Lenovo Yoga Tab Plus review – The affordable giant tablet takes on the iPad Pro

Not only does the iPad Pro have to face a new strong competitor, but Android manufacturers also have something to fear: The Lenovo Yoga Tab Plus offers a lot of features, comes with a large accessory package and delivers high performance, all while costing significantly less than other premium tablets designed for work and entertainment.

Plus, you hardly have to make any compromises: Its screen is high-resolution and bright, the Lenovo Tab Pen Pro is precise and offers great feedback, its battery life is fine, its speakers deliver a full sound and the tablet's software is very customizable.

Of course, you might expect more than just four years of updates for a premium device, and 256 GB of storage may not be enough if you are working on several large projects at the same time. And its IPS screen can't display perfect blacks or shine as brightly when displaying HDR content as the competition's OLED screens can.

But you can accept minor flaws in the Lenovo tablet for a price of less than $700—especially when you look at how much competing devices cost. If you are looking for a high-quality, stylishly designed, well-equipped premium tablet, then you should definitely consider the Lenovo Yoga Tab Plus.

The Lenovo Yoga Tab Plus is currently on offer on Lenovo's website for $599.99.

Lenovo is known for its tablets which are often quite affordable and yet usually of high quality. The 12.7-inch Yoga Tab Plus is now also taking on some of the most expensive tablets on the market: For example, the Apple iPad Pro and the Samsung Galaxy Tab S10+.

Once again, Lenovo has managed to undercut the competition's prices significantly, even including a stylus and keyboard cover. In this review, we'll be taking a closer look at whether the test device can truly keep up with high-quality entertainment and productivity tablets.

Lenovo has taken inspiration from the sea when it comes to the Lenovo Yoga Tab Plus' colorways: "Tidal Green" is a slightly greenish blue, and "Seashell" is a beige color option.

Its screen bezels on the front are slim and give the tablet a modern look. At the same time, they make it possible to hold the tablet in your hand without constantly operating the touchscreen by accident.

The tablet's metal case has a very high-quality finish overall and is very stylish, while the large glass strip in the upper area gives it an unusual design. This section also houses the camera modules. Its stability is decent for an almost 13-inch tablet, but you can still hear a distinct creaking noise when twisting it and applying strong pressure.

Weighing in at 640 grams, the device is quite heavy; the iPad Pro with an even larger screen weighs 85 grams less. The tablet doesn't have an IP certification, so you shouldn't use it in dusty or wet environments.

Although Lenovo does calculate the carbon footprint of its products over their lifetime and usually provides the data, it was not (yet) available for the Yoga Tab Plus at the time of writing.

Unfortunately, there is no concrete information on how many recycled materials are contained in its products. The tablet's packaging is largely unprinted and consists of recycled cardboard.

Lenovo usually offers self-repair guides, but these tend to relate to the manufacturer's laptops. You can also search for spare parts directly on Lenovo's website, but nothing is yet available for the Yoga Tab Plus.

The Yoga Tab Plus comes with WiFi 7 as its fastest Wi-Fi standard, meaning it can also access the 6 GHz frequency band, which is currently still rarely used. Unfortunately, our reference router, the Asus ROG Rapture AXE11000, only supports WiFi 6E, so we cannot determine the tablet's maximum possible Wi-Fi speeds.

Even so, the Yoga Tab Plus achieves high transfer rates of up to 1,731 MBit/s in the 6 GHz band with WiFi 6E. This means you can easily max out a gigabit internet connection and it is well equipped for use in even faster internal networks. In the receiving direction, we measured a maximum of 1,188 MBit/s, which the other devices managed to significantly surpass.

Overall, its WLAN module's transfer rates are often not quite stable, and we noted some drops in its data rates when the test was repeated several times.

Unlike most other Lenovo tablets, the Yoga Tab Plus doesn't have a GNSS module for determining its location, so you can only get an approximate position from Google via known Wi-Fi networks. There is also no cellular module in the tablet.

The Lenovo Yoga Tab Plus comes without a charger, but with a USB cable and a stylus. Our test device also came with the keyboard dock, which has a touchpad and doubles as a protective cover. Strangely, the stand is sold separately. On the one hand, this means that you can set up the tablet without the keyboard. On the other hand, it makes the whole system a little less stable.

The stand is magnetically attached to the back, but doesn't snap into place completely straight on our test model, which is generally not a problem, but it still looks strange.

Lenovo offers a 12-month warranty for its devices.

The Lenovo Yoga Tab Plus uses the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 as its SoC. It dates back to 2024 and was installed in many high-end smartphones at the time. It is therefore still a very powerful SoC, which made itself noticeable in the processor benchmarks: Our test device was often the fastest among its Android competitors and was only beaten by the Apple iPad Pro 13.

This makes it easy to work with several complex apps at the same time, and its ample RAM means that even larger documents are no problem.

When it comes to graphics performance, the Adreno 750 is a super powerful solution, although the Samsung Galaxy Tab S10+ with its ARM Immortalis-G720 GPU was somewhat faster in some cases during our test. Our test device, however, managed a stable 30fps when displaying complex 4K graphics and over 60 fps at 1440p.

You can also expect plenty of power when surfing the web and waiting times are minimal—even when loading complex websites.

Lenovo has opted for very fast UFS 4.0 storage. Unfortunately, we can't compare its storage speed with the iPad Pro, as there are no storage benchmarks on iPadOS. However, our test device still ranked at the top of the Android tablets.

So nothing stands in the way of fast data transfers and short loading times when you use the Yoga Tab Plus.

The large surface area of the Lenovo Yoga Tab Plus also allows the SoC's waste heat to be dissipated easily, even without