.:HoA Presents!:.

This is a fairly long piece on my first impressions on my refurbished Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet. Figured I’d save folks from the Wall-o’-Text by popping in a “Read More” thingie. It’s neither tech-heavy nor art-heavy yet gives a good review of the device. Fell free to send questions my way if you have them. Now… on with the show! = D

On Feb. 15th, I put in an order for a refurbished 32gig ThinkPad Tablet through Lenovo’s Outlet shop and the tablet pen that goes with it through Wal-Mart (Lenovo didn’t stock in their US shop). The tablet showed up less than a week later. It came in a fairly plain shipping box, too. Only the clear packing tape sporting a red “Think” pattern in the ThinkPad font really gave it away.

I got a bit of a surprise once I popped the package open. The listing on the Lenovo site stated that it didn’t come with the N-Trig pen – the reason I ordered one from Wal-Mart the same day I ordered the tablet. Lo and behold, I found one sitting right next to the USB cord and AC adaptor complete with a “AAAA” battery and two spare tips. Underneath those sat the tablet itself. It was packed securely with showed no outward signs of damage or prior use. It still had the thin shipping plastic over the “ThinkPad” label on the back. I don’t know if this is a common thing or I got lucky but it’s nice to see this level of quality in a refurbed product.

The size of the tablet was a bit of a shock. From the information I had, I figured it would be slightly larger than the Galaxy Tab my father owns (just a bit bigger than my physical sketchbook). When I pulled this thing out it and saw it in person, it seems its size is closer to that of a standard composition book or the book I draw my comic strips in. It’s… it’s big but it has a nice weight to it. Not crazy heavy yet not feeling like a delicate toy. It has a bit more substance to it than an iPad but doesn’t suffer from the same super slick issues. The ThinkPad sports a slightly rubberized finish on the back that gives it just enough grip to not slide off of a table or slip through one’s fingers. That’s not to say I’m not going to find some kind of case for it but it’s always good to know it won’t slip off couch when I walk away.

One of the benefits of the ThinkPad – and the reason I bought one - is its pressure-sensitive pen. Lenovo has a spot built into the product itself to store it. Though mine didn’t come with one, there is a spot on both the pen and the device to attach the two together. I can see this being needed in certain situations but the pen and tablet are so well mated that the pen stays put. I’d go so far as to say it’s a bit too tight. Being the guy I am, I strung my cellphone charm from the ‘Paul Reveres’ on the pen to make it easier to pop out and find if it disappears on me.

The tablet was pre-charged right out of the box and was loaded with all of Lenovo’s standard business apps. After hooking it up to my WiFi network, I let it do its thing. The tablet ships running Android’s Honeycomb OS but has an update to Ice Cream Sandwich. The update installed smoothly and everything is incredibly snappy. I have yet to see any lag in opening, loading or running programs.

If you’re like me, you have your own set of apps and programs that you trust to handle things. Lenovo’s setup is pretty nice, too. It comes with everything a business person could need from Citrix VPN software and the McAfee Security suite to Documents to Go (a nice document reader) and a handy little program called Notes Mobile which works quite nicely with the pen for folks more into hand writing things out than typing. It also comes with the Goggle Play shop, Angry Birds HD and a few other time killers that ended up off my desktop rather quickly. I still have all but one of the original apps on my system. I ditched McAfee for AVG… force of habit.

First things I installed (aside from AVG) were the Amazon App store, DropBox and SketchBook Pro. All three load like a champ and SB Pro responds amazingly well to both the pen’s movements and the pressure-sensitivity. It took me a bit to get used to just how smooth the pen glides across the Gorilla Glass surface but I expected as much. If I had to place it, it’s like drawing with an oil pastel on glass.

I pulled myself away from SB Pro long enough to test the rest of the device out a bit. I snapped a few pics with the tablets twin cameras. It sports a 2mp front and a 5mp rear-facing camera. Though I’m not likely going to get much use out of them, they both work well. The same goes with the speaker. It’s plenty loud though I’m more apt to keeping it silenced when I’m working. The screen is fantastic. It’s bright, clear and easy to read and work on even at the dimmed setting I run it at.

Last up would be the battery life. It’s pretty fantastic. From a full charge, I worked for the better part of eight hours on a pic and I believe it dropped a bit below 30%? This is probably due to my keeping the screen relatively dim and not running the sound but that still quite the battery life. Definitely wouldn’t say “average” but yeah… it’s impressive.

This is the part of the show where I say whether I would recommend this tablet or not. That’s the tough part, really. The ThinkPad Tablet was the solution I came to for my own problem. I wanted something I could do digital work on with proper pressure sensitivity while still being small enough to grab and go. This satisfies all that and then some for me. Lenovo does have a brand new ThinkPad Tablet 2 that runs a proper version of Windows 8. If the whole running an Android OS is a deal breaker (my other choice ran Windows XP but was much larger than I needed), I would recommend shopping around for some of the newer Win8 products out now. If you’re looking for a good refurbished sub-$400 tablet, then I’d look to Lenovo’s ThinkPad Tablet.

Hopefully, this little “First Impressions”-style review helps folks out. There was a lot I skipped over but I’m down for answering any questions folks might have. Now it’s time for me to get back to playing with SB Pro ‘till the sun comes up. = )