Lenovo IdeaPad S2109 Tablet

Goodness knows there are plenty of Android tablets on the market now, particularly 10.1" models. So Lenovo decided to differentiate their newest tablet, the IdeaPad S2109 (or simply IdeaPad S2), with a 4:3 aspect ratio 9.7" IPS panel. It runs at 1024 x 768, just like the iPad, and is less oblong than the usual 1280 x 800 Android 10.1" tablet.




The Lenovo IdeaPad S2109 has a bright 420 nit IPS display that's absolutely sharp and lovely. The aspect ratio is better suited to reading eBooks and PDFs, though movies and more recent TV shows will have those big black bars top and bottom. Some folks feel a 4:3 tablet is easier to hold, but I'd say the Lenovo is more pleasant to hold because it weighs just 1.3 pounds and is slim but not painfully skinny.





The tablet runs Android OS 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich on a 1GHz dual core TI OMAP CPU with 1 gig of DDR2 RAM and 8 or 16 gigs of storage (a 32 gig model is coming). It has a microSD card slot for expansion, a micro HDMI port with HDCP copy protection support, micro USB and a 3.5mm jack.




The Lenovo IdeaPad S2109 and the New iPad



The Lenovo IdeaPad S2 is available now, with a $399 list price for the 8 gig and $449 for the 16 gig. That's not wildly price competitive with tablets like the $399 Asus Transformer Pad TF300, 1080p $449 Acer Iconia Tab A700 and the $449 Toshiba Excite 10 with Tegra 3 quad core CPUs, but Lenovo's website has enticing sales. Right now, the 16 gig model is just $349.

Here's our Lenovo IdeaPad S2109 video review. Our full review will follow in the coming days.

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Toshiba Excite 7.7,The controls and buttons are easy to operate but not easy to accidentally press.

In fact, nearly everything in our Excite 10 review holds true for the Excite 7.7: it's fast, very stable and the quality is top notch. The controls and buttons are easy to operate but not easy to accidentally press.  The software customization is minimal (a good thing) and the software bundle is mostly useful. The tablet is very attractive and light: both important in a world dominated by the iPad. The tablet has stereo speakers, a front 2MP camera and a 5MP rear camera. It has single band WiFi 802.11n, Bluetooth and a GPS. There's a microSD card slot for storage expansion and a micro USB port that supports USB host (host cable not included). That means you can use USB flash drives (FAT32 not NTFS), portable hard drives, keyboards, mice and game controllers with the Excite 7.7. The tablet lists for $499 for the 16 gig version and $579 for the 32 gig model. The Excite 7.7, like the rest of the Excite family, runs Android OS 4 Ice Cream Sandwich and there's no skin to slow you down. Stability is very good as is speed. In fact, Toshiba did well to wait and tweak their ICS tablets because the Excite 7.7 and Excite 10 have been among the quickest and most well behaved Android tablets we've tested (and we test them all!). Display: Love it! The Excite 7.7 diverges from the Excite 10 in a good way: its AMOLED display is drop dead gorgeous and the light bleed that plagues the 10.1" model is absent here (AMOLED displays don't usually have light bleed problems, unlike LCD displays). The only thing we miss from the Excite 10 is the HDMI port, which is increasingly rare on 7" tablets. The 1280 x 800 resolution is relatively high for a tablet this size, and the result is extremely sharp text (sharper than the 1024 x 600 Kindle Fire and Nook Tablet) and great looking photos and video. Brightness is good but not among the brightest tablets, and AMOLED displays do tend to fade more in bright sunlight vs. their LCD counterparts. But overall, it's hard to beat the zingy yet not unnatural colors and sharpness of this screen.

