Prime Notebook Computer Review

Lenovo IdeaPad K1 distinguishes itself with a decent build quality, excellent battery performance, and Netflix support. It’s a good tablet. The K1 goes after mainstream consumers with a winsome design, sure, but also a software package designed to make Honeycomb easier to use, and to help ensure that flummoxed, low-tech users don’t have to spend too much time downloading apps out of the box. What’s more, it ships with Android 3.1 and has a two-cell battery that promises up to ten hours of battery life.

The Lenovo IdeaPad K1 is a 10.1-inch tablet that, when viewed from head-one, looks exactly like its 10.1-inch cousins. The IdeaPad has a sturdy aluminum border that extends to the back, and houses two stereo speakers in a thicker portion on the bottom. The rest of the back is sheer plastic and it contains a five-megapixel rear-facing camera along with a photo flash. The plastic has a bit of bounce to it, but it is securely in place and not removable like the Toshiba Thrive’s back panel. The K1 is available in three colors: white, black, and red.

Only two of the K1’s four sides house ports and buttons. There is a proprietary charging connector on the bottom, next to a 3.5mm audio jack and microHDMI port. The on-board mic, power button, volume rocker, orientation lock switch and a microSD card slot are on the left side. There is no USB port, so you can’t take advantage of Honeycomb 3.1’s USB hosting feature without an adapter. Also, the microSD slot cover is secure, and can only be opened by pressing the pinhole next to it, and that requires a thumbtack or other fine point. It’s annoying and unnecessary.

The 10.1-inch (1280 x 800) display has viewing angles comparable to other tablets we’ve seen, which is to say you can get away with watching a movie from the side or with the tab face-up on a table, but the glare from the screen might make it a not-so-pleasant experience. And while the resolution is on par with pretty much any other 10-inch slate, the panel doesn’t seem quite as bright as some others. The Galaxy Tab 10.1′s screen, for instance, has the same size and resolution screen, but it’s noticeably more vibrant.

The K1 packs a 1GHz NVIDIA Tegra 2 SoC. Mainstream consumers might look at us cockeyed if we told them the performance could be zippier for those folks, the performance should be plenty fast. But more discerning techies will likely notice some lags when minimizing and opening apps. The screen was also often slow to switch orientations as we flipped from landscape mode to portrait and back, and more than once the display was unresponsive, leaving us tapping multiple times before the tablet did what we wanted it to. In general, we tend to say that all Tegra 2 tablets have some obvious performance limitations, but the K1 felt pokier than others we’ve tested. Indeed, its score of 1,448 in the Quadrant benchmark falls short of the 1,546 and 1,584 that the Thrive and 10.1 notched.

The Lenovo Honeycomb tablet took 25 seconds to power up from a cold stop, which is a bit faster than some other tablets. Both the Galaxy Tab 10.1 and Thrive took approximately 30 seconds. The IdeaPad also had an impressive battery life, lasting 5 hours and 54 minutes while constantly streaming video with the screen brightness maxed out and Wi-Fi on. The Galaxy Tab 10.1 lasted only 4 hours and 39 minutes with the same test. However, the Tab 10.1 has a much brighter screen than the IdeaPad. The Toshiba Thrive, which has a screen comparable to the IdeaPad, lasted 4 hours and 25 minutes. The Lenovo IdeaPad K1 tablet’s performance matches other tablets in its class.

Lenovo applied a few tweaks to Android Honeycomb, perhaps more than any other manufacturer to date. Overall, the additions smooth out the experience, and one in particular addresses a frequent complaint I’ve had with Google’s tablet operating system. Manual app management in Android is a hassle. There is no easy way to close out background apps as that function is buried in a Settings sub menu. In all fairness, Android is very good at managing apps and memory on its own, but I like having as much control over my device as possible, which Android otherwise provides – it’s why I prefer Android to iOS.

The K1 has a 5 megapixel camera in the back and a 2 megapixel one on the front pretty standard fare for tablets these days. To tell the truth, we never have high hopes for tablet cameras they too often feel like an afterthought, and almost all of them struggle in dimly and harshly lit shooting conditions.

The K1 has a 2-cell, 7400mAh battery that promises up to ten hours of battery life the same claim made by the iPad 2. In our standard battery rundown test (movie looping, WiFi on), it lasted eight hours and twenty minutes, matching the Motorola Xoom and falling about ten minutes short of the TouchPad.

There is one reason to choose the IdeaPad over the other Honeycomb tablets on the market, and that’s Netflix. Overall, the IdeaPad K1 is a good Honeycomb tablet in a crowded market. It offers more or less the same experience as the Xoom, Thrive, Iconia Tab, G-Slate, and a handful of others, but with the important addition of Netflix. Give it a look if you want an iPad alternative.