Amazon was the pioneer in introducing budget tablets under $200. It was basically an attempt to popularize their reading tablets which used to be in black and white. Amazon stripped Android heavily and came out with a user interface which can’t be recognized as Android at a glance. However, Amazon’s budget tablet is predominantly used for reading while it provides elements of entertainment with movies and games. Hence one may be reluctant to call Amazon Kindle Fire a fully-fledged tablet. After all, installing third party applications is also cumbersome where you can install generic applications from Amazon app market only.
Following the popular Amazon Kindle Fire design, other prominent manufacturers also came up with designs for budget tablets. They were mainly 7 inch tablets for obvious reasons, and the best budget tablet we’ve seen so far is from Google itself which is Asus Google Nexus 7. Today we are going to compare another budget tablet introduced by Lenovo with Amazon Kindle Fire and see which excels which. But be assured, Lenovo is not known for cheap products so you will see a heavy tradeoff in value for money for the Lenovo IdeaTab 2107A tablet. This tablet is one of the trios introduced at the IFA 2012 held in Berlin couple of days ago. It was previously rumored although it doesn’t seem the geeks were anticipating it much due to the stale nature of its performance matrix. Let us explore both of these tablets and try to understand where Lenovo IdeaTab 2107A fits.
Lenovo IdeaTab A2107A Review
Lenovo IdeaTab A2107A is a 7 inch tablet that is more or less like Amazon Kindle Fire. It features a resolution of 1024 x 600 pixels and is powered by 1GHz dual core processor on MediaTek MTK6575 chipset with PowerVR SGX 531 GPU and 1GB of RAM. The version we are talking about is with the 3G connectivity whereas the Wi-Fi only version has 512MB of RAM. The operating system is Android v4.0.4 ICS, and we hope there will be an upgrade to Jelly Bean soon. It is slender, but a bit to the heftier side of the spectrum scoring a thickness of 11.5mm and dimensions of 192 x 122mm. However, Lenovo has made it refreshingly light at 400g which makes it a pleasure to hold on to its smooth matte back plate.
Lenovo boasts IdeaTab A2107A to have professional level GPS support deeming that it can lock the location in 10 seconds top which may be an attractive option. It comes with a 2MP camera on the back and 0.3MP camera on the front that can be used for video conferencing. In terms of storage, there will be three versions having 4GB, 8GB and 16GB of storage all with the option to expand using microSD card up to 32GB. It is a rugged tablet which is stronger and more resistant to falls and bruises than your regular tab with its roll cage enclosure. It has Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n connectivity as well as 3G connectivity enabling you to use internet seamlessly without any connectivity issues. It also has micro USB support and built-in radio element. The tablet aims at 8 hours stretch from a single charge. The battery is said to be 3500mAh but no official indication on that either. Lenovo has been silent about the price and the release information as well although we are hoping the tablet will be released sometime in September 2012, as rumored.
Amazon Kindle Fire Review
Amazon Kindle Fire is a device that promotes the economical tablet range with moderate performance that serves the purpose. It actually is boosted by the reputation Amazon has. Kindle fire comes with a minimalistic design which comes in Black without much styling. It is measured to be 190 x 120 x 11.4 mm which feels comfortable in your hands. It is slightly on the hefty side since it weighs 413g. It has a 7 inch multi touch display with IPS and anti-reflective treatment. This makes sure that you can use the tablet in direct day light without much of a problem. Kindle Fire comes with a generic resolution of 1024 x 768 pixels and a pixel density of 169ppi. While this is not the state of the art specs, it’s more than acceptable for a tablet in this price range. We can’t complain because Kindle will produce quality images and text in a competitive manner. The screen is also chemically strengthened to be stiffer and harder than plastic which is just great.
