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Lenovo Tab M7: Fire 7 alternative with modern design

Good build quality with poor performance: the Lenovo Tab M7
Good build quality with poor performance: the Lenovo Tab M7
With the Tab M7, Lenovo shows that “low-priced” does not always mean “cheap”. The build quality of the Tab M7 is very good and the modern design makes all other low-priced tablets look obsolete. Unfortunately, the system performance is not very high, because of the intended purpose of the device.

Thanks to the Fire 7, Amazon has been the dominant player in the 7-inch tablet market for a long time. Anyone who picks it up will immediately notice the extremely thick bezels, which seem impractical in everyday use.  Moreover, Amazon’s Fire OS is designed exclusively for Amazon customers, who can use all the Amazon services through the applications.

Enter Lenovo: The aspect ratio and the screen size of the Tab M7 and the Fire 7 are identical. However, the Lenovo tablet has much smaller bezels, which is why it feels more compact in the hand. While the Fire 7 users have to live with a plastic back, the Tab M7 features a metal back. When you put the two tablets side by side, the Tab M7 looks much more premium.

The same applies to the software. Thanks to Android 9 Go edition, the Lenovo Tab M7 does not come with any superfluous bloatware. The only pre-installed application is Lenovo Vantage, which helps free up the RAM. The anemic hardware is the reason why the tablet ships with a cut-down version of Android. Low-end hardware is the main drawback of low-priced Lenovo tablets. 

For a device with such a price tag, the Tab M7 does not achieve good results in the benchmarks. Amongst cheap tablets, the Fire 7 from Amazon provides 50 % more performance than the Tab M7. Users of the Lenovo slate should forgo multitasking, because multitasking might make the system feel very unresponsive. The hardware is only good for those who want to surf the Internet, check email and stream video. 

In our review, we were impressed by both the price tag and the build quality, both of which are ideal for a device intended for use with simple applications. You can get the Amazon Fire 7 for even less, but then you will have to deal with all the bloatware that comes with it.

Source(s)

Notebookcheck review of Lenovo Tab M7

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> Expert Reviews and News on Laptops, Smartphones and Tech Innovations > Reviews > Lenovo Tab M7: Fire 7 alternative with modern design
Mike Wobker, 2019-12-31 (Update: 2019-12-30)