not have this issue. I have edited my review to state that I prefer the "App" version of the browser.
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