Lenovo Ideapad A1 22282MU 7-Inch Tablet (Black)
Lenovo Ideapad A1 22282MU 7-Inch Tablet (Black)
- Texas Instruments OMAP 3622 (1GHz)
- 16GB SSD; 512 MB LPDDR2 600MHz
- Dual camera 0.3/3.0 MP
- 7.0″ SD LED Glare Multi-touch with integrated camera 1024×600
- Android 2.3 Operating System
The affordable 7″ Ideapad Tablet A1 is a durable Android based multimedia device good for the web on the go. It’s unique offline GPS navigation technology allows direct satellite connection. Plus the Lenovo App Shop and Android Market give you easy access to thousands of apps. The Lenovo 7″ IdeaPad Tablet A1: Comes with everything except a hefty price tag. If you’re always on the go and always online, look to our 7″ IdeaPad A1 Tablet, a compact yet rugged multimedia device t
List Price: $ 199.99
Price: $ 324.95
Best Out There with these specs,
After what seemed like forever waiting for a 7″ tablet that was designed to be a tablet, with a capacitive screen, GPS, bluetooth, a camera (this has two) and all of the standards (not requiring cell service) for an affordable price (and not being a China wanna be), I thought I finally hit gold with the A1. I actually pre-ordered this directly from Lenovo prior to common availability. Well, to sum it up briefly, it’s tons better than any China Wanna Be of any size, but only ties with a converted B&N Nook. (*”converted meaning: rooted and using either a Gingerbread or Honeycomb formatted SD.)
The processor lags compared to Nook. If surfing the Market or the web, you’re really never quite sure if you hit the back button because of the lag. Kinda annoying when you discover you’ve lost you’re search or closed out of a program because of this.
Although the resolution is the same as the Nook, the quality and light sensing of the Nook is by far superior.
The touch sensing is equal to the Nook. At times it is very sensitive – unless it’s edge sensing. Like the Nook, it sometimes gets a bit persnickety.
The cameras aren’t to compare to today’s phone or digital camera standards, but this isn’t a phone or digital camera and wasn’t designed as such. They do the job exactly as I would expect them to. (**Skype is claimed to not work, however other video chat clients have been reported to.)
The GPS rocks. Plain and simple. No data/Wi-Fi required as long as you use a locally installed Nav program. Lenovo includes a limited (one state) nav program just for this. If you hotspot your phone for a data connection, you can use Google’s Navigation which is also included. (**GPS does not work within buildings but does fine in a car in a wooded area.)
Bloatware? I wish all devices came like this. MOST of them can actually be removed without root! It only came with the standard Google apps (including Market), Lenovo’s Market (awful), the Nav app, Kindle, a help program, eBuddy (one stop social networking), Documents To Go, iheartradio, esFile Explorer, and mSpot Movies. That’s it! Koodos to Lenovo for this.
Battery life? Nook takes this, too. Constant use is about 5 hours. Depsite its common micro usb charging port, ONLY the Lenovo cables will work to charge.
Speakers? A1 takes the trophy. By far. Really good and loud sound – which is great for audiobooks! But keep in mind, this is a tablet. Not an iPod. Not a stereo.
Design. The Lenovo wins. It feels a lot more sturdy than the Nook. And the back doesn’t pop off like the Nook’s does. The microSD slot is a lot easier to access. The volume buttons react better because of a slight bump in the buttons that make them easier to push. (**The pictures of the A1 make it appear to have both a micro and a standard SD Slot. Looks are deceiving. The standrd SD is NOT a standard SD Slot – its a speaker.)
As a side note, the A1′s hard buttons (menu, home, back) only light up if you touch them. Considering the black frame, and incredible unlikelihood that the user is psychic, I feel that was a pretty poor choice of design. At least it has them, though. (**To remedy this, I put a screen protector on it, then used white out to put dots below the buttons so I could see them.)
