New iPad 3 vs Windows 8 Lenovo Ideapad Yoga (Rumours)

We see how the Windows 8 powered Lenovo Yoga tablet fares against the new iPad 3

Published on Mar 12, 2012

  

We take a look at how Lenovo's forthcoming Windows 8-powered Ideapad Yoga compares to Apple's reigning iPad 3.

Form
iPad 3 - 241.2x185.7x9.4 mm, 652g
Lenovo Ideapad Yoga - unknown

Lenovo's Yoga tablet is muscling in on the Asus Transformer Prime's territory as a device which is both tablet and laptop in one package. It shares some design features with the Transformer Prime including an attractive metal chassis and a thin 17mm profile.

By most tablet and phone standards 17mm might not sound particularly thin, but when you consider that this is both halves - the keyboard and screen - it's not too bad. After all, the Transformer Prime's component pieces are 8mm each so it's more or less the same and from using the Prime we certainly wouldn't say it's a bulky device.

The Yoga pad is perhaps slightly clunkier and less slick than the Prime due to the fact it's a full size 13-inch laptop rather than a smaller 10-inch ‘Notebook'-style affair.

Unlike the Prime, however, the Yoga tablet doesn't split into two component parts, instead it follows its namesake and flexes completely round on itself, so that the keyboard is neatly tucked behind the screen.

After you push the keyboard past a certain point as you fold it back, the keys and trackpad are deactivated, which is a nice touch and ensures you won't accidentally start spamming the controls.

Apple's iPad 3, or ‘New iPad' as the company insists on calling it, follows a much more conventional tablet format. It has a more rounded-off design and is smaller in size too.

Although it's slightly heavier and thicker than its predecessor, the iPad 2, it's barely noticeable and we suspect it'll be much lighter than the Lenovo Yoga tablet at 652g.

Generally, it's business as usual with the iPad 3 as it's wearing the same Apple uniform as its predecessors and if that's something you like you're sure to find the new iPad an attractive piece of kit.

If, however, you've developed iFatigue then maybe it won't be your cup of tea.

We appreciate Lenovo's technical innovation here but it's not the best looking device we've seen and certainly we feel that the iPad's design is much more appealing, even if we're a little jaded with Apple's visual style by this point.

Winner - Apple iPad 3

Display
Apple's big selling point for the iPad 3 is that it's managed to bring the company's acclaimed Retina display technology to the larger tablet format.

You've still got the same 9.7-inch LED-backlit IPS LCD capacitive multi-touch display as the first two iPads, but this time with a 2048x1536 pixel resolution resulting in an unprecedented pixel density for tablets of 264 pixels-per-inch (ppi).

It should be no surpruse then, that this means it'll have some of the sharpest visuals yet seen on a tablet device and should be more than enough to satisfy the most ardent of pixel-counters.

The Lenovo Ideapad Yoga features a 13.1-inch, 10-point multi-touch display at 1600×900 pixels. While that resolution might sound high, at this size of screen it results in a pixel density of only 140ppi, which is distinctly below average and doesn't promise the best picture clarity.

We have to hand Apple the victory this round.

Winner - Apple iPad 3

Storage
It was pretty much a given the iPad 3 would come in the now-traditional three flavours of onboard storage - 16GB, 32GB and 64GB - but what Apple has been keeping very coy about is the amount of RAM included in the device.

The general consensus at this point is that it has 1GB, and logically that seems quite sensible to us. Of course, as usual, the iPad 3 doesn't have a card slot for micro SD.

The Ideapad Yoga's trump card here is that it's as much a laptop in terms of spec as it is a tablet, meaning for storage and memory it's much better equipped than the majority of pure tablets out there, including the iPad 3.

While it might seem like a lot by both tablet and even PC standards, Lenovo says the Ideapad Yoga will come with 8GB of RAM onboard. For internal storage it has a lot more than your average tablet at 128GB.