Lenovo IdeaPad Miix 520 Review - Review 2022

The Lenovo IdeaPad Miix 520 ($999) is gunning for the Microsoft Surface Pro, aiming to provide many of the features of this iconic Windows tablet at a fraction of the toll. Information technology's a difficult task, made even harder past the fact that many other PC makers are attempting to practice the same thing. But there's no question that it'south a worthwhile pursuit, since the the high price of a respectably configured Surface Pro is perhaps its most pregnant drawback. Lenovo succeeds on the most important fronts—a powerful eighth-generation Intel Core i5 processor and a useful stylus, for instance—simply fails to improve on some common tablet drawbacks, such equally poor battery life and uncomfortable ergonomics for lap use. Still, the Miix 520 is clearly the all-time midrange Windows tablet yous can purchase right at present.

Flexible Design

The Miix 520 is minimally changed from its predecessor, final year'south Miix 510. Both are Windows tablets with included smart keyboard covers. The encompass protects the Miix 520's 12.2-inch, full HD (1,920 past 1,080) screen when yous're not using it, and its Pogo-mode connector magnetically detaches when you want to apply the device in Tablet manner. The entire package is designed to compete as much with traditional laptops and 2-in-1s every bit with high-finish tablets, especially the 12.9-inch Apple iPad Pro with its optional Smart Keyboard Cover.

With keyboard attached, the Miix 520 weighs two.65 pounds and measures 0.vi past 11.8 by 8.i inches (HWD). That'southward marginally slimmer and lighter than the Miix 510, which is 0.eight inches thick and weighs 2.71 pounds with its keyboard. While yous would certainly consider these tablets to be thin and light, neither is as feathery as the lightest conventional notebooks, such as the 2.45-pound HP Spectre xiii or the 2-pound LG Gram thirteen ( at Amazon) . They also aren't every bit sparse every bit conventional tablets; the iPad Pro is 0.27 inches thick, compared with the Miix 520's 0.four-inch thickness without the keyboard. Essentially, you are trading a fleck of portability for a lot of flexibility.

And the Miix 520 certainly is flexible. Its keyboard has two magnetized areas, and then you can utilise it flat on a tabular array, or you tin can prop it up so the keys are positioned at a slight angle to the screen. It's much more versatile than the iPad's Smart Keyboard, for instance, which can only lay apartment. Since the Miix 520's keyboard is so thin, you'll find quite a fleck of flex when information technology's angled, being that the tabular array isn't supporting it, but the keys themselves are the same large, sturdy ones we've come to wait from Lenovo. They're fifty-fifty backlit.

Lenovo Miix 520 12 inch 13

Whether you're using the Miix 520 with or without the keyboard, you can extend the kickstand that's congenital into the back of the tablet. There are no detents on the attractive watchband-style hinges, which ways that you tin prop upwardly the tablet at nearly any angle. It'due south sturdy, too—so sturdy that I noticed almost no screen bounce when I tapped the screen with my fingers or wrote on information technology using the included Lenovo Active Pen 2. Screen bounce is a common problem with conventional touch-screen laptops.

There is one major advantage of conventional laptops that the Miix 520 can't come up close to matching, however: It doesn't comfortably fit on your lap. In fact, when I tried, the stand up kept slipping off of my knees as I typed and moused around on the small just authentic multi-touch on touchpad, and I had to take hold of the top of the tablet to keep it from sliding off my lap and onto the floor.

Limited Ports

With laptop components and a stand built into a tablet-sized enclosure, it'south no wonder that Lenovo had trivial room left over for ports. All you get is a USB iii.0 port, a USB-C port, an audio input/output jack, and a connector for the ability cablevision. The audio port is located on the correct border, next to the ability button and a book rocker, while the other iii ports are on the left edge. That side gets peculiarly crowded when y'all use the holder for the included Agile Pen 2, a plastic tab that plugs into the single USB 3.0 port. Non simply must y'all give up access to the USB three.0 port when the holder is installed, but when information technology'due south holding the pen, it besides blocks the power jack and the USB-C port. It's a poor design that has us longing for the potent magnets that agree the Microsoft Surface Pen to the Surface Pro . That's too bad, because the pen itself works flawlessly for sketching and writing on the screen, and you can also use its buttons via a Bluetooth connectedness for basic navigation inside apps.

