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.

Lenovo Yoga Tablet 2 10 with Windows.

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Update: Live Q&A is over but the stream and edited HQ version is available below.

At 2100 Berlin time (about 50 minutes from this posting) you’ll be able to see the Dell Venue 11 Pro (Baytrail) unboxing, comparison with the Lenovo Miix 2 10. Q&A will be open for those joining with a Google account on the event page.

Full live stream (90+ minutes) and edited HQ version below.

The ASUS Vivotab Note 8 is now available in the US Microsoft Store [Update: Now out of stock] and that’s great news because the ASUS Vivotab Note 8 is turning out to be one of the best 8-inch Windows tablets there is.

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I’ve just unboxed two 8-inch Windows 8.1 tablets. The ASUS Vivotab Note 8 and Dell Venue Pro 8 both have digitizer layers but one has a Wacom layer and a pen compartment.

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The Lenovo Miix 2 10 is now available in Europe and, lucky for us, in stock near the UMPCPortal office. Here’s an unboxing of the little fella which, so far, seems to be excellent value for money. An 18-minute unboxing and overview demo is available below.

I paid 369 469 Euros at Conrad in Bonn and got the 64GB version with 1090×1200 screen, keyboard dock and Z3740 CPU and so far everything is working nicely. For those that know the Acer W510, a popular 2-in-1 based on Clovertrail in 2014, this beats it in most areas,most notably in browsing speed.

Total weight is 2.3 pounds. The tablet weighs about the same as the W510 at 606 grams / 1.34 pounds. Battery capacity is 24Wh, not much compared to the Acer W510 but good enough for 6 hours of Web work by my reckoning.

As for the keyboard dock it seems OK. There’s a slightly abnormal layout due to the lack of a function key row and it’s going to need some time to get used to but the keys seem to be accurate. The mousepad is OK but there’s no multi-touch. I’m writing this article on the Miix 2 10 right now.

Screen angles are good but the screen could be a little flat in terms of color. Auto-brightness works but it doesn’t seem to be that bright at max settings.  1920×1200 is a very high density that could catch you out in desktop mode with some programs. The attachment to the base is easy to use but of course, only at one angle.

Charging is via USB or power port on the tablet. The dock has two USB2.0 ports.

The speakers are loud and accurate on the tablet and the additional speaker on the dock adds a little bit of lower-end range, but not much. It’s not what I’d call Bass.

That’s it for now. I’ll get to work on the full review so stay tuned. Feel free to ask questions below.

I’ve tested a number of Baytrail devices and, as always with a new platform, there’s potentially a difference between the over-excited experience at the launch event and real-life usage; Sometimes it’s disappointing. In this case, I’m extremely excited because the experience is better than I thought. I’ve just received the Toshiba Encore WT8 (bought for UMPCPortal) and spent 2 hours unboxing and testing in front of cameras. My first impressions in blog-form will take a few days but if you’ve got time to watch through this 40 minute testing video, you’ll see why I’m excited. That’s all I’m saying for now. Your questions are, as always, welcome.

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One of the best Ultrabooks of the 2012/2013 phase was the Samsung ATIV Book 9. It got even better with Haswell and a QHD screen in the following version. It’s a stunning bit of kit that I’ll be testing fully over the next week or two.
In the meantime, enjoy this overview video and feel free to ask questions. Price is currently about $1399 for the 128GB/4GB/QHD/Core i5 version. It’s not cheap and one could argue that for that price you shouldn’t have to carry adaptor cables but despite that, the quality, efficiency and style should fit with a lot of customers.

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Update: Full review now live.

Need an Ultrabook for professional use that’s going to be flexible with connectivity and be available in hundreds of variations? The Dell Latitude E7440 is one for you to take a look at because it’s available in variants that would suit most people. From a ‘basic’ Core i5 with 1366×768 screen and hard drive to this, the 8GB, SSD and FullHD version with fingerprint reader and smartcard reader.

The version I have here isn’t actually an Ultrabook although one can argue that by last years specifications it is. it doesn’t have the touchscreen and it runs Windows 7. It will be interesting to test Windows 7 on Haswell to see if it’s as efficient as Windows 8. I don’t think it will be but we’ll find out soon.

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