Hasta La Gadget!

This week the folks at Lenovo have revealed their IdeaPad Y Series with a brand new interchangeable HDD bay they’ve called the UltraBay. This HDD bay is able to swap out for dual-graphics cards, increased storage space, an an additional fan for cooling. Outside this is either the Y500 with a 15.6-inch display or the Y400 with a 14-inch display – and notebooks in black and red!

This machine is made to be changed around, that’s for certain. You’ve got up to 3rd generation Intel Core i7 processor options and the ability to add up to NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M dedicated graphics with NVIDIA OptimusTM technology. You also have up to 16GB DDR 3 memory, up to 1TB HDD storage, and up to 16GB SSD cache. You can also work with an interchangeable DVD reader/writer or Blu-ray Disc drive!

This beast works with one of Lenovo’s own Intelligent Touchpads optimized for Windows 8 and their next-generation touch- and gesture-friendly interface. The Y Series has an all-ways on USB port for charging of USB-powered (charged) mobile devices even when the notebook is not powered on itself – unplugged, even.

On the sides you’ve got 2x USB 2.0 and 1 USB 3.0 port, a 6 in 1 memory card reader, 1/8 inch Stereo Headphone Output Jack/ SPIDIF, 1/8 inch Input Jack Microphone, and HDMI out. The full beast is either 387x259x15.5-36.0mm (13.77×9.64×0.59-1.29 inches) for the larger model or 350x 245x 15-33mm (13.77×9.64×0.59-1.29 inches) and both have a battery that’s quoted at 3 hours of productive usage without recharge. These notebooks will have specifications that vary by region – and both will be available October 2012 starting at US $649. Stay tuned for more Lenovo action at IFA 2012!

Lenovo IdeaPad Y Series brings UltraBay for interchangeable upgrades is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Lenovo is expanding its IdeaPad line to include some new S Series ultraportables. Today the company announced the 13.3-inch S300, the 14-inch S400 and the (also 14-inch) S405. These models sport a metallic finish, with color options including crimson red, silver grey and cotton-candy pink. All three models measure 0.86 inches (21.9mm) and weigh 3.97 pounds (1.8kg), and, aside from screen size, the main difference between them is processor type. The S300 and S400 will be available with Core i3 or Core i5 CPUs, while the S405 will ship with an AMD chip (up to a quad-core A8 processor). Storage options include a 500GB, 750GB or 1TB hard drive, and the S400 and S405 are configurable with a 32GB SSD. Lenovo says you can expect up to five hours of battery life from these machines. They’ll go on sale in August (aka now) for $499 and up. Though all models will ship with Windows 7, they’ll be eligible for an upgrade to Windows 8. Check out our hands-on below.

Zach Honig contributed to this report.

Continue reading Lenovo announces IdeaPad S300, S400 and S405 notebooks for $499 and up

Filed under: Laptops

Lenovo announces IdeaPad S300, S400 and S405 notebooks for $499 and up originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 30 Aug 2012 07:48:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Lenovo‘s newest Android tablet, the IdeaPad A2109, didn’t make much noise when being announced but the tablet is already readily available. They’ve released a few budget tablets in the recent past but this is actually one worth checking out. The IdeaPad A2109 apparently is already reaching stores with Best Buy offering it for just $299.

Not to be confused with the S2109 we recently reviewed, the A2109 rocks a 9-inch 1280 x 800 resolution HD display and the NVIDIA Tegra 3 quad-core processor. Add those two specs in with a 16GB tablet all for $299 and you have a pretty great deal, especially considering the S2109 meets none of those specs and costs more.

We’ve seen reports of a similarly spec’d A2107 7-inch Lenovo tablet but that appears to be missing in action. The A2109 however is available right now at Best Buy both online, and in stores according to their site. We haven’t heard much from Lenovo on this tablet but with specs and a price like that they should be telling the world.

The Lenovo IdeaPad A2109 also comes with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, 1GB of RAM, micro-SD support for extra storage, a 3 megapixel rear and 1.3 VGA front camera, and even HDMI out options. All this comes in at less than a half an inch thick and only $299. Hopefully we’ll be hearing more about that 7-inch model soon, as it could possibly rival the Nexus 7.