Lenovo Miix 520 12 inch 10

The Miix 520 itself has both Bluetooth four.ane and 802.11ac Wi-Fi. Our review unit of measurement, which is the only configuration you can purchase, also comes with a micro SIM card slot tucked beneath the kickstand, although information technology lacks a cellular modem to take reward of it. Currently, cellular-equipped versions of the Miix 520 aren't for sale in the US.

The front- and rear-facing cameras on the Miix 520 work fine for casual Skype sessions with family unit members, although the stock-still-focus 5MP front shooter requires you lot to concord the tablet a set distance from your face for the clearest picture show. The speakers are on the lower-left and lower-correct sides of the tablet, and deliver the so-so audio that you lot'd look from a tablet. Music and voice tracks sound more rich on the iPad Pro ( at Amazon) .

Lenovo includes a one-year warranty for the Miix 520.

Admirably Equipped

Our review unit of measurement is well-equipped for a tablet. In addition to the eighth-generation Intel Cadre i5-8250U processor running at i.6GHz, information technology also includes 8GB of memory and a 256GB SSD. Other midrange and high-terminate tablets offer similar specs and prices; you can get a 12.9-inch iPad Pro with Apple tree's A10X processor and 256GB of storage for $899. The Surface Pro is a notable exception here—its $799 entry-level version comes with just 4GB of RAM, a 128GB SSD, and a Core m3 processor. A better-configured ane is much more expensive; the Surface Pro nosotros tested costs $2,199 and comes with an Intel Core i7-7660U processor, 16GB of RAM, and a 512GB SSD. And then it'due south clear that with the Miix 520, Lenovo is attempting to compete with both Microsoft and Apple tree by offering more versatility than yous can get from the iPad Pro and similar performance you'd look from a Surface Pro.

Lenovo IdeaPad Miix 520 Performance Chart

Does it succeed? Unequivocally, yep. It outscored its main competitors on well-nigh all of our synthetic and real-world benchmarking tests. The Miix 520'due south score of 3,436 on the PCMark 8 benchmark, which spits out a proprietary score to compare videoconferencing, web browsing, and many other common PC tasks, shows just how much Intel'south eighth-generation Core processor architecture has improved. It'southward leaps and bounds ahead of the sixth-gen Core i5 that powers the Miix 510 (2,820), the seventh-gen Core i7 that powers the HP Spectre x2 (2,865) and it'due south even faster than the Microsoft Surface Pro (iii,032).

OK, you might exist saying, but the Surface Pro is for professionals, so it probably performs better on specialized tasks such as image editing and video transcoding, right? Wrong. The Miix 520 significantly outscored the Surface Pro on our Handbrake video-encoding test (1 infinitesimal and xviii seconds vs. ii:16) and the Cinebench 3D rendering criterion (606 vs. 407), and nigh matched it on our collection of Photoshop image-editing tasks (3:20 vs. 3:15). And don't forget that the Surface Pro configuration referenced here has double the retentiveness and is more than $1,000 costlier than the Miix 520.

Lenovo IdeaPad Miix 520 Graphics Performance Chart

There are two minor downsides to the Miix 520's configuration (well, iii, if you count its dismal gaming operation, but no Windows tablet offers adequate gaming graphics functioning). At seven hours and 32 minutes, its battery life is much shorter than what y'all'd expect from conventional ultraportable laptops, some of which button 20 hours. That's a byproduct of putting high-powered components into a tablet; its competitors, including the Surface Pro, offer roughly the aforementioned battery life. Secondly, nosotros noticed conspicuously aural fan dissonance when performing processor-intensive tasks, such as streaming video from a website. The fanless iPad Pro has a clear advantage hither.

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An Affordable Surface Culling

With the IdeaPad Miix 520, Lenovo succeeds in its mission to offer an affordable Windows tablet that combines the best features of the iPad Pro and the Surface Pro. Not only is it a swell midrange tablet, just if you can look past a few pocket-sized blemishes like fan noise and a clumsy pen, the Miix 520 could even be a better choice than the Surface Pro if you're a toll-conscious creative professional seeking a powerful, thin, and light pattern tool. If your budget allows, though, you can just as hands justify the Surface Pro'due south additional expense, specially if you appreciate Microsoft'southward excellent build quality and can brand use of the company's superior pen.

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