So in summary, if you’re looking for tablet to read, check the news, watch videos in a hotel room, listen to stuff, or to look cool in office meetings as you record them, then the A1 is perfect for the price. If you don’t need the stable bluetooth, GPS, decent speakers, and a microphone, save the $50 and go with the rooted/hacked Nook Color.
FAQs: No there is no standard size USB port – just the micro. No there is no HDMI port. No it will not be upgraded to Honeycomb. This is a single processor device that can not support it correctly. Being a former user of Honeycomb, I haven’t missed it. You will NEED to replace the standard Launcher with another like Launcher Pro, ADW Launcher, or Go Launcher EX. The included Launcher is EXTREMELY slow. The review was written on my Lenovo A1 tablet.
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|Lenovo a1 from lenovo.,
Although on Amazon is pre-ordering, mine was bought earlier from lenovo official website (It’s a 2G version, so I’ll need to buy a 16G or 32G sd card soon). Lenovo a1 seems tough-build. The size is exact the same with my kindle 3 but double the thickness because I can put my kindle 3 case on it, tightly. I don’t think you need screen protection film. The screen looks and feels like a thick glass. very bright, I even had to dim the light to the lowest. A1 is very easy to use. So far no lag time. Everything so fast (maybe it’s new and I do not have many apps yet?) One offline GPS apps called Navdroyd. It was not a full version since it’s free which only allows you to download a chosen state map. I guess you can buy the full version from android market for $7. Another apps named Navigation doesn’t seem to work without wifi. Anyways, the Navdroyd has turn by turn and speak street names correctly (tried highway and local small rd both). There’s lot of input languages to choose from. picture and video quality is fine. I have to say comparing to iphone 4s picture quality it’s not as good but it’s not bad at all. One thing I love it is the convenience. Using USB. Basically just drag files between your PC. Then you can back up and read doc excel pdf epub mobi mp3 mov, you name it (of course you have to have the good apps from android market which are usually free too). Much easier than that sync thing for iphone and itures. Music played smoothly. I recommend qqplayer to watch video since it plays all kinds of formats. I did try use adobe flash apps then played web flash, it worked. I don’t know what will happen since I just heard adobe flash ceased mobile business. I have only used this tablet for 2 days, so I can’t guarantee it will be good forever. But I really love it for this price and this quality.
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|Ok tablet, but good for the price,
Bought two of these as gift. I wanted a cheap tablet for playing game and skype voice / video chat. I would have prefer Acer Iconia, Asus Transfomer or Kindle fire. Acer/Asus are really nice but too expensive for gift. Kindle fire is good but I really wanted front webcam for video chatting.
So I went with Ideapad A1 16g. Overall the experience was ok. Build quality is good. Performance is good. No too much preloaded apps. Gingerbread is a phone OS and this whole thing basically feel like a giant phone. Hopefully once they have enough out there people will post instruction on how to flash them with ICS.
Its not the best tablet out there. But at $199, probably one of the best in term of price/quality ratio.
Pro:
+Price!! Got it on sale for $199.
+Camera!! Even though its not very good resolution, it good to have them for video chat
+7inch is easy to hold
+Battery life seems good
+Screen seems good, not IPS but bright and vibrant enough for my purpose
Con:
+The 16g model is really 2G SSD and 14G internal SD card. This is very very misleading on Lenovo’s part
+Video in Skype and Google video talk is upside down on the remote end!! Not really sure what’s going on here.
+Sometime touch screen feels slight lag / unresponsive. Hopefully its software and not hardware issue so I can fix it when I flash it
+The three buttons on the bottom blend in too well and its is hard to find when you need it
+Gingerbread OS is not optimized for tablet experience. Going to flash it with ICS or Honeycomb as soon as I can.
Note:
+Skype does work for me. (except video is upside down)
+You should use the charger they provided. Its still USB charger, but at a higher voltage. I think the complain about slow charging is with normal phone charger.
+I don’t have much issues with wifi-reconnect, not more than what I get on my phone anyway.
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