The latest line of Android tablets from the PC giant Lenovo were revealed in Barcelona, Spain during Mobile World Congress, and today a few are finally available for purchase. It’s been almost 5 months since we first got our hands-on their tablets and today the budget 7-inch Lenovo A1000 can be yours for just $149.
The folks from Lenovo are taking a similar approach as Acer, and as of late Samsung, by offering a low or mid-range tablet at an affordable price. The Lenovo A1000 isn’t quite as powerful or up to spec as the Nexus 7 from Google and ASUS, but they’ve managed to undercut them on the price tag.
The Nexus 7 is still flying off the shelves, even with rumors of a Nexus 7 2 in the works, and Lenovo wants a piece of the sales. The Lenovo A1000 comes equipped with a 7-inch 1024 x 600 resolution display (the weakest link) compared to the HD display of the Nexus 7, but you get what you pay for here. You’ll also be working with a 1.2 GHz dual-core MediaTek processor, instead of the quad-core Tegra 3 from the Nexus 7.
The A1000 is very similar the recently reviewed HP Slate 7, in which it offers nearly the same specs, but skimps on a few important ones and is available for less cash. It comes with 1GB of RAM and sadly only 4GB of storage. However, their A3000 has a quad-core from MediaTek and 16GB of storage for $179, again undercutting the Nexus 7 price.
These Lenovo tablets do run Android 4.2 Jelly Bean, but surely they won’t receive the same fast updates as Google’s own Nexus 7. If you’re on a budget they are worth consideration, but honestly you might as well save up for the Nexus 7. That or wait for the Nexus 7 2 which is rumored for a late July release.
Get the Hisense Sero 7Pro from Walmart for $149.99. It’s a great tablet, has specs the same or better than the Nexus 7 with a micro sd card slot, rear camera, and hdmi out at a lower price.
I dunno, I can’t say I’ve ever heard of Hisense, its hard to take the plunge with a company you haven’t even heard of. It isn’t always a bad idea, but…I dunno, something undeniably attractive about how the Nexus is positioned.
I’ll have to wait for the price-tag and the features before deciding.
You are right. Do not get the Hisense Sero Pro 7. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNiH0q1fz-M&feature=youtube_gdata_player 1). Specs look great but hardwares and softwares are not fine tuned. 2). It’s only with internal 8gb memory; newer android os won’t allow apps installed on sd card. Mind you, you probably only have 4gb usable memory taking it out of the box cos the android os n installed apps take up the other half memory. 3). Price gap between Hisense Sero Pro 7 and the current Nexus 7 is not big enough, and don’t forget the newer Nexus 7 should come out any time soon.
I have A1000 16 GB version and it has only Android 4.1.2. On Lenovo forums support person said that they do not support 4.2 for A1000 and thats why update is not possible. But many stores are marketing this with 4.2, also the one where from I bought that.
Biggest problem was that there were only about 400 MB free memory for software installs’. The tablet is partitioned to to parts, one for software and second for data. Some softwares were possible to move to other partition. Luckyly we got update on last week that changed partition sizes. Of course nobody from Lenovo told that on forum thread where was discustiong about that.
No rooting possibility have been found yet… 3 updates were loaded when I started to use that so at least someting Lenovo is trying to fix. Two of them lose all settings.
Me too. I bought the tablet July 2013 knowing the application space limitation. The store then claimed it to have 4.2, but it was 4.1. In August I got a OTA update, which to my surprise wasn’t 4.1 -> 4.2 but it seems that it fixed the application dilemma by extending the size to 1.5GB. It still not best (why even limit the application space??), but it’s workable.
Is there anybody actually using A1000 with Android 4.2? In which country?
hi,was it automatic to receive system update or you called lenovo to give you ota update.because i bought 1 ideatab a1000 recently in bestbuy unfotunately the internal memory is only 503mb,cannot download apps and games.when can i get my ota update,any advise.thx
Alvin, it was automatic. I suppose updates are given to specific countries at a time. At least it was so with my Samsung Galaxy tab 2. My country received the 4.0 -> 4.1 months later than in U.K.
Yeah it only runs Android 4.1.2