Lenovo absitively to hit the duo area they reside with a $249 7" Android tablet. Sounds great, right? The botheration is, the E9 TABLET PC is anachronous out of the box. It's as if they advised the book to be appear in June 2011, but waited until February 2012 to advertise it. In fact, the Kindle Fire and B&N Nook Book accept bigger specs in the CPU administration with bifold amount CPUs, while the E9 Book PC has just a individual amount 1GHz CPU. Individual amount CPUs are appealing attenuate a part of bank one tablets, and that's not good. The E9 Tablet PC runs Android OS 2.3 Gingberbread; the phone adaptation of Google's adaptable OS. Yikes. We see Android 2.x on arrangement cast Android tablets, but we're absolutely abashed to see it actuality on a Lenovo. Forget about cat-and-mouse for Android OS 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, this little guy won't even get 3.2 Honeycomb according to Lenovo.
Now that we've gotten the bad account covered, let's attending at the acceptable points: Lenovo loves discounts, and they generally accept a few colors on auction for $209 (the book is accessible in black, white, blush and blue). The IdeaPad has a athletic body with Lenovo's signature magnesium admixture close cycle cage. The case is plastic, but the faux metal binding looks so good, you ability be fooled. There's a absolute GPS inside, and it works offline after a WiFi connection.
Design and Display
The E9 Book PC isn't a bad searching tablet, admitting annihilation distinguishes it from the army of slabs on the market. We like that it's accessible in four colors and it feels able and able-bodied made. It weighs 0.88 lbs., so it's no featherweight, and it's just beneath a bisected inch thick. The book has a 3.5mm headphone jack up top, sculpted aggregate buttons on the ancillary and a microSD agenda aperture beneath a awning on the basal bend (when captivated in account mode). There's a individual apostle on the basal bend and a micro USB anchorage for charging and syncing. The book has a circling lock about-face on the ancillary just aloft the aggregate controls. There's no HDMI out, but with a individual amount CPU and 512 megs of RAM, this book doesn't play 1080p video.
The book has WiFi 802.11b/g/n individual bandage 2.4GHz and Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR with a abounding set of profiles as per accepted for Android. It uses the Broadcom BCM-4329 admixture WiFi and Bluetooth chip. The GPS is Broadcom's BCM4751. There is no 3G/4G.
The affectation runs at the accepted lower resolution 1024 x 600, and it has an ambient ablaze sensor and an accelerometer to handle automated awning rotation. The LED backlit LCD is appropriate but not cool impressive: accurateness is acceptable abundant for reading, but the 250 nits of accuracy won't action alfresco ablaze and it isn't about as ablaze as the Kindle Fire that has the aforementioned resolution. Lenovo says the console has a acceptable 700:1 adverse ratio, and it supports 2 credibility of multi-touch. Examination angles aren't IPS-level 180 degrees, but things attending acceptable up to 30 degrees and are adequate at 60 degrees. It's absolutely bigger than the Acer Iconia Tab A100 with its actively bound examination angles, but it's not as acceptable as the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7 Plus, Nook Book and Kindle Fire.
Performance and Horsepower
The E9 Book PC runs on a 1GHz TI OMAP 3622 A9191 individual amount CPU. It uses the PowerVR SGX530 GPU for 2D and 3D cartoon acceleration. In our tests, the Lenovo did abundantly with accepted 2D and 3D amateur and 720p top contour video, but it banned to play 1080p video. Netflix and YouTube alive plan able-bodied over WiFi.
The book feels apathetic actuality and there, and that's no abruptness accustomed the individual amount CPU and 512 megs of RAM. Synthetic criterion numbers won't wow you, but they're afresh what you'd apprehend from a book with this CPU and memory. The Sunspider JavaScript benchmark, area lower numbers are better, is decidedly poor, but in use, web browsing didn't feel apathetic at all.
Software
Lenovo's aboriginal IdeaPad book and even their ThinkPad Book came loaded with too abundant bloatware. But Lenovo has cut that down decidedly for the E9 TABLET PC, and we acclaim this. We acclaimed that bloatware bogged down those 10" tablets, and we can't brainstorm what it would do to the E9 TABLET PC accustomed its slower CPU. Lenovo includes their accoutrement for quick admission to the web browser, settings and the video, email, music and ebook apps of your choice, and we like it absolutely well. Lenovo's App Shop, mSpot Movies (movies for hire and purchase), Lenovo's accomplished multi-lingual Go Keyboard and NavDroid are on board. NavDroid provides for aeronautics and maps that are locally stored so you don't charge a abstracts connection. This chargeless adaptation allows you to download the map for one US state, so artery biking requires added investment or a altered offline aeronautics band-aid like CoPilot (not included). NavDroid isn't the slickest aeronautics app and they do acquaint you that map abstracts comes from accessible sources and may be wrong. Our advice? Give it a try and see if it meets your needs. If it doesn't, analysis out added solutions on the Android F610 Market.
GPS and Cameras
The GPS formed absolutely able-bodied in our tests with Google Maps and Aeronautics (we acclimated our smartphone's adaptable hotspot affection to accommodate the book with a abstracts connection). It aswell formed able-bodied with NavDroid and the maps were authentic for our bend of the Dallas metroplex.
The E9 Book PC has a foreground VGA video babble camera that's a bit aphotic and noisy. The rear 3MP camera takes adequate photos but not the affectionate you'll be dying to upload to Flickr or Facebook. Still, it's bigger than annihilation and beats the camera-less Kindle Fire and Nook Tablet. The rear camera can shoot 480p video.
Battery Life
The E9 TABLET PC has a 1 cell, 3550 mAh Lithium Ion array that Lenovo claims is acceptable for up to 7 hours of use if web browsing over WiFi. We averaged 5.5 hours with accuracy set to 50%, WiFi on and use that included web browsing, arena several YouTube videos, email and an hour of ebook reading.
Conclusion
The E9 Book PC book is by no agency a bad product; in actuality it's a acceptable another to those no-name tablets we see at Fry's and MicroCenter (Azpen, ChinaMart, even some Coby's aren't so hot). But the tablet's OS and CPU are already dated, and that agency you'll get no future-proofing here. In fact, the Kindle Fire and Nook Tablet, articles that are primarily marketed as blush ereaders, accept a bigger CPU and a absolute acumen to run Gingerbread (it's badly customizable and both Fire and Nook use awful customized UIs to accomplish them added about-face key for the causal client who's into ebooks, web and video watching). But if you wish cameras, a GPS (off-line GPS at that) and able admission to the Android Market, and your account is $200 to $250, the E9 Book PC does beat the Fire and Nook Book in those potentially important respects.