While most of the tablet market is in a soul-searching stage, most Android tablets are still sticking to their “content consumption” roots. And Lenovo is going to try to squeeze out as much as it can from that market segment. By no means a top-tier tablet, the Yoga 3 Plus still packs just the right hardware to make videos and music stand out. And with Lenovo’s unique, if not odd, four-mode form factor, the Android tablet aims to rise to any multimedia occasion or location, like hanging from a hook on your wall.
Yes, you read that right. This is the one viewing mode that Lenovo’s Android Yoga tables have over their Windows cousins. While the Yoga convertible laptops have a laptop, stand, tend, and tablet mode, the Yoga 3 Plus, like its other Android predecessors, boasts of tablet, stand, hold, and hang modes. Gripping the tablet in hold mode is supposedly made easier by Lenovo’s unconventional cylindrical hinge. No hidden projector in this one. Hang, on the other hand, is made possible by the same flap that acts as a stand.
But why would you want to hang this tablet anyway? Because it would make for a great kitchen companion or standing display, thanks to its screen and speakers. At 10.1 inches, the screen’s 2560×1600 resolution gives it an effective pixel density of 299 ppi, one of the highest on a tablet. It also boasts of not two but four JBL-powered front-facing speakers for a booming sound experience.
Underneath the hood, the Yoga 3 Plus might dismay some. It is driven by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 652, which, in the grand scheme of things, is the chip maker’s higher mid-range chip, straddling the middle ground between the real mid-range 400 series and the premium 800 range. There’s also only 3 GB of RAM, where the standard high-end spec would be 4 GB. Storage does start at 32 GB, expandable up to 128 GB more. There’s a 13 megapixel rear camera, non-rotating this time, and a 5 megapixel shooter on the front. The 9,300 mAh battery is advertised to get you 18 hours of use. One strange spec is that, while the tablet does feature a USB-C port, it only uses USB 2.0 instead of the latest USB 3.0.
The Lenovo Yoga 3 Plus is a rather mixed bag that seems to sit in between the entry level Yoga 3 10 and the projector-enabled Yoga 3 Pro, while also surpassing the latter in some aspects. One of those aspects is, thankfully, its price tag. The Lenovo Yoga 3 Plus goes on sale in October with a matching mid-range price of $299.99.
I like these tablets. Just not powerful enough. The screens also have been weak.