When the Lenovo Yoga Tab Pro 3 turned up I was excited to see the bright screen, long battery life figures, LTE and that projector, which of course no-one needs…but everyone can, somehow, justify. Here’s a summary review of this interesting and well-designed 10-inch Android tablet.

Yes the Lenovo Yoga Tab Pro 3 is the one with the projector that you’ve probably heard about already. This isn’t a laptop or 2-in-1 mind, despite the Yoga branding.

Details: All the Lenovo Yoga’s, specifications and reviews.

My daughter already loves the Yoga Tab Pro 3 more than the Samsung Gear VR now that she knows she can lie on her bed and watch Germany’s Next Top Model with and I’m finding it very useful as a test-bed for Android apps. The family watched Shaun The Sheep yesterday and despite it being only 480p resolution it’s fine for family entertainment. I did a few productivity tests too. It’s working out well across a number of scenarios.

As mentioned, there’s no keyboard included with the Yoga Tab 3 Pro so I connected a USB keyboard and mouse and used it for about an hour as a ‘PC.’  There’s no HDMI output (not even MHL over USB) so it’s not comfortable as a long-term desktop screen. 11.6-inches is the smallest screen I would recommend for productive mobile work.

There’s an Intel Atom X5 inside which drives good web-loading times using Chrome but Tweetdeck on as a tab seemed slow. Atom X5 on Windows tablets isn’t exactly speedy either so that’s no big surprise and an indicator that the Lenovo Yoga Tab 3 Pro isn’t a barrier-free web-worker.

As you know, however, there’s an app for almost everything you need to do on the ‘web’ and most of them are fast and efficient. It makes-up for the so-so raw Web experience and that’s not something you can say about Atom-based Windows tablets.

The ergonomics are good if you’re hand-holding. You’ve got a solid and comfortable gripping point (housing the battery, DLP projector and hinge) if you’re looking for a portrait mode reading pad and the stand works both in upright mode and as a kind-of landscape mode easel which works really well if you’re drinking a coffee at a table.

I resisted looking at the price until I could make an educated guess about its value and had 499 Euro in my head. That’s based on the style, LTE and projector. This model is actually 549 Euro with LTE. 429 Euro without the LTE ($499 in the USA.) Maybe we’ll see 499 offers soon though because the delta between the WiFi and LTE versions is more than it should be. A 50-80 premium is more like the going rate.

Lenovo Yoga Tab 3 Pro problems.

I’m a bit miffed that the Yoga Tab 3 Pro won’t pair with a Galaxy Gear S2 Classic 3G that I’m testing. Bluetooth 4.0 LE doesn’t seem to be supported. Periscope crashes on startup, the camera isn’t that good and it isn’t running the latest Marshmallow version of Android. There’s no fingerprint reader (Hey, if the Honor 5X can offer it at half the price, why can’t this Lenovo ‘pro’ tablet include it?) Yes, there are issues.

And how about that projector? It’s low resolution (480p) and weak (50 lumens. Office and home projectors are usually over 2000 lumens) but it’s a lot of fun. You can watch videos in a dark room without any problem but I’m not sure there are many other uses for it unless you’re looking for some creative way to project some advertising on a shop Window. I tried that and  might run it on my studio windows overnight. The scheduled power-off feature will allow me to run videos on the frosted part of the Window for a few hours after dark.

The Lenovo Yoga Tab Pro 3 is  an interesting tablet and if you’re looking for a 10-inch mobile device I advise you to take a closer look at it. The design is good and the screen is sharp and punchy. There’s a 23 Wh battery inside (some sites refer to a bigger battery capacity but I think that’s for the non-Pro version of this tablet that doesn’t have the projector) and my colleagues at Notebookcheck got over 9 hours in their WiFi surfing test (150 nits brightness.) There’s no MHL-over-USB (HDMI output via an adapter) but it’s OTG capable so you can connect keyboard, mouse and storage. Miracast is supported, there’s dual-band AC WiFi, GPS and compass too there’s an IP21 dust and splash resistant rating.

The projector doesn’t seem to take a huge amount of energy and might give you more battery life than on the screen. That surprised me.

Full Lenovo Yoga Tab 3 Pro review at Notebookcheck.

Good design, quality screen, LTE and projector. IP21 protection, good speakers, great battery life and good performance. The Lenovo Yoga Tab 3 Pro LTE is a really interesting 10-inch Android tablet and I’d really love to have it as part of my ultra mobile PC kit.

Compared to Windows tablets there’s less flexibility at the OS level but a huge choice of apps the make up for it, including Office Mobile. Don’t expect laptop performance here because the Atom X5 isn’t much better than the 2014 Baytrail-T platform.

The price for the LTE version needs to come down a bit but if you do buy it at full price I doubt you’ll be regretting the purchase.

