Gadgetory

when developing affordable tablets device makers often focus only on key components of the overall experience with a quickly met budget audio quality is often one of the many afterthoughts Lenovo took a different approach though with our affordable a tablet series this is Bailey Stein with Android authority and this is my floor view of the Lenovo Tab 2 a 8 the sides and rear of the tablet are made of a single piece of matte plastic which meets with the display frame the rear cover is navy blue which is a nice change from the usually default black the tablet itself is 8.9 millimeters thick and weighs 390 grams it feels nice in the hand and you probably wouldn't expect it to cost 130 dollars if you were to just pick it up in the store it's a little too wide for comfortable one-handed use but you shouldn't really expect to handle a device this large with a single hand anyway there is a small flap on the back which allows you to insert a microSD card and presumably a SIM card if you purchase the LTE model in addition to that the two speakers on the device are both on the front to the sides of the display the one complaint that I do have regarding the design is that the power and volume buttons do feel a bit mushy they're close to flush with the side of the tablet and the feedback just isn't that good otherwise I think lenovo did a great job with the design of the tablet the 8 inch 720p display looks decent and colors look good viewing angles aren't the best however and the relatively low resolution leaves for a low pixel density this is a budget tablet though so I'm not going to complain as basic users most likely won't notice the difference when compared to with another device equipped with a mediatek mt6752 a8 does perform well the MTA 161 is one of media Tech's lower end offerings but I didn't have any performance issues sure it is a tad slow at times but you really won't notice any slowness when watching a video or listening to music it does unfortunately include just one gigabyte of RAM I think is more of the bottleneck when it comes to speed it works fine when using a single app but if you leave that app and go do something else you'll likely run into problems with the Molly T 7 20 G PU the little tab to a 8 is able to handle most games just fine including popular titles like Need for Speed Most Wanted the gaming experience is excellent when combined with the audio quality which I think makes gaming much more immersive my model of the tab - aah the Wi-Fi model supports 802 11 and Wi-Fi GPS and Bluetooth 4.0 there is also an LTE model but it's unknown when that model will become available I was happy to find support for GPS on the tab 2 a8 as some budget tablets exclude this to save on cost being able to take the tablet and use it for offline navigation is very nice to have and I think that a lot of users will benefit from this the front-facing stereo speakers on the device are really really good lenovo says that the tablet includes dolby atmos cinematic moving audio exclusively and the quality is very apparent when playing audio when watching a movie it feels like you're actually sitting in a theater just with a slightly smaller screen you really have to experience the sound for yourself to get the full effect but believe me you will not be disappointed the tab to 8/8 five megapixel rear camera is quite candidly awful images it took black sharpness and just weren't good I have no idea why they even bothered with adding a rear camera but it's there if you're really desperate then again if you're buying a tablet for its camera you're doing it wrong battery life on the tab to a8 was fairly good with very little standby usage lenovo claims that the four thousand two hundred and ninety milliamp battery will last for up to eight hours and my testing ended with similar results although i wasn't able to make the eight-hour mark i did manage to use the tablet from 11:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. with over five hours of screen on time that was well connected to Wi-Fi with brightness set to 100% i did leave it on standby for about an hour but the rest of the time was spent watching youtube videos and writing reviews battery life is good and most users will be able to get the tablet to last through a full day of use lenovo has shipped the tab to a8 with a very lightly skinned version of android 5.0 lollipop the only noticeable UI changes are the custom icons a few status bar changes changes to the quick toggles and an actual home button instead of just a circle the custom icons are far from my cup of tea but i think the status bar looks fine i'm not sure if the blue accents added to the quick toggles are irrelevant addition to the experience but i'm ok with them the only other changed lenovo made to the experience was that they disabled animations out of the box which makes android feel a bit edgy no worries however is you can always reenable the animations with androids developer options another addition is the notification log which lets you see a log of dismissed notifications I can see all could be useful for some users although I personally didn't check it outside of my normal testing and that's pretty much it lenovo has kept everything else stock which is a very nice change from their heavy vibe UI skin the setup lockscreen launcher multitasking menu and settings are all very lightly modified if at all lenovo is offering the tab to a 8 navy blue with 16 gigabytes of internal storage starting at $130 for the Wi-Fi model unlike some mediatek devices that 16 gigabytes is a single partition so you don't have to worry about having internal storage and phone storage separate if 16 gigabytes isn't enough lenovo has you covered with a microSD card expansion slot up to 32 gigabytes lenovo has undoubtedly built a very solid tablet at a competitive price point the strong points include a classy design and excellent audio setup and a close to stock Android 5.0 experience on the other hand the tab to a8 falls a bit behind with just one gigabyte of RAM a slower processor and a mediocre display yes there are better options available for almost twice the cost but for a hundred and thirty dollars the Lenovo Tab 2 a 8 delivers an entertainment experience that has yet to be rivaled at this price point if you're on a tight budget and just want a brand new tablet you should really give it some consideration thank you for watching this video and please make sure to give it a thumbs up below if you found it helpful or informative also please make sure to subscribe to the channel if you'd like to see more content and feel free to leave a comment below finally be sure to visit the Android Authority website for additional coverage is we are your source for all things Android