[via Engadget]

Lenovo IdeaPad A2109 Tegra 3 tablet hits Best Buy starting at $299 is written by Cory Gunther & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

If you’re one of the few that is looking for a decent mid-range well rounded Android tablet that also manages to come in the same shape as the iPad, we might have something just for you. Today on the SlashGear test bench is the new Lenovo IdeaTab S2109 Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich tablet. Running on a standard build of Android, but rocking an iPad-like 9.7-inch 1024 x 768 resolution display check out if this tablet is for you after the break.

What we have here is a tablet that Lenovo has designed to be well built, well priced, and budget friendly. Coming in at just $349 with 16GB of internal storage it’s an ideal offering, although the Nexus 7 severely undercuts it — while being more powerful. First you’ll need to see our hands-on and unboxing, then lets dive into the tablet and see what we think. Shall we?

Hardware

In the very recent past Lenovo’s hardware and build quality has always been one of the low points of their tablets, but with the S2109 they’ve surprisingly done a much better job in that department. Offering it at a low price at the same time doesn’t hurt either. The build quality and hardware is improved, but it still isn’t up to Samsung or Apple standards.

Lenovo’s equipped this S2109 tablet with some pretty poor specs to meet that low price point though. You get an old, aging, and quite grainy 9.7-inch display rocking the same 4:3 aspect ratio and terrible 1024 x 768 resolution that the original (yes as in a few years old) iPad had. Almost all Android tablets come with at least a 1280 x 800 resolution so this is instantly looking worse once you glance into the screen. After using the Acer A700 with a 1920 x 1200 resolution, or our new iPad with Retina display this thing almost hurts my eyes.

Other than that you’ll get a mid-range 1.0 Ghz dual-core TI OMAP 4 processor, 1GB of RAM, and this model comes with 16GB of internal storage — they do offer a 32GB version for those in need too. We would rather of seen the NVIDIA Tegra 3 quad-core here, but we’ll take what we get. Overall however the S2109 both looks and feels smaller than a 9.7-inch tablet because of the curved rounded edges and the sleek unibody design. Sadly the back is a hard plastic and not aluminum and it picked up scratches extremely quick. Lenovo has shipped the tablet with a silicone case right inside the box however, so that is an added bonus.

As for ports and options you’ll quickly notice the micro-HDMI and micro-USB ports on the right side, followed by a reset pinhole, the proprietary jack for charging, and a micro-SD slot for extra storage options. The top is outfitted with a single volume up/down rocker, then the left side is the lone 3.5mm headphone jack and power/wake button. The design is pretty basic, but works great for those who might be just beginning.

Sadly the hardware isn’t anything special. The best part is probably the unibody design (although it’s plastic) and the quad-stereo SRS surround sound speakers. The only camera is the 1.3 MP shooter up front, and they scraped the rear camera in favor of a low price. The speakers offer quite great sound for a little and budget tablet. While they won’t fill an entire room — most tablets don’t — they do have clear and crisp sound. We have mixed feelings on the hardware and build quality, but I guess for $349 it’s ok but we’d rather just buy an iPad 2.

Software

The Lenovo S2109 runs a completely stock version of Android 4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich which is a nice change since their previous attempts had a lot of changes — for the worse. Everything is completely vanilla and they’ve not touched the launcher, settings or notification bar or anything. For some reason however it seems to stutter and lag more than it should.

Lenovo’s pre-loaded AccuWeather, Lenovo App Shop, Documents To Go, Evernote, Adobe Flash Player, Go Keyboard, Movie Studio, Norton Security, Lenovo PrinterShare, Skype, SugarSync, News Republic, and Zinio. More than I’d like to deal with, but a few are quite nice. First thing you’ll want to do however is disable that terrible Go Keyboard and stick with ICS stock option.