Toshiba Excite 7.7 Video Review

Performance and Horsepower

The Toshiba Excite 7.7 runs on a quad core 1.3GHz NVidia Tegra 3 CPU with a fifth low power companion core and GeForce graphics. The Tegra 3 and the Qualcomm S4 dual core are currently the fastest CPUs on the market, but the Qualcomm S4 hasn't found its way to tablets yet. The Excite has a gig of RAM and 16 gigs of internal storage. It feels fast and it is fast. Here are the benchmarks:

Benchmarks

	Quadrant	GLBenchmark 2.1Egypt Offscreen	AnTuTu	Sunspider JavaScript Test
Toshiba Excite 7.7	3996	61 fps	9559	2002
Toshiba Excite 10	4143	63 fps	11,056	1935
Nexus 7	3638	64 fps	N/A	1720
Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7	3545	49 fps	7050	2003
Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0	2705	28 fps	4841	2288

The Competition

The Toshiba's most direct competitor is the also lovable Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7. The Tab 7.7 is also expensive and in the US it's only offered as a carrier model with 4G through Verizon. Alternatively, you could import a non-Verizon Galaxy Tab 7.7, but that's also pricey. The Toshiba Excite 7.7 beats the Samsung thanks to its faster quad core CPU and easier access to USB host features (it's hard to find Samsung's USB host dongle adapter in stores). The Toshiba ships with Android OS 4.0, while the several months older Samsung hit the market with Android 3.2 Honeycomb. The Tab 7.7 has a more heavily skinned version of 

 Android thanks to Samsung's TouchWiz software, while the Excite has a relatively clean and unskinned OS.

Google's Nexus 7 tablet, built by Asus, is clearly a threat, but it goes after the lower end market where the Kindle Fire and Nook Tablet live. The 16 gig Nexus 7 will sell for a very affordable $249 and it has some solid features like the Tegra 3 quad core CPU and an IPS display. It also runs a slightly newer version of Android: 4.1 Jelly Bean. But it lacks Gorilla Glass and goes with a more budget oriented soft touch plastic back rather than the metal back on the Toshiba. The Nexus 7 doesn't have a rear camera, while the Toshiba Excite 7.7 has a 5MP rear camera.

Battery Life

The Toshiba has a 1 cell, 15 Watt/hour Lithium Ion battery that's sealed inside the case. Seven inch tablets can go either way: they can have long battery life thanks to the smaller display or they can have short runtimes since there isn't as much room for the battery compared to 10" tablets. Happily, despite the fast quad core CPU, the Excite 7.7 averaged 10.1 hours on a charge with moderate use. That falls short of the record-breaking Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7, but it beats most 10" tablets on the market, including the new iPad.

Conclusion

The tablet lists for $499 (16 gig). That's a high price for a 7" class tablet, and in fact it's the same price as the Toshiba Excite 10. I know many of you expect smaller tablets to be less expensive, and Toshiba's pricing is surprising. That said, it's currently the best 7" class tablet on the market. The 0.3", 13 ounce tablet is thin, light and stylish. But it's not just good looks: the 1.3GHz Tegra 3 quad core is every bit as fast as 10" Android tablets. The AMOLED display is alive with color yet not unnatural looking and it's fantastic for watching movies. The tablet is also fast and stable, and the rear camera takes decent photos and video.