It comes with a 1GHz Cortex A9 dual core processor on top of TI OMAP4 Chipset. The operating system is Android v2.3 Gingerbread. It also has 512MB RAM and internal storage of 8GB which is not expandable. While the processing power is good, the internal capacity may cause a problem since 8GB of storage space just isn’t enough to fulfill your media needs. It’s a shame that Amazon doesn’t feature higher capacity editions of Kindle Fire. We got to say, if you are a user with the need to keep a lot of multimedia content at hand, Kindle Fire may well disappoint in you in that context. What Amazon has done to compensate this is enabling the use of their cloud storage at any time. That is; you can download the content that you bought over and over again whenever you want. While this is highly advantageous, you still have to download the content to use it which can be a hassle.
Kindle Fire is basically a reader and a browser with extended capabilities to fulfill the needs of the user. It features a heavily modified version of Android OS v 2.3 and sometimes you wonder whether that’s Android at all, but rest assured, it is. The difference is that Amazon has made sure to tweak the OS to fit into the hardware for a smooth operation. Fire can still run all of Android Apps, but it can only access the content from Amazon App store for Android. If you want an app from Android Market, you have to side load it and install it. The primary difference you’ll see in the UI is the home screen that looks like a book shelf. This is where everything is and your only way of accessing application launcher. It has the Amazon Silk browser which is fast and promises good user experience, but there are some ambiguities involved in that, as well. For instance, it’s observed that the Amazon’s accelerated page loading in Silk Browser indeed yields in worse results than normal. Thus, we need to keep a close tab on it and optimize ourselves. It also supports adobe Flash content. The only blowback is that Kindle only supports Wi-Fi via 802.11 b/g/n and no GSM connectivity. On the context of reading, Kindle has added a lot of value. It has Amazon Whispersync included which can automatically sync your library, last page read, bookmarks, notes and highlights across your devices. On Kindle Fire, Whispersync also syncs video which is quite awesome.
Kindle Fire does not come with a camera which is justifiable for the price, but the Bluetooth connectivity would have been very much appreciated. Amazon claims that Kindle enables you a continuous read of 8 hours and 7.5 hours of video playback.
A Brief Comparison Between Lenovo IdeaTab A2107A and Amazon Kindle Fire
• Lenovo IdeaTab 2107A is powered by 1GHz MTL Cortex A9 Dual Core processor with PowerVR SGX 531 and 1GB of RAM while Amazon Kindle Fire is powered by 1GHz Cortex A9 Dual Core processor on top of TI OMAP 4430 chipset with PowerVR SGX 540 and 512MB of RAM.
• Lenovo IdeaTab 2107A runs on Android OS v4.0.4 ICS while Amazon Kindle Fire runs on a heavily modified version of Android OS v2.3 Gingerbread.
• Lenovo IdeaTab 2107A has 7 inch capacitive touchscreen featuring a resolution of 1024 x 600 pixels while Amazon Kindle Fire has 7 inch IPS TFT capacitive touchscreen featuring a resolution of 1024 x 600 pixels.
• Lenovo IdeaTab 2107A has 2MP camera on the back and 0.3MP camera on the front while Amazon Kindle Fire offers no cameras.
• Lenovo IdeaTab 2107A is slightly larger, thicker yet lighter (192 x 122mm / 11.5mm / 400g) than Amazon Kindle Fire (190 x 120mm / 11.4mm / 413g).
Conclusion
It is difficult to come up with a well laid conclusion because there seems to be many versions of Lenovo IdeaTab A2107A where 3G connectivity is available and not available. The storage capacity also ranges from 4GB to 16GB. Depending on whether the handset has 3G or not, the RAM changes sizes from 1GB to 512MB. Because of this ambiguity, it won’t be fair if we give a verdict right now. However, knowing Lenovo, they are highly unlikely to screw up their product line, so we are expecting a good tablet. Hence the only factor that needs a deep consideration is how much of a hole created by each of these tablets in your pocket. The Amazon Kindle Fire is offered at $199, which is a fair deal, although, with the introduction of Google Nexus 7, it went outdated. Our question here would be whether Lenovo would be able to compete with the $199 price tag of Kindle Fire. One advantage Lenovo A2107A has is that it offers a version where 3G connectivity is available which is really needed in Kindle Fire, as well.