I wanted a larger tablet, and this Lenovo caught my eye. It has some significant advantages, but unfortunately, also some serious drawbacks.
The screen is, of course, very large, which is really nice for watching TV shows or YouTube. The resolution and refresh rate are also excellent. The colors are reasonably saturated, but I think the contrast could have been a bit richer. The brightness is a bit disappointing; it could have been a bit brighter. Even indoors, I sometimes find the screen a bit too dim.
The sound is excellent. It's clear, and everything is easy to understand. The bass is a bit weaker than I'd hoped for from a tablet of this size, and the maximum volume isn't very loud, but as long as you set the volume to a maximum of ~85%, there's no distortion, and it certainly doesn't sound tinny or anything like that.
The tablet is quite fast. The processor (Dimensity 8300) is really fast enough, and the graphics are particularly impressive for this type of tablet. If you wanted to, you could easily play games and emulate games on this tablet. You can also use the software as a "desktop environment," and this tablet should easily be powerful enough for that as well. I don't really use these features, but it's impressive what this tablet can do in those areas.
The rest of the software is a bit inconsistent. Android itself is a fairly clean version, although quite a few apps are automatically installed that definitely fall under the "bloatware" category. Think of simple mobile games. Fortunately, you can remove these quite easily. However, I find the photo app really bad. It's from Google; apparently, Lenovo has discontinued its own photo or gallery app. But Google's isn't designed for large photo loads. If you have thousands of photos, you can unfortunately expect them to load very slowly, or not at all.
The battery life is reasonably good, but I expected a slightly longer battery life from a 10,000mAh battery. Of course, that also has to do with the large screen. Particularly annoying is that the software doesn't clearly indicate when the battery is low. An on-screen message that the battery is at 5 or 10 percent would have been a nice touch. You can even enable a feature that would make it more clear, but that doesn't make things much better. You can undoubtedly solve this with a third-party app, but that shouldn't be necessary. Incidentally, the stylus's battery life is a bit disappointing, and it doesn't indicate clearly enough when it's low or completely empty.
The fingerprint scanner was also a major reason to buy this tablet, and it's quite nice. It doesn't always work right away, but it does save a lot of typing in PINs and passwords. I think a fingerprint scanner should be standard on tablets by 2025, but until then, I consider it a big plus.
Another small feature I really appreciate is the integrated background sound function in the menu. That might seem trivial, but I often use background noise to help me sleep better, and sometimes it also helps me focus better at work. It's really handy that this is built-in, and that you can choose from so many different sounds. I think this seemingly small feature is a really great addition.
All in all, I think this tablet has many significant strengths, but there are also plenty of areas for improvement in both the hardware and software. However, if you're looking for a tablet with a large screen, without ads in the software, and you don't want to spend a fortune, I think you'll struggle to find a better alternative to this Lenovo IdeaTab Pro.
