Lenovo Miix 310 review : Just a decent 2-in-1

The Lenovo Miix 310 is a new entry level 2-in-1 laptop targeted at those who want one device for all at small price. Basically the Miix 310 is a 10″ tablet with a keyboard dock. Priced at Rs.17,000/- the Miix 310 is available for purchase on Amazon India. We used the Miix for a while and have purchased it. Read on to know what we think about this

Key Specifications

• 1.92GHz Intel Atom x5-Z8350 processor
• 2GB DDR3L RAM
• 32GB Storage
• 10.1-inch screen
• Windows 10 Home OS

Design

The first thing that I thought of when I took the laptop is ‘which side is up?’. Thanks to the display size, the Miix 310 is very easy to carry. Unlike Surface where the backside flip is used to rest the laptop on a surface, the Miix 310 works like a normal notebook. The display locks on to the base on two hinges. To remove the tablet, pull it out from the dock. Do remember that you cannot upgrade RAM or hard drive in this one as this is more of a tablet with a keyboard dock.

The Miix 310 comes with wide range of ports. The tablet has headphone jack on the left side. A power on/off key, micro USB port, mini HDMI port power input reside on the right side along with a microphone and microSD card slot. The base has two full size USB ports, one on each side. Dual speakers are on both sides of the tablet. The bezels around the display are perfect, neither too fat nor too thin. There are two cameras, one is rear mounted and one is front mounted. The base has a five row keyboard and a trackpad.

Display

The 1280×800 pixel resolution touch screen display is above average at best. The Lenovo Miix 310 is designed for those on the go but the sunlight legibility is average at best. To have a visible display, you need to max out display brightness and that means that you sacrifice battery life. Given that this is a touch screen display with a glass layer on top, going with a matte coating is not feasible. The color reproduction is just average and the text looked kind of pixelated (all these retina display phones pampered our eyes). The touch sensitivity and response is good and is one of the better touch screen models available in the market (sub-20k segment).

Keyboard and Touchpad

The keyboard is below average at best. I have used small sized keyboards in the past but this one somehow feels awkward. The key spacing and row alignment is wrong. The top row keys are smaller than the bottom row and most of the times, my fingers would press the wrong number key. Another problem is with the key travel. The key travel is very low and this reduces the typing speed. I can hit 85-95wpm on keyboard but on this one, I could barely manage 60wpm. If your work involves lot of typing, I suggests you carry a Bluetooth wireless keyboard that is designed for tablets.

The track-pad is tiny but does the job well. Touch sensitivity is good and multi touch gestures work well. The problem though is with the palm rejection. The palm rejection is not up to the mark and when I am typing, there were many instances where the cursor moves to different spot. There are no physical keys, glad that Lenovo has included click and tap function. The track-pad has marking for right click and left click actions. You can either tap or click (as if you are clicking a mouse button).

Performance

Do not expect this one to blow your mind with performance. For simple day to day tasks, the performance is very good. The Miix 310 does not exhibit any lag when you open multiple apps. I have used multiple browsers, mail app, music app and the Miix 310 did well. For a home user or traveler, the performance will be more than enough.

You can play simple and small leisure games but do not expect to even install games like Battlefield 1. There is not enough space in the first place to install such games and the GPU cannot handle these games. Given that this notebook only has 2GB of RAM, applications that require lot of memory may not even install.

Multimedia

The two stereo speakers are of average quality. You can watch movies occasionally indoors but they are not loud enough for outdoor use. The audio quality using headphones is good. The Lenovo Miix 310 can handle casual music and movie playback. The front and back cameras too are of average quality. The low light quality of front camera is extremely poor and you can forget about doing video call in low light conditions.

Here is a big deal breaker for movie and TV show lovers. The Miix 310 is not able to power the portable external hard drives but will read pen drives and also work with external full size hard drives that connect to wall socket for power. This is a big flaw but something that we have to live with as it is a common case of such low power devices. This can be a major headache for those who store lot of movies as the space is just 17GB. If you are a traveler and watch lot of movies, you better invest in a pen drive to go along. If I were you, I will delay my purchase till Lenovo fixes this issue or go with other product that has big enough internal storage.

Battery

The battery is rated to last 10 hours (video playback). But if you use it like a PC, attached to a dock, it will last up to 5 hours. When you are watching a video without any background activity happening, the battery is consumed only by display and a little bit by CPU/GPU. But when you are working, switching between apps, every component in our laptop will be working and this is the ideal way to rate a battery.

Conclusion

The Lenovo Miix 310 is thin, lightweight yet sturdy. The major plus point is the detachable tablet. This is essentially a tablet with keyboard dock. The display quality is okay but thanks to the ports, you can connect it to an external display, use with Bluetooth or USB keyboard and mouse. The Atom chip does not stutter when you perform simple work (browser internet, watch movies, listen to music etc). Then there are some nagging issues like inability to use portable external hard drives, bad keyboard layout and only 17GB of available space.

Throughout the review, we gave average or below average opinion for most sections. Does this mean that you should ignore the Lenovo Miix 310?  The Lenovo Miix 310 costs just over 16,000/- rupees and at this price, there is not much competition. If you are looking for a notebook that is small, that can be used as a tablet, can run desktop apps, the options are minimal and the only other worthy device that we found is the Acer One convertible. For basic work (blogging, reading, chatting etc), you will be satisfied. Anything more than this and you will have to look elsewhere.

Link to buy: http://amzn.to/2gk1PZs