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Consumers who are partial to the iPad's size but wish to stick to Android should be interested in the Lenovo IdeaTab S2109 . This tablet runs Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich and sports the same 9.7-inch 1024 x 768 pixel display as Apple's 1st- and 2nd-gen slate. But considering its other components, is $349 a fair price? Although it has a 9.7-inch screen, you might mistake the Lenovo IdeaTab S2109 for a smaller slate because of its rounded corners. The tablet checks in at 9.7 x 7.3 x 0.35 inches and 1.3 pounds, on a par with the ASUS Transformer Pad TF300 (10.4 x 7.1 x 0.38 inches, 1.4 pounds) and the new Apple iPad (9.5 x 7.31 x 0.37 inches, 1.44 pounds). We admire the overall look of the IdeaTab S2109, which has a streamlined, curved design. The back of the slate has a smooth aluminum finish in gunmetal gray, while the Lenovo logo sits smack-dab center in white lettering. Also on the back, you'll find four SRS surround-sound speakers, two each on the left and right sides of Compatible Parts . Our biggest complaint about the S2109's design is that Lenovo couldn't seem to decide whether buyers would use this device in portrait or landscape mode. And that's odd because Google's software is optimized for landscape view. Lenovo Keyboard Lenovo gives you two keyboard choices on the S2109. The preloaded Go Keyboard's small keys frees up more space on the screen, but we typed less accurately than with the stock Android keyboard which has the same function as the Lenovo G Series Keyboard . Supplementary gimmicks abound with the Go Keyboard, such as smiley faces, a handwriting input option and voice notes, but ultimately, we didn't think any of these items were indispensable. Performance The Lenovo IdeaTab S2109 features a 1-GHz dual-core TI OMAP 4430 processor and 1GB of RAM, which delivered only moderate performance in our testing. This is unsurprising, given that the more powerful quad-core Nvidia Tegra 3 chip is generally the more favored CPU of choice in tablets nowadays, including the cheaper Google Nexus 7 . On the CPU portion of the Benchmark app, the IdeaTab S2109 scored 2,857, falling below the ASUS Transformer Pad TF300 (3,613; 1.2GHz quad-core Tegra 3 CPU) and the Nexus 7 (3,612; 1.3-GHz quad-core Tegra 3 CPU). At least this slate surpassed the tablet category average of 2,813, but only by a hair. The S2109 did much better graphics-wise. It posted a score of 7,532 on An3DBench, outstripping the category average of 7,299. However, it was outclassed yet again by both the Transformer TF300 (7,705) and the Nexus 7 (7,782) on the same test. In real-life testing, the S2109 performed fairly well with the help of its Compatible Parts . Apps launched smoothly, we swiped through the five homescreens fluidly, and on the whole, performance was relatively lag-free. We did notice some latency when switching between the Chrome browser and the "Tiki Kart 3" game. While the water racing game "Riptide GP" played smoothly, the level of detail on screen was noticeably lacking versus HD Android tablets.
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