Score: 5/10 (Mediocre)
Pros Front-facing speakers sound quite nice, expandable storage, access to Google Play, dirt cheap. | Cons Tablet feels cheap and heavy, horrendous screen resolution with awful viewing angles, everything slow, internal storage issue makes the A1000 fell incomplete, Lenovo's UI feels clunky and awkward, Netflix app doesn't work. |
The 7-inch tablet market is never lacking in choices for consumers. Between the Apple iPad mini, Amazon Kindle Fire HD, Google Nexus 7 (2013), a slew of Samsung Galaxy Tabs, and more, consumers have more choices than ever. A lot of these manufacturers have also found the sweet spot of around $199 for these tablets. It's cheap enough to where most people won't mind plopping down a couple hundred bucks for it, but costs enough so you can get some decent specifications at the same time. Lenovo is looking to enter the 7-inch tablet market once again with the IdeaTab A1000. Does the A1000's low price tag of just $129 justify the purchase? Find out in our full review!
Design/Build Quality
The Lenovo IdeaTab A1000 isn't going to win any awards for its design, but it works fairly well. Measuring in at 7.83 x 4.76 x 0.42 in and with a weight of 11.99 oz, the IdeaTab A1000 feels a tad thick and heavy. Although the curved edges feel comfortable in the hand, it looks chunky and bulky when compared to tablets like the iPad mini and Nexus 7 (2013). The A1000's bezels are just about the right size, so you won't accidentally input the screen when holding onto the edge, but the IdeaTab A1000 also feels cheap. This is mostly due to the fact that the entire tablet is made out of plastic. Or more specifically, the type of plastic that Lenovo used to construct the A1000. There are a lot of tablets out there that are made out of plastic, yet still feel respectably higher-end (e.g. Nexus 7, Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 line, etc.) However, the type of plastic Lenovo used on the A1000 is very underwhelming.
Despite its poor design and build quality, Lenovo was able to get one thing right. The speakers. The IdeaTab A1000 is equipped with a pair of front-facing speakers that utilize Dolby's Digital Plus audio technology. Audio sounds loud and has a good level of base to it. Unfortunately, this is just about the only real highlight for the entire tablet.
Hardware
As mentioned earlier, the A1000 features a 7-inch screen size. What we didn't mention earlier, was that this screen has a pixel resolution of 1024 x 600 with 170 ppi. A 1024 x 600 pixel resolution just doesn't cut it anymore. Colors on the screen look soft and muted, text is fuzzy, and viewing angles are just plain terrible. If you aren't looking at the A1000's display head-on, images look very distorted. After having worked with numerous devices that have 720p HD and 1080p HD displays, the A1000's screen was actually painful to look at.
In terms of processing speeds, the A1000 is packing in a 1.2GHz dual-core Cortex A9 CPU, along with 1GB of RAM. As expected with these specifications, the A1000 is not among the fastest tablets currently on the market. While gaming performance was surprisingly smooth with Temple Run 2 and Fruit Ninja, I did notice some lag when browsing the Web, using applications, and even swiping through my home screen and app drawer. While the A1000 should have enough processing speed for the average consumer, it's not nearly enough to make up for its other faults. The A1000 is home to only one, front-facing camera. While this is fine with me seeing that rear-facing cameras on tablets aren't the most useful thing, the front shooter on the A1000 is abysmal. At just 0.3MP, images are grainy, dark, and just look bad. Between this and the screen resolution, it's becoming more and more apparent that Lenovo skimped on some key features of the tablet, just to have a lower than average price point.
One higher point for the A1000 is the fact that , along with 16GB of internal storage, it can be expanded up to 32GB of via microSD card. Unfortunately, there is a pretty critical storage issues right out of the box with the tablet. Although the A1000 is supposed to have 16GB of internal storage, you get 512MB out of the box. There is an OTA update to bump up the tablet's storage to 1.5GB, but that is currently the maximum internal storage capacity the A1000 is capable of due to "technical reasons". Even though Lenovo is working to fix this very odd storage issue, it makes the A1000 feel incomplete. To only have access to 1.5GB of storage, when I should be getting 16GB, is unacceptable. It's also not fair to consumers to pay $130 for tablet, only to realize that they can only install a handful of applications before running out of system storage. The IdeaTab A1000 also houses a non removable 3,500 mAh battery, which provided me with about 7 hours of moderate usage. For a budget tablet this cheap, the battery life is fairly decent.
Software
The Lenovo IdeaTab A1000 is also lacking when it comes to software. The A1000 is running Android 4.1.2, and if previous Lenovo Android tablets are anything to go by, we most likely won't be seeing an update to 4.2 or 4.3 anytime in the near future. While not as laggy as previous iterations, Lenovo has still added their own skin over Android. This skin that Lenovo has layered over it brings multiple Lenovo widgets, customizable transition effects for your home screens and app drawer, and access to certain settings via the notifications bar. Unfortunately, the UI just feels clunky, glitchy, and really makes you wish that Lenovo had just left Android alone. Thankfully, there are a couple of useful features Lenovo had added. These include the ability to schedule to have the A1000 automatically turn on and/or off at a certain time of day, and show the battery percentage next to your battery icon in the status bar. The A1000 also has full access to Google Play and all of its services, unlike a lot of Android tablets in this price range.
Another interesting aspect with the A1000 is that the Netflix application does not work on it. I installed the Netflix app, logged into my account, but I just could not stream any videos. I attempted to stream multiple times, but each time the tablet got stuck on the buffering screen. I checked other reviews for the A1000, and others stated that they experienced the same issues.
Final Verdict
As you an see, I am not a fan of Lenovo's latest entry-level tablet. I understand that Lenovo couldn't implement the highest specifications into the A1000, seeing that it is selling for only $129, but the IdeaTab A1000 wasn't enjoyable to use. I often had to force myself to use the A1000, simply for the fact that it isn't fun to use. Tablets should be fun devices that we want to experience. Unfortunately, I had no such feelings for the A1000. The tablet is ugly, slow, and not a good purchase. Even though it is one of the cheapest mainstream tablets you can currently get, you'd be crazy to not to throw down an extra $70 for the Kindle Fire HD or Galaxy Tab 3 7.0. Better yet, $100 more for the latest Nexus 7.
Author:Joseph Maring
Author:Joseph Maring
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