Tablets are uniformly rectangular and thin. In fact, that’s a rather long-standing definition dating back to times biblical and beyond. Or are they? The $369, 10-inch Lenovo Yoga Tablet 2 with Windows and its siblings are a bit different. While the tablet portion is considerably less than a quarter-inch thick, there’s a one-inch-thick battery tube running down one of the long edges.

It can be argued, as Lenovo does vociferously, that the battery tube makes the Yoga Tablet 2 easier to hold, while giving it a nice rake when it’s lying on its back. I agree. The large battery provides the Yoga Tablet 2 with marvelous run time, and the additional grip the tube provides easily compensates for the substantial 1.4-pound heft of the tablet to which the battery contributes.

The battery tube has a fin that, when rotated, functions as a kickstand. This allows the Yoga Tablet 2 to be used upright in landscape mode at anywhere from about 15 degrees to about 80 degrees, and at a full 90 degrees in portrait mode. There’s also a hole in this component that fits easily on a peg or hook. Lenovo calls this “hook mode, ” which rings better than the alternative term “hang mode, ” a dicey term to use around a computer.

We’re not sure we like the term “hang mode”, but thanks to the hole in the Yoga Tablet 2’s kickstand, you can do just that with it.

Lenovo ships the Windows version of the Yoga Tablet 2 with the BC800 auxiliary Bluetooth keyboard, which attaches magnetically to the battery housing. It’s a cleverly conceived design that makes the Yoga Tablet 2 look very much like a thin netbook—so much so, that I found myself trying to do things that could only be done if it were such. This generally resulted in an untimely detachment of the keyboard or an unexpected fall by the tablet.

Please learn from my mistakes, but Lenovo, if you’re listening, perhaps spring-loading the BC800’s hinges and using a stronger magnet would help. Sadly, that’s not the worst of it.

A keyboard disaster

I said the BC800 keyboard was cleverly designed. What I didn’t say was that it’s embarrassingly designed and an unmitigated disaster for a company with a reputation for the best keyboards in the business. The layout is cramped, the typing feel is sloppy, and the cursor tends to move when you click on the equally sloppy-feeling touchpad. Additionally, the touchpad’s rough texture is off-putting, and the metal shell covering the back of the unit extends above the keyboard deck, creating a sharpish edge that’s an unpleasant tactile sensation.

Even worse, the unit is so flimsily constructed that the one Lenovo shipped us was bent slightly above the micro-USB port used to charge the unit. Any reasonably strong person could fold the unit in the middle. And believe me, after five minutes with the BC800—I wanted to. There’s a cheaper $299 version of the Yoga Tablet 2 that comes with Android and doesn’t include the keyboard.

Though it looks swell in the picture, the BC800 Bluetooth keyboard was flmsily constructed and didn’t pass muster.

Back to the good stuff. Our test Yoga Tablet 2’s 10-inch display offered 1920x1200-pixel resolution—not quite Retina-like, but a lot of pixels in a relatively small space. I like the extra 120 vertical pixels that you gain over the more common 1920x1080 displays. I can deal with letter-boxed movies if it means I can see more rows in a spreadsheet or word-processing doc.

Source: www.pcworld.com