Lenovo quintuples down on its Android tablet line as this year’s Mobile World Congress kicks off, releasing five (five!) new Android tablets, including a huge, 13-inch Yoga Tab 13.
Android tablets have significant market share in the US, and according to Statista, they’ve been closing the gap with the iPad over the past two years. While the US tablet mix used to be 80/20 iPad to Android, now it’s more like 60/40, Statista says. Globally, Lenovo is the number-three tablet vendor, between Samsung and Amazon, according to IDC.
So there’s plenty of market for Lenovo’s slates. The Yoga Tab 13 will cost $679.99 and go up against higher-end models like Samsung’s $649.99 Galaxy Tab S7 and the $599 iPad Air. With a Qualcomm Snapdragon 870 processor, it’s ever so slightly faster than Samsung’s tablet, and the 13-inch, 60Hz 2,160-by-1,350 LTPS LCD screen is the biggest in its class. The tablet is heavy, though, at 1.83 pounds.
The Yoga’s unique feature is a built-in, stainless-steel, loop-style kickstand, which can either stand the tablet up or let it dangle from a hook. The tablet also works with an optional pen, and Lenovo showed examples of someone drawing on it with the pen in its stood-up mode.
The tablet also works as a secondary display for your Windows laptop, using an included cable.
The Yoga Tab 11 will be Lenovo’s midrange model; at $319.99, it goes up against the base $329 iPad. It runs a MediaTek Helio G90T processor and has an 11-inch, 2,000-by-1,200 TDDI LCD screen. It’s lighter than the 13-inch model, at 1.44 pounds. There’s a version with integrated 4G, but it isn’t banded well for US use. It has the kickstand and pen support, but doesn’t look like it works as a secondary display.
Then there are the lower-cost tablets. The $259.99 Lenovo Tab P11 Plus is very similar to the Yoga Tab 11 in some ways—same screen size and resolution, same processor, same battery, same Android 11—but it doesn’t have the integrated stand that lets the Yoga tabs stand up or hang from hooks on their own, and it’s a bit specced down in other ways. The Yoga has an 8GB RAM option, while the P11 Plus only has 4GB or 6GB; the Yoga tab has a time-of-flight sensor with the front camera, while the P11 Plus doesn’t. Honestly, the P11 Plus looks like the better overall value here.
The $109.99 Lenovo Tab M7 and the Lenovo Tab M8, which didn’t have a price given, offer alternatives to inexpensive Amazon tablets that support the full Google Play store. They use an MT8166 processor, which is a step below the MT8168 in the Amazon Fire HD 8. The M7 has a 7-inch, 1,024-by-600 screen, 2GB of RAM, 32GB of storage, and dual 2MP cameras. It weighs half a pound. You’ll be getting somewhat less tablet per dollar here than you will with Amazon tablets, but you’ll be free of Amazon’s ecosystem and into the superior Google Play store.
The Yoga Tab 13, Tab 11, and Tab M7 will be available in July. The Tab P11 Plus will be available in August, Lenovo says.
