Lenovo Yoga Tablet 8 review

The smaller of Lenovo's two new tablets (the other is the Yoga 10) comes with a unique look and impressive battery life, but is its performance good enough to win over any fans?

It's on sale for £200.

Design
It weighs in at an extremely light 401g, despite the metal body. There's a very different look to the Yoga, but what at first seems like madness actually turns out to be quite an asset.

The unsightly-looking cylindrical bulge along one side seems to ruin the line of the device, increasing its thickness from an extremely svelte 4mm at its thinnest edge to 22mm. But not only is the bulge easy to hold onto, it also houses an outsize 6,000mAh battery, the kind you're more likely to find in a laptop, and which keeps the Yoga 8 running for considerably longer than just about anything else in its class. Where most tablets struggle after a day's worth of use, the Yoga was still going after nearly three days.

let 8

Lenovo

That bulge also holds a large power button in the side that glows when you're low on battery, and a brace of Dolby Digital Plus DS1 stereo speakers that pump out a sound that's better than expected -- certainly better than most tablets. It also conceals a sturdy fold-out metal kick stand that lets you place the screen at anything between about 40 and 80 degrees (below 40 it tends to topple over). You can also flip it so that the screen sits at a slight angle, iPad style, for typing. The stand isn't infallible however -- too much pressure on the screen from insistent jabbing can easily knock it over.

Hardware and Android
The quad-core processor is clocked at 1.2GHz and backed by 1GB of RAM. That's not bad, but it's not in the same league as the likes of Google's Nexus 7 with 1.5GHz and 2GB of RAM. In use it tended to be a bit on the sluggish side, taking its time when opening apps, though it did at least manage to play HD games like Real Racing 3 satisfactorily. Our AnTuTu performance benchmark delivered a score of 13,452, which puts it below Tesco's budget-priced Hudland most other quad-core devices we've tried, and explains why this isn't exactly a nippy device in use.

The eight-inch screen offers a bit-more-than-standard HD resolution of 1,280x800 pixels (189ppi), which might not be quite up there with the full HD best, but on an eight-inch screen it still looks pretty sharp.

It's running the recent Android 4.2 Jelly Bean with a few tweaks. Icons have had a pointless makeover and there's no apps section, so they all live on your home screens whether you want them to or not, which could become a problem if you like to add lots of new ones from Google Play.

Photography
The five-megapixel camera on the back has autofocus but not much else in the way of frills. It's okay, but we've seen better quality on similarly specced snappers from LG and Sony. The 1.6-megapixel camera on the front passes muster for video calls though.
There's 16GB of memory on board plus you can add more via microSD card, which slips into a slot behind the kickstand.

Conclusion
It's light enough to use as an e-book reader and the cylindrical bulge makes it easy to hold. The stand also comes in handy for viewing, reading and general use. It's a neat design, and one that's bound to win fans, but it's a pity the performance doesn't quite match the style. If battery life is your number one feature, the Yoga takes the crown with its longevity.