LENOVO IDEATAB A1000

When critiquing Lenovo’s IdeaTab A2109, this reviewer mused for an upgrade to what appeared to be a nearly no-frills, stripped-down device; the A1000 version unfortunately shows that this brand name just isn’t interested in making a super souped-up tablet to compete with true market leaders like the iPad Mini, Google Nexus, Samsung Galaxy Tab, etc., but are content to stick with what they know: Producing budget tablets with little to offer.

Suggested retail price on the IdeaTab A2109 is $129.99 and, relatively uniquely for a Lenovo device, includes a micro SD card slot to jump up that internal memory of (guess what) 8 GB. Well notable is the surprisingly good sound quality – it’s been jacked up with Dolby Digital audio enhancement – which ultimately makes the prospective customer wonder if this technology was built for another device altogether. This aspect makes the A2109 a best case scenario for gifting the music junkie to play around with.

Aside from this, though, one can simply run down the Lenovo IdeaTab A1000 specs list to see revealed another generic-quality tablet: The processor is a ho-hum 1.2 GHz ARM Cortex A9 – Could this be the last device to carry this dinosaur of a CPU? – and the performance this delivers is about as sub-standard as one might imagine; games are troublesome and many apps and/or websites simply won’t run. The resolution is just 1024 x 600 pixels, which … ah, you get the idea.

Even among budget tablets, the IdeaTab A1000 cannot be highly recommended – though again, for music-first users, this might be a nice disposable little toy.