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Connections, performance, and battery life
The Lynx falls victim to the same problems as many other Atom tablets. It eschews full-size ports and connections in favor of micro versions, which are frankly not terribly useful for everyday consumers, who rarely have a Micro-USB-to-USB dongle with them, or a microSD card. You'll end up carrying around a pocket full of adapters and cables, which runs counter to the portable nature of a lightweight tablet. The keyboard dock adds a couple of full-size USB ports, but they are of the older 2.0 variety, not the faster USB 3.0 you'll find in an Intel Core i-series device.
The performance of all the Atom-powered Windows 8 tablets and hybrids we've tested has been similar, and surprisingly good for everyday use (at least for anyone who remembers how slow Atom-powered netbooks were). That's because so much of what we do on laptops and tablets these days is cloud-based, such as online video streaming, e-mail, and social media -- and also because Microsoft has done an excellent job making sure the Windows 8 UI and native apps run smoothly even with an Atom CPU. IE10 and Netflix are two examples of apps that look and work better than one might expect.
(Credit:
Sarah Tew/CNET)
The big advantage these Atom tablets have over their more expensive Core i5/i7 cousins is in battery life. The low-power CPU is very efficient, and the Lynx ran for 7 hours and 32 minutes on our video playback battery drain test. That's using the internal tablet screen battery -- we're currently testing the system with the additional keyboard dock battery and will update this review when we have those results.
Conclusion
The Lenovo IdeaTab Lynx is a perfectly workable Atom-powered Windows 8 tablet, and has a better-than-average optional keyboard dock to form a quasi-clamshell package that works well as a laptop. But, starting at $649 for a plastic case and micro-style ports, it's hard not to either comparison shop down to Dell's Atom-powered Latitude 10, which starts at only $499, or slightly up to to Lenovo's own ThinkPad Tablet 2, which offers a great relative value starting at $30 more, and includes a full-size USB port, better construction and design, and dual front-and-back Webcams.
Unless I absolutely needed an 11-inch screen over a 10-inch one (and I can't imagine why I would), that extra $30 for the ThinkPad version represents a smart investment.
(Shorter bars indicate better performance)
(Shorter bars indicate better performance)
(Shorter bars indicate better performance)
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
System configurations
Lenovo IdeaTab Lynx
Windows 8 (32-bit); 1.8GHz Intel Atom Z2760; 2GB DDR2 SDRAM 800MHz; 737MB (Total) Intel GMA; 64GB MMC SSD
Asus VivoTab Smart
Windows 8 (32-bit); 1.8GHz Intel Atom Z2760; 2GB DDR2 SDRAM 800MHz; 725MB (Total) Intel GMA; 64GB SSD
Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet 2
Windows 8 (32-bit); 1.8GHz Intel Atom Z2760; 2GB DDR2 SDRAM 800MHz; 737MB (Total) Intel GMA; 64GB MMC SSD
Dell Latitude 10
Windows 8 (32-bit); 1.8GHz Intel Atom Z2760; 2GB DDR2 SDRAM 800MHz; 747MB (Total) Intel GMA; 64GB MMC SSD
Acer Iconia W510P-1406
Windows 8 Pro (32-bit); 1.8GHz Intel Atom Z2760; 2GB DDR3 SDRAM 1,066MHz; 747MB (Total) Intel GMA; 64GB SEM64G SSD
Microsoft Surface Pro
Windows 8 Pro (64-bit); 1.7GHz IntelCore i5; 4GB DDR3 SDRAM 1,600MHz; 32MB (Sharedl) Intel HD 4000; 128GB Micron SSD