Price: $499 for 16 gig, $579 for 32 gig

Website: www.toshiba.com

Acer Iconia Tab A700, is the 1080p companion to Acer's quad core Android OS

The Acer Iconia Tab A700 is the 1080p companion to Acer's quad core Android OS 4.0 Iconia Tab A510. It shares the same design, casing, quad core NVidia Tegra 3 CPU with 12 core GeForce GPU and a 10.1" LED backlit LCD. The A700's impressive 1920 x 1200 resolution sets it apart from most other Android tablets on the market that run at 1280 x 800 resolution. The A510 impressed us with its top notch CPU, pleasing display and USB peripheral support, and the A700 is all that plus a sharp high res display. Specs: - 1.3GHz NVidia Tegra 3 T30S quad core CPU with GeForce graphics - 1 gig DDR2 RAM, 32 gigs storage - 10.1", 1920 x 1200 multi-touch display - WiFi 802.11b/g/n (single band), Bluetooth and GPS - 2MP front camera and 5MP rear camera - 9800 mAh Lithium Ion battery, 36.26 Wh, 2 cell - USB host for USB peripherals (cable included) - Android OS 4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich - Ports: micro USB (with USB host), micro HDMI, micro SD card slot, 3.5mm audio - Colors: available in silver and black colors - $449 US Design and Ergonomics The A700 is a dead ringer for the A510 and in fact looks much like the Acer Iconia Tab A200 (Acer's budget 10.1" offering) with more ports. The design is rubbery-rugged: the back has a soft touch finish and the 0.40" tablet is by no means thin but it feels good in hand and the added girth allows for the same 9800 mAh battery capacity found in the A510. The tablet weighs 1.47 pounds and that's not so heavy that we'd dock major points but it certainly doesn't earn points. The textured soft touch back and straight sides make it easy and comfortable to hold, though your hands may tire after an hour of use (the same is true of many of last year's 10" Android tablets). There are no abrupt or sharp edges to dig into your palms and the tablet feels solid. We find ourselves wishing for an updated design that matches the high end specs and full HD display. This is the third Acer tablet to sport the chunky but comfortable design and it just doesn't say "high class, trendy technology" the way the New iPad, Asus Transformer Infinity TF700 and Toshiba Excite 10 do. We forgave the A510 for looking like its cheaper brother the A200 because Acer managed to squeeze a huge battery and impressive internals into the casing, but we're more than ready for a thinner and lighter revision with more panache. Like the Acer Iconia Tab A510 the bottom right rear corner gets hot when playing demanding 3D games. There's a small hotspot (0.25" diameter) that reached 108F when we played Dark Meadow for 15 minutes. The surrounding area is 95F and it gets gradually cooler from there. The soft touch finish diminishes heat so it doesn't feel dangerously hot as aluminum might, but it did give us a sweaty hand. Stereo speakers fire from the bottom edge and they're particularly loud and full for a tablet. They get some help from Dolby Mobile 3 audio, and this is one of the few tablets that doesn't send us running for headphones or external speakers when watching a 2 hour movie. The tablet has a multipurpose charging port at the bottom that also accepts the included micro USB to USB host cable for USB peripherals. The charger tip is notched to prevent you from using it with your smartphone or other device because the output voltage and amperage is quite high so it can charge the big battery inside.  The tablet has 32 gigs of internal storage and a microSD card slot under a door on the right side. There's a blank slot beside the SD card slot for a SIM card holder should Acer offer a 3G/4G version. Our model is WiFi-only. The micro HDMI port lives on the right side too, and the power button and 3.5mm audio jack are on the left side. The volume controls are up top, and they have dots so you can tell volume up from volume down by feel. The rotation lock sensor is located next to the volume controls. The controls are rattle-free and are easy to operate but not easy to accidentally press. The front video chat camera is slightly off center toward the right above the display and the rear 5MP camera is dead center near the top of the tablet's back.

Acer Iconia Tab A700 Video Review

1920 x 1200 Display

You're here to read about the Acer A700's high resolution display, so let's cut to the chase. Yes, the display is very sharp thanks to all those pixels packed into a 10.1" LCD. At 224 ppi pixel density, it is a bit lower than the New iPad's 264 ppi, but still more pixels than many of us can examine easily with the naked eye. Thanks to Android's dpi scaling, text isn't micro-sized and in fact icons and text are the same size as on standard 1280 x 800 tablets. Those words and icons simply look sharper and more perfectly defined, making the Acer Iconia Tab A700 a great choice for eagle-eyed eBook and PDF users. Text rivals that of the New iPad and images look likewise equally as sharp though colors aren't quite as vibrant.

Viewing angles are very wide, though this isn't an IPS display. Off-angle sharing when watching videos works just fine and brightness is more than adequate for indoor use, though it can't rival the Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime TF201 and Transformer Pad Infinity TF700 for outdoor viewing and brightness (these tablets have Asus' Super IPS + display. Colors are rich and balanced, without an obvious color cast. Since this is full HD display, you can watch 1080p videos at native resolution with no scaling, and they do indeed look very sharp. The tablet handles 1080p MPEG4 high profile content just fine, and YouTube streaming is a breeze.

Touch response, despite Acer's uncommon touch sensitivity setting option, is poor. Particularly at the edges of the screen, touches too often go unregistered. We died in games all too often because of this, and it can make the tablet seem slow. It's not always a speed issue; it's the touchscreen's failure to respond to touch quickly.

