This makes it much easier to hold because the vast majority of the weight is on one side and therefore in your hand. The barrel also angles the display towards you when placed on a surface, where you can also make use of the built-in kickstand.
The Yoga Tablet’s kickstand is made from aluminium, as is the side edging. However, the remaining parts, bar the glass screen, are plastic.
If you want a good-looking and versatile tablet then the Yoga Tablet will suit, especially when you consider its reasonable price tag.
While the Yoga Tablet has an impressive and innovative design, its hardware doesn’t match up. It’s got an adequate 1.2GHz quad-core processor and 1GB RAM, plus 16- or 32GB of internal storage and a microSDXC card slot.
It’s nippy when navigating the home screens, but with more demanding tasks the Lenovo show signs of lag. Scrolling through the Play Store, for example, is often jerky, and switching between open apps can take a couple of seconds.
The screen is 8in, but has a uninspiring resolution of 1280x800 (187ppi). It o ers great viewing angles, but we found it occasionally temperamental.
While the cameras are good but not great, we did like the front-facing stereo speakers. If you’re going to watch video these will be a real boon. Battery life is also impressive at around 12 hours in our tests.
The Yoga Tablet 8 is preloaded with a tweaked version of Android 4.2 Jelly Bean. A Smart Side Bar provides access to app shortcuts and media content. However, this is switched o by default and doesn’t work unless you’re on the home screen.
Verdict
The Yoga Tablet 8 is one of the best-designed Android tablets we’ve seen and costs a reasonable amount. However, it’s let down by mediocre hardware and performance.