Performance and Benchmarks

Unlike many recent tablets the Lenovo doesn’t run an NVIDIA Tegra 3 quad-core processor. Instead it runs a pretty basic and aging Cortex A9 Texas Instruments chip that lags behind most of the tablet competition, even compared to old Tegra 2 dual-core options. Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich had a little lag here and there that wasn’t expected, but that could be due to the old and aging processor under the hood. For the most part performance was fluid and swift, but we had to mention those odd stutters. Operation throughout the OS wasn’t too bad, it was browsing the web, reading RSS feeds, or checking through the market that seemed to struggle more than most.

Benchmarks, as expected, fall far behind most of the competition. Tablets like the Transformer Prime, or even cheaper options like the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10 (2) all are a little better in this category. We see where Lenovo was aiming, but they just haven’t quite hit the mark. Scoring lower benchmark tests than all 3 mentioned above. Here’s a quick look at Quadrant and AnTuTu — which speak for themselves.

The boot time is rather long, and has a loud and slightly obnoxious animation and sound that is louder than anything else the tablet puts out, which we found a little odd. Playing your average games was decent although the slow processor and low resolution display gives you a less than stellar experience compared to the competition.

Camera and Battery Life

Now first we’ll start with the camera, since it only has one. Most tablets these days offer both a front and rear camera but here we only have a 1.3 megapixel front camera. It’s capable of 720p video but you’d hardly tell. While I don’t consider it a con that there’s no rear camera, many tablets currently offer one in this same price point — so we’ll take another notch off for that.

Battery life is one area that the Lenovo IdeaTab S2109 does do well though. It comes with a 6,720 mAh battery under the hood that lasted for around 7-8 hours of solid use. They claim 10 hours of video playback but we doubt you’ll make it that far. Stand-by battery was quite excellent too. Using the tablet here and there briefly during the evenings and leaving it at a table nearby we managed great battery life as you can see here. Some tablets no matter what will run out of life after a few days, but not the S2109.

Wrap-Up

When using this tablet over the past few weeks we decided that for $349 you could probably do worse, but at the same time you could easily do better. Overall Lenovo has designed a decent mid-range tablet with ok specs, and a low price. With the iPad 2 being just $399 these days, and powerful quad-core Android tablets being similarly priced we had a hard time giving this a thumbs up of any kind.

If you’d like to stay under the $400 mark we’d easily have to recommend the ASUS Transformer Pad TF300T. It rocks a quad-core, higher resolution, and an optional keyboard for only $379, as well as the brand new Google Nexus 7 16GB for just $249. For those looking for a 9.7+ tablet the iPad 2 or even the new Acer Iconia Tab A510 would be a great option.

In the end the Lenovo IdeaTab S2109 is a well built tablet, it functions well and operates smoothly. The mid-range at best specs, low resolution, lack of a rear camera, and occasional stutters makes it hard to justify. For the price you could do better, but if Lenovo drops her down to $299 this might be a slightly different story.

Lenovo IdeaTab S2109 Review is written by Cory Gunther & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Lenovo got the memo: it’s high time the company released a new tablet. With products from Acer, ASUS and Samsung keeping us plenty busy these last few months, Lenovo can hardly expect to stay relevant with the IdeaPad A1 and ThinkPad Tablet from 2011. So the IdeaTab S2109, a $350, 9.7-inch slate running Ice Cream Sandwich, comes in the nick of time.

That’s not to say we were surprised when the tablet launched in June. The S2109 made its grand debut at the FCC in March, and Lenovo teased its arrival with a YouTube video highlighting the 8.9mm-thick unibody shell and the 1,024 x 768 IPS LCD display. What the company wasn’t so quick to point out, though, was that this device packs a TI OMAP 4430 CPU rather than the Tegra 3 processor that’s quickly becoming the new tablet norm. So how does the performance stack up? Does this go toe to toe with all those other mid-range, 10-inch slates we’ve seen lately? Let’s take a look.

Continue reading Lenovo IdeaTab S2109 review: a budget-priced ICS slate with a few too many quirks

Filed under: Tablet PCs

Lenovo IdeaTab S2109 review: a budget-priced ICS slate with a few too many quirks originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 10 Jul 2012 14:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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