Overall its a nice, large tablet that allows for good measure of productivity for the average person.

I did, ultimately, get it to charge (the Lenovo forums are rife with complaints about charging, from slow or no charging to problems if you lose the proprietary cable (which can not be replaced) to badly made ports which fail (on average in 8 months to a year).I am not a big one for disposable tech, and will sitll be returning this as the description in no way matches performance.

Yesterday I did finally get it to charge.After about 6 hours the charge was up to 66%.Lenovo’s energy manager told me that I had 2 hours 15 minutes remaining.That means that even using their energy management system which tamps down performance even more, you a get a max of 4-5 hours battery life.My new unit was not failing. It was performing as expected, but you will not see that anywhere.In fact despite reading dozens of reviews, and some from units with 8 g of ram, the best ones made, NO ONE reported getting over 5 hours battery life.In fact, no one recommended this tablet.To the contrary, most (blogs, magazines, tech sites) recommended against it.I discovered as I read and compared that my 2013 ASUS tablet was almost twice as fast! (and with identical resolution).I decided to splurge and go up to the best ASUS made in the transformer line, the TF701T ASUS TF701T-B1-GR 10.1-Inch Tablet. At the time of this writing there’s one left (sold by Amazon), 2-3 years old and benchmarking at almost twice the speed, also a fraction the price with an all aluminum bodywhich is the genes of the zenbook.Because it is an android tablet, few reviewers compare them directly.Most compare this tablet to the ASUS Transformer Book T100HA-C4-GR 10.1-inch 2 in 1 Touchscreen Laptop which got PC world’s editor’s choice award: very close in performance at a fraction the price.While I haven’t used one of these, the write-ups say it has a better build than the Mixx, which I can believe.

I went back to reading reviews because I did not know what I was going to replace this with, again, thinking I had a defective machine.Either I do, or the description provided by Lenovo is way off the mark.Original review appears below.

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I received this tablet 2 days ago.I have been able to use it for about 4 hours of that time.

It took roughly 12 hours to charge.When I turned it on, I thought the display was impressive, but it seemed slow for an I5.I began to do initial setup and was prompted that Microsoft recommended windows 10, so I began the install.It was still not finished when I went to sleep, and when I woke up the battery was drained.I charged it again, or tried.It charged to 18% and I finished the install.It was much faster! So far so good, sort ofI went back to where I was in the set-up and got a warning that the battery was low.It couldn’t find display drivers, and lost touch screen capabilities. (Apparently Lenovo set it to do this as a power management feature)so I thought, OK when I charge it I’ll have that back again.With the battery at 4% I plugged it in.It did not seem to be charging.I went to the manual to discover that it needed to be on to charge. OK, I have had tablets that needed that before.I turned it on an plugged it in.After a couple of hours it was up to 15% so I transferred the cable to the dock and seated the tablet.It proceeded to drain while plugged into the charging dock.I set up energy management features after downloading lenovo software which was lost during the upgrade.at this point the battery was down to 4% after using it (while seated in the charging dock) for 20-30 minutes.Once again I rationalized it; maybe the updates etc. were too processor-intensive for it to charge as quickly as it was draining.

I left it in the charging dock.It did not seem to be charging.I plugged the cable into the tablet and the charging light didn’t come on.I tried the dock again, nothing. This all happened on Tuesday, Dec. 1, and I thought, OK now I can not get any of the specials which were available the entire month of November.If I replace it I will be getting much less machine, so I thought I would try to work with it.I went to the Lenovo forums linked by another reviewer, and there got an eye full.

The specs on this machine are terrific, at least at what I paid last week, BUT

1. Lenovo has capped performance.You will not get 1.6 Mhz, but 1.0If it goes over that the bios throttles it back to prevent overheating.

2. Charging problems are pretty common.They range from:
a) it won’t charge (plugged into tablet, dock or both)
b) the cable and charging block are both proprietary and Lenovo doesn’t have any more. They are effectively impossible to get, so if you lose it, that’s it, you have adead tablet.
c) *if* you can get it to charge, expect 4 hours battery life, *TOPS*.I saw one ecstatic review from someone who got 4 hours on it.I did too, once, and the advertised battery life is 8, not 4.4 hours really isn’t very usable unless you plan to use it plugged in most of the time, seated in the dock (If yours works).

3.The build quality is pretty awful.The tablet itself is pretty good but the charging dock, lightweight and flimsy, cheesy looking and pretty useless.
The keyboard is barely usable (when it is working) and the track pad worse (here is much on this in the Lenovo forums).I’d put the build in between Acer, Dell and HP(who all make plastic, budget equipment) and thelowest end ASUS, 5 generations back.

4. It is difficult to get the table to seat properly in the dock.You can get it to sit firmly, but that does not mean it has made a connection (for charging).The tablet is *MUCH* heavier than the dock.If you hold it in your lap it will tip over.It is stable on a table as long as you do not touch it much, or with too much force (tap it and it falls over).

In Sum:
2 stars for build : a lightweight plastic dock which does not always connect properly.Good strong magnet holds tablet in place, but connections do not always work.
2 stars for functionality. No getting around this, really.It has an I5 processor rated at 1.6 mhz, but Lenovo has throttled it to 1.0 in bios.Slower than my 5 year old Transformer.
4 stars for display.It is a very impressive looking tablet, when it works. High res 1920 x 1080 resolution, one of the best (but topped by ASUS and Samsung’s high end) and even one of the mid-range transformers.
1 star for battery life: 4 hours *if* you can get it charged to 100% (and Le4novo’s energy management system will pop up warning that it is bad for battery life if you do pretty much anything; open a browser or note pad).
1 star for support. Lose the proprietary charging cable and you have an expensive paperweight. Lenovo doesn’t stock them, neither does anyone else. (on the Lenovo forum people are trying to buy the cable from others with dead machines. Lenovo removes emails for security, making it impossible for those stuck without a cable to get one from someone else who has but no longer can use it).
2 stars for design. A very retro squared off tablet, and thick (much thicker than just about anything else currently on the market).If you like industrial or retro chic, you might want to consider that it is 2-3x thicker than just about anything else.

That last point would not matter much to me if it worked.The bottom line, if you can not get it to charge, the specs, display, design… are all irrelevant.

It’s pretty nice, when it works… I think. I did not get past set-up when it failed.It boots quickly and dies just as fast.Guess I am one of the lucky ones. I can still return it.Go to the lenovo forums to see how many people are stuck with tablets that failed 8 months to a year out.Myself, I am done with Lenovo.I just replaced a laptop (one of their higher end I5s) which my son absolutely depended on.Fortunately it died a week inside of our warranty, and AmEx is totally excellent about refunding money for things they insure.In 30 years it is only the second machine which I have had to use their service on, and the first was 7 years old (back when they doubled the warranty, and my very nice machine came with a 7 year warranty) not this one.

Did I rate it too high at 2 stars?Maybe.How many stars do you give a machine that just doesn’t work, fails to charge after 48 hours, has dummy specs?This is very clearly an attempt to compete with the transformer.It doesn’t.The only place it matches or beats performance: the magnet (which hold the tablet to the dock) is stronger. The build is nowhere near as good. The specs, while ostensibley better, are not reflected in performance.The speed limit set by Lenovo is lower than last gen atom processors. The display, while nice, is topped by the chai, tai chi and zen lines. (I guess I know what I am replacing it with).ASUS makes machines that last.You are lucky if you get through the warranty period witha Lenovo, in my experience.

This machine is going back.Had I seen the stuff on the Lenovo forums last week, I never would have purchased this.