After testing a number of high-end devices recently, including gaming-capable PCs and the Surface Pro 4, it was a really interesting experience with the Toshiba Satelite Click 10 last week. Going from €1500 of Surface Pro 4 down to €399 of entry-level mobile 2-in-1, with the same total weight, highlighted just how much value you can get for your money…and what the differences are between high-end and low-end. My video review for Notebookcheck is embedded below in this article but I’ve also added thoughts about how the Click 10 compares with the ASUS Transformer Book T100HA (good power, storage options) and the Acer Switch 10E (a great budget 2-in-1.)

The Toshiba Satellite Click 10 follows in the footsteps of the Click 9, the unique netbook-style 2-in-1 with the big battery life. Like the Click 9 the Click 10 has a battery in both the tablet and keyboard but by keeping the weight down to 1.1 KG Toshiba have created the best battery:KG ratio in the 10-inch dockable tablet market. How’s the rest of this ultramobile PC though?

The Acer Aspire Switch 10V takes the new 11V design and shrinks it down a little to make an overall improvement on the original Switch 10. There’s an Atom X5 (Z8300) on the inside along with a Full HD screen. Hands-on video at the base of this article.

Acer Aspire Switch 10V

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At 1063 grams, including keyboard, the Dell Venue 10 7000 is another Android 2-in-1 to consider for mobile productivity, if you can justify the price.

Back in 2010 I tried to put together a 1KG ‘rig’ that would serve mobile computing duties and in the test I had one of the first Android-based ‘smartbooks.’ The Toshiba AC100 was a really interesting product let down by an operating system and apps that didn’t support the laptop style of working. Move on to 2015 and we now have two good Android-based offerings and a range of Windows-based offerings. The choice has never been better. Unfortunately, while the Dell Venue 10 7000 is an extremely smart-looking dockable tablet, it costs $629.

Reviews have been favourable so far for the Dell Venue 10 7000 and it’s clear that Android 5 is better at supporting these form-factors than before. Some apps still don’t understand the concept of landscape mode but if we see more keyboard-based Android products in the future developers will be forced to move from portrait-only.

One of the key features of the Dell Venue 10 7000 is the screen. If it’s anything like the Dell Venue 8 7000, 2560 x 1600 OLEDs should really make a punch and bring some reasonable outdoor capabilities, which would be nicer if there was an LTE option. I agree that most of us can use our phones as temporary hotspots but if you want to be productive and independent of a smartphone battery (i.e. be able to work after 3pm without any worries!) then you need built-in cellular data capability; that’s what makes the Xperia Z4 Tablet so interesting.

The keyboard is getting praise. “Dell has taken the same build quality we saw last year and extended it to a modular design to support one of the best keyboards you can buy for an Android device today.” (Androidcentral) although it’s obviously more cramped than anything you’ll get on an 11.6-inch device.

Dell Venue 10 7000 keyboard.

Battery life looks to be around 6 hours which isn’t great for the weight and screen size. The similar, but Windows-based, Lenovo Yoga Tablet 2 10 offers more life from a charge and it only costs $349. If you really want a 2-in-1 tablet bargain, the original Acer Aspire Switch 10 is available for $219, which again highlights the big issue here. Dell need to knock the price down to $399 before the Venue 10 7000 gets really interesting. A $499 version with 64 GB and LTE would make it ultramobile. As it is, $629 is your starting price for this tablet and keyboard combo.

I’ve added the review links into the product database.

Going into this review I had a very clear idea of what it was that I wanted out of the Yoga. I wanted something with great battery life, lightweight, moderate computing power and good “lapability”. I hate that word but it does cover that attribute quite well. Those of you who have read my first impressions will know that I was pretty chuffed with the device from the get go. Now a week later have things changed or am I am still in the honeymoon period? Read on to find out more.

Specifications and other information can always be found in the Lenovo Yoga Tablet 2 specifications page.

The Lenovo Yoga Tablet 2 10 is a product I’ve been close to buying more than once. I love the stand, the battery capacity, the screen and the design but because it’s ‘just’ a Baytrail-T Atom tablet and I’ve still got the Lenovo Miix 2 10 this just isn’t enough of an upgrade for me. Some of you might be thinking about this as a cheaper alternative to the Surface 3 though so I’m happy to have had Garry Clark, gadget fan and blogger, send me his thoughts. He’s unboxed it, photographed it and written his first impressions for us. Over to you Garry.

I was working at CeBIT with Mobilegeeks on their Techlounge product last week. If you haven’t heard of them it’s because they’re big in German but not so big in English. I’ll explain more in another post but it meant that my focus was on creating videos (with the talented German, Rob Vegas) that would fill-in between the live sessions. In all we created around 25 videos in German and English and it was interesting to take a look at stuff I don’t normally look at. Curved monitors, for example. More interesting for me though were five Core M-based products that tell me one thing – Core M will move into the low-cost market.

Core M is built for low-cost. Its small die means, when yields are good enough, it’s cheap to produce but initial products, as always, tend to be a little more costly. Did you take a look at that Macbook yet? More mainstream are the Acer Switch 12 (reviewed here) and the UX305 which, at $699-$799 represent good value 2014-era Ultrabook performance without fans. But prices will drop further…

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