Lenovo ThinkPad 10 Windows 8.1 Bay Trail Tablet

Performance Summary: Wrapping Intel's Bay Trail platform in a 10.1-inch tablet and then injecting 2GB of RAM into the mix is a fine recipe for a daily workhorse. By that we mean productivity chores -- Microsoft Office, researching topics on the web, and anything else that isn't overly demanding. The ThinkPad 10 posted strong web browser scores in SunSpider and Browsermark, and even the graphics performance was acceptable for a business-class machine, though far from being this tablet's focus.


Can a Windows 8.1 tablet truly replace your laptop? Just as Microsoft set to prove it can with its Surface Pro 3, Lenovo also believes it can be done, and its ThinkPad 10 is the tablet it envisions doing it. To some extent, Lenovo succeeds. The 10.1-inch display with its 1920x1200 resolution complements Windows 8.1 nicely, and the Bay Trail platform provides sufficient muscle for general purpose computing chores and productivity software.

It's when your workloads are more demanding that the ThinkPad 10 falters, at least as configured. For tasks that include serious photo editing (Photoshop) and other types of content creation, you really should be looking at a Haswell-based machine with more RAM, possibly a dedicated GPU, and a 64-bit OS.

That's to say there's a performance ceiling with the ThinkPad 10, though that's not necessarily a bad thing. As configured, this is a $599 slate -- the same price as Apple's 32GB iPad Air, but a heck of a lot more functional. Make no mistake, this isn't solely a content consumption tablet, though you can use it as one after the work day is done. Instead, Lenovo built a multi-mode tablet that can tackle a variety of tasks.


One of the big selling points is the robust ecosystem of accessories. Whether it's a hardware keyboard or docking station that you need to get through the work day, Lenovo has you covered (for a cost). It's almost a modular system in that sense, though we prefer to think of the ThinkPad 10 as a Surface Pro Lite. It may not be as powerful, but it's just as flexible and costs less to boot.