Performance and Horsepower

Here's where things get a little dicey. We expected a performance hit with the vast increase in pixels this tablet has to push around compared to the Acer Iconia Tab A510. But benchmarks were nearly identical, and honestly, the 12 core GPU is probably more than enough to handle the resolution. But the tablet sometimes bogs down when doing simple things like maneuvering through the app drawer or running the web browser on a page without Adobe Flash elements to slow things down. We suspect it's not a hardware issue since this tablet is at the top of the specs heap, but rather software optimization. Acer has some work to do here to make things more fluid. The tablet isn't constantly slow-- it's a random thing. We played the very demanding 

Dark Meadow game and Shine Runners without slowdowns, though the sometimes unresponsive touchscreen got us killed more than a few times.

Benchmarks

	Quadrant	GLBenchmark 2.1Egypt Offscreen	AnTuTu	Sunspider JavaScript Test
Acer Iconia Tab A700	3646	58 fps	10,536	1958
Asus Transformer Pad Infinity TF700	4915	74 fps	12,229	1903
Acer Iconia Tab A510	3807	69 fps	10,910	1788
Toshiba Excite 10	4143	63 fps	11,056	1935
Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime	3801	61 fps	9846	1814
Acer Iconia Tab A200 (dual core Tegra 2)	1800	42 fps	5025	2185
Asus Transformer Pad TF300	3425	69 fps	9559	2257

Wireless, USB Host and Camera

The tablet has single band WiFi 802.11b/g/n, Bluetooth and a GPS that works fine (even with WiFi turned off). There's currently no 3G/4G option in the US. WiFi speeds and range were good, just as with the Acer A510, and we got max upload/download speeds 30 feet from the router through walls. As with the A200 and 

A510, we sometimes noticed WiFi performance suddenly drop and a reboot fixed this.

The Acer has USB host, and that means you can use USB peripherals with the Iconia such as keyboards, mice, USB flash drives, game controllers and even portable hard drives. Acer goes one step extra and includes a USB host cable in the box, since those are hard to find in stores. And yes, the tablet supports 

NTFS, for those of you who want to use external hard drives formatted NTFS. External storage support is excellent; from microSD cards to flash drives and NTFS self powered-hard drives. The various storage items appear in third party file managers (not just the built-in file manager as with Asus tablets) and their contents automatically appear in Gallery (photos and video) and Google Play Music. The Acer lacks Asus' USB 

 Ethernet adapter driver, alas.

The tablet has the same 5MP rear and front video chat camera. The 5MP camera is the average among Android tablets, and it takes distinctly average photos and 720p video. It's not bad by any means, but it won't beat the better camera phones on the market like the HTC One X, Samsung Galaxy S III and Sony Xperia Ion.

Software

Once again, we're looking at the same software bundle as the Acer Iconia Tab A510. The tablet runs Android OS 4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich with very little UI customization (we rarely see much UI customization on Android ICS tablets). Acer adds their Ring launcher (the bull's eye on the bottom task bar). 

Tap it and you've got quick access to four apps of your choosing, browser bookmarks, volume and search. Acer also includes their dLNA client and server for streaming multimedia over your WiFi network, and Acer Print for wireless printing over WiFi (sweet!).

Polaris Office for tablets is on board, and it has a lovely UI and the ability to view, create and edit MS Office compatible documents. VirusScan Mobile is pre-installed and isn't removable though you can disable it.

Battery Life

Like the A510, the Acer A700 has excellent battery life. The huge 9800 mAh Lithium Ion battery makes for better than average runtimes. Our tablet typically lasts 10 to 10.5 hours of actual use time on a charge, and that translates into several days on a charge with moderate use.

Conclusion

Right now, only the Acer Iconia Tab A700 and the Asus Transformer Pad Infinity TF700 have 1920 x 1200 displays. They go neck and neck with the New iPad and its Retina display and they have top CPU and storage specs plus USB host. But the A700's aging design, insensitive touch screen and micro-lags hold us back from feeling truly excited. Hopefully Acer will remedy the performance and touch screen issues, but until then we have to list them as a caveat. The display is truly sharp and lovely to look at, though as with the New iPad's Retina display, you have to look closely to appreciate the improvements that a very high resolution brings.