Lenovo Yoga Tab 11 review – an affordable tablet with a niche stand
Lenovo has the lion’s share of the market when it comes to laptops. And this is not without a reason. The manufacturer specializes in making affordable high-quality devices. This is why we were curious how well are they doing on the tablet front. Today, we have the Lenovo Yoga Tab 11 and it is a surprisingly low-cost alternative to the Galaxy Tabs and Apple’s iPads.
Indeed for a starting price of $320, you are getting a lot of features. And while you shouldn’t expect the latest top-notch Snapdragon processor, you get a pretty powerful SoC – the Mediatek Helio G90T.
Its list of specs continues with the display, which is an 11-inch IPS LCD unit with a 1200x2000p resolution. Once again – it is definitely not the sharpest unit out there, with 212 PPI pixel density, and a 5:3 aspect ratio.
In terms of the storage/memory situation, the base option pairs 128GB of UFS 2.1 storage with 4GB of LPDDR4x memory, while the 256GB UFS 2.1 storage is combined with 8GB of RAM. Additionally, you can expand the integrated storage with a MicroSD card. If the latter comes in a FAT32 format, the maximum storage supported is 512GB, while the exFAT format allows you to go up to 1TB.
You can check the current price of Lenovo Yoga Tab 11 here: Buy from Amazon.ca (#CommissionsEarned)
Contents
Specs Sheet
Lenovo Yoga Tab 11 | |
---|---|
Dimensions | 256.8 x 169 x 7.9-8.3mm / 650 g |
Display | 11-inch 1200×2000 60Hz IPS LCD |
SoC | Mediatek Helio G90T (12nm) |
Configurations | 128GB 4GB RAM, 256GB 8GB RAM |
Camera | Back – 8 MP (1080p@30fps); Front – 8 MP (1080p@30fps) |
Software | Android 11 |
Battery | Li-Po 7700 mAh, 20W fast charging |
Features | JBL quad-stereo speaker, accelerometer, gyro, face recognition, 4G LTE, GPS |
What’s in the box?
Ultimately, this device comes in a pretty standard branded packaging. Inside, you will find some paperwork, a SIM card ejection tool, a USB Type-A to Type-C cable, and a 20W charger.
Design and construction
Let’s continue with the device, itself. Since we’ve covered some of the specs, we would like to talk a little about the outside. Lenovo’s Yoga tablets are a bit different from what a “normal” tablet seems to be. Instead of a rather flat design, appearing like an enlarged smartphone, the Yoga Tab 11, features the signature kickstands. During the years, we’ve seen a lot of different, and visually unappealing designs. However, today, the stand itself features two hinges and is made out of stainless steel. For some sort of bushing, there is a rubber foot.
What we noticed, on the other hand, is that the hinge is a bit stiff. Yes, it holds the tablet in one place, and it will not close when you are taping on the touchscreen, but inevitably, it’s too difficult to open. And of course, the side effect of having this kickstand is the huge cylindrical shape of one material around the hinge.
Other than that, the Yoga Tab 11 is made out of a combination of aluminum for the frame, glass for the display cover, and fabric for half of the back panel. Although we like the look of the fabric back, we feel that it is going to be pretty easy to stain, and incredibly difficult to clean.
Other than that, the build quality seems decent, and the device can work with a stylus, which you need to buy separately – nothing unexpected at this price.
As far as the speaker placement goes, there are two cutouts – one on each side of the device, as well as a huge grill on the bottom side, which houses two additional speakers.
Still oriented with the stand to the bottom, on the right side, you will find the SIM card/MicroSD card tray, the volume rocker, and the power button. The large circular detail beneath houses the USB Type-C port. As you can see, there is no fingerprint reader anywhere to be found on this device. The only way of biometrical authentication it offers is the 2D face recognition offered by the camera.
Software
This tablet comes equipped with Android 11. We don’t yet know if and when Android 12 will be coming for it, but we are pretty sure that it will at some point. Other than that, it runs a vanilla version of the OS with some additional software provided by Google – the “Google Kids Space” and the “Entertainment Space”.
Battery
We tested the battery life with 3DMark’s Wild Life stress test, whilst setting the screen brightness to 120 nits. Here, the 7700mAh battery got us through 20 minutes of stress testing, while using only 5%, equalling 400 minutes of screen on time while gaming.
CPU tests
This tablet features the eight-core Mediatek Helio G90T. It is built on the big.LITTLE ARM architecture, on a 12nm node, and offers two performance Cortex-A76 cores, clocked at 2.05 GHz, as well as six efficient Cortex-A55 cores, ticking at 2.0 GHz.
CPU Benchmarks | single/multi Geekbench 5 | PCMark Work 3 | Octane V2 | Mozilla Kraken 1.1 (lower is better) |
---|---|---|---|---|
Lenovo Yoga Tab 11 | 511/1634 | 8404 | 14693 | 3143.7 ms |
Samsung Galaxy Tab S7 FE | 658/1957 | 8828 | 19517 | 2001.2 ms |
Huawei MatePad Pro | 756/2918 | – | 21479 | 2288 ms |
Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 | 747/2709 | – | 23685 | 2171 ms |
Samsung Galaxy Tab S7 | 972/3000 | – | 27339 | 1972 ms |
GPU tests
The aforementioned SoC comes paired with a Mali-G76 MC4 GPU. It operates on 4 out of 20 cores possible for this particular chip. Unfortunately, at the moment of writing this review, we weren’t able to connect with the GFXBench servers, hence, there are no test results from its benchmarks.
GPU Benchmarks | 3DMark Slingshot (Graphics score) | 3DMark Wildlife | GFXBench Manhattan 3.0 (1080p offscreen) | GFXBench Manhattan 3.1 (1080p offscreen) | GFXBench Aztec Ruins OpenGL (1080p offscreen) |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Lenovo Yoga Tab 11 | 3362 | 1342 | – | – | – |
Samsung Galaxy Tab S7 FE | 3856 | 1109 | 44 fps | 32 fps | 22 fps |
Huawei MateBook Pro | 4301 | 3281 | 95 fps | 72 fps | 47 fps |
Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 | 9176 | 2118 | 96 fps | 69 fps | 42 fps |
Samsung Galaxy Tab S7 | 13520 | 4240 | 140 fps | 97 fps | 59 fps |
Storage
We had the 128GB version of the device, and the speeds it managed to achieve were 501 MB/s of Read and 286 MB/s of Write.
Stress test stability
It is great to see that this device achieved a stability score of 99.2%, indicating no thermal throttling, whatsoever. Additionally, the hottest the Mediatek Helio G90T got was no more than 30°C.
Verdict
Drawing a conclusion for this device is easier said than done. Right of the bat, you should know that this is not a powerhouse. Instead, it is a leisure-oriented tablet, that is meant predominantly for entertainment. No matter if you are purchasing it for yourself, or for a child, it will allow you to make the most out of it.
Ultimately, we were pretty happy with the battery life, since we got about 6 hours and 40 minutes of straight gaming from it. Additionally, the Wild Life stress test revealed a super balanced performance with virtually no throttling after 20 minutes, whatsoever.
Now, the display is definitely not as vibrant as the OLED panels found on some of the Samsung Galaxy tablets. However, comparing it to the TFT LCD screen of the Galaxy Tab S7 FE it seems to be on par.
Ultimately, one of the strongest points is the hinge – it offers a ton of opportunities, even to hang your device when you are cooking for example. On the other hand, we see how some people may view it as an unattractive accessory. Indeed, we would have preferred a case with a dedicated keyboard, like the Huawei MateBook Pro.
On the other hand, the speakers of this machine are absolute units. There are four of them, and they are tuned by JBL. Also, the fact that you can put a MicroSD card that is up to 1TB of capacity is really refreshing. Not to mention the fact, that some models come with LTE connectivity, thanks to a single nano-SIM card slot, shared with the memory card tray.
As we mentioned earlier, the Yoga Tab 11 lacks a fingerprint reader but offers 2D face recognition via its camera. Unfortunately, we found it to be unreliable, and even in good light conditions it barely managed to recognize my face 1 out of 10 tries.
This might be fixed in a future update, but it also might not. This definitely doesn’t render the tablet unusable, but it’s petty you can’t use one of its advertised functions.
Nevertheless, it is unlikely that you’ll find a better product in terms of hardware at that price. And if you don’t really need the face recognition function, a purchase seems like a good choice.
You can check the current price of Lenovo Yoga Tab 11 here: Buy from Amazon.ca (#CommissionsEarned)
Pros
- Affordable
- Decent speakers
- 4G support
- MicroSD card slot
- Cool and stable in games
- Good battery life
- Usable kickstand
Cons
- Quite bulky due to the stand
- 60Hz IPS panel
- Face recognition doesn’t really work
Impressive chipset by mediatek and the 8MP camera are top selling points.
The tablet is packed with all the good specs including the mediatek processor.
A solid tablet by Lenovo that features a top mediatek processor for gaming.
Ordered one to replace a 6yr old Yoga Tab, it’s still running fine but can’t connect to the latest BT earbuds anymore, old android build. My old one withstood years of use and abuse and I expect this one to as well.
The hinge and big speakers are a big selling feature for me.