Lenovo IdeaPad Tablet A1, a $199 Bargain

Lenovo has provided a sneak peek at a future announcement, and the big reveal shows that the company has been giving serious thought to how it bum make an impact with a 7-edge tablet. Coming later in September: The IdeaPad Tablet A1, the first 7-in pad of paper priced at $200 or little (our bet is that it will be $199.99, but technically that's still under $200). For that price, you'll have to give happening-board storage, but not functionality—and you'll get any foundation, too, since it's the first tablet with a full GPS that can be used without a data connecter.

One storm: The IdeaPad Tablet A1 comes with Android 2.3 Gingerbread, arsenic anti to the Android 3.2 version of Honeycomb designed for tablets (and found on the $330 Acer Iconia Tab A100). Using Gingerbread now that Android 3.2 is out feels the likes of a letdown, especially considering that the tablets that have been able to get out with using 2.2 or 2.3 on a 7-edge exhibit have done so by making significant customizations to the stock Android apps and interface. Information technology's not clear to what stage, if whatever, Lenovo has made such changes itself. Lenovo did refer this model would have its Launch Zone widget, something we likable in the company's first tablet, the IdeaPad Tablet K1.

The new IdeaPad Tablet A1 International Relations and Security Network't especially slim—information technology measures 0.47 inch unintelligible, which puts it at the one-half-inch heaviness of Acer's A100 and the original Samsung Galaxy Tab 7-edge in modeling. Lenovo's A1 weighs 0.88 pound, compared with 0.92 pound for the A100, and the archetype Galaxy Lozenge's 0.85 pound.

Lenovo busts out the color options for the IdeaPad Tablet A1, with four separate offerings: white, inglorious, pink, or light blue. The troupe talked up its magnesium alloy "axial motion cage" case design that protects the intimate components with bumpers.

The unit of measurement achieves its low Price in piece through its minimal on-board storage: It comes with 2GB of internal storage, though versions with high capacity will be procurable. The microSD calling card slot allows expansion adequate 32GB, and a micro-USB port makes information technology easy to sideload content via your PC.

In spite of appearanc, the tab has a exclusive-pith 1GHz Pallium A8 processor. That single-core CPU may be the reason why no Honeycomb is on board, and may explain how Lenovo can achieve its offensive cost.

Most notable for a tablet at this price: The touchscreen is capacitive pinch, not the all-too-common resistive touch found connected the current crop of so-called value tablets. And it's a higher-than-normal-resoluteness display, overly: 1024-away-600-pixel solution, with 170 pixels per inch (ppi). That makes the display sharper than screens ground on more expensive tablets, including the Apple iPad 2, which has 132 ppi on its 9.7-edge in screen.

The IdeaPad Tablet A1's straw man- and rear-facing webcams have the same result at 3 megapixels, and its battery is rated at 7 Web-browsing hours.

Since the inherent GPS receiver can be misused with or without a data connecter, the enclosed NavDroyd navigation app behind be used at some prison term—within reason, course. Like the other tablets from Lenovo, the IdeaPad Tablet A1 will have access to the Lenovo App Browse, where about 200 apps for 7-inch tablets wish be available. Likewise preinstalled: Lenovo's Social Touch app, which aggregates e-mail and calendar appointments with your social media connections happening Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and more than.