Lenovo officially launches IdeaPad K1 tablet

Joining the Android tablet fray, Lenovo officially launched their K1 10.1-inch tablet last week at the Republiq in Resorts World, Manila. The product has already been available in stores a few weeks ago but it’s just recently that Lenovo decided to let more people know.

At first glance, the Lenovo K1 IdeaPad looks fun and sporty, like their IdeaPad notebooks. It’s a bit on the thick side (13.3mm) with an almost rounded, glossy shell like the HP TouchPad and it comes in red, black or white.

The Lenovo K1’s internals is just like your average 10-inch tablet. It runs on a 1GHz NVidia Tegra 2 SOC which gives it a fast response in today’s Android tablet standards.

Screen size is 1280 x 800 and sports an Android 3.1 Honeycomb OS with little to no customizations. We’re missing the screen capture button on the navigation bar and Lenovo added its own “œLaunch Zone” icon in the middle of it. Pressing this button will invoke a wheel type menu on the side for quick access to commonly used apps.

Other features include a 5 megapixel rear camera and a 2 megapixel up front. There’s a miniHDMI port, 3.5mm audio jack, a 30-pin docking port for data or charging and also a microSD slot. The microSD slot by the way has a metal cover that you can open by using a pin on the tiny hole next to it. Like what your optical drives which makes it a bit of a hassle to use.

Not sure if this is a good thing for you but Lenovo preloaded the K1 with more than 30 apps from partners like Adobe, Amazon, EA, Rovio, Zinio, etc. They say the included apps are over $50 in value. Too bad you can’t shave it off from the price if you opt to delete them.

One thing that stood our for the Lenovo IdeaPad K1 aside from its red color is that the 32GB WiFi is priced at Php24,900. Other Android 10-inchers will only net you a 16GB version with that amount. Unfortunately, that’s the only size Lenovo is selling. They will also see how the WiFi version goes before deciding to bring in the 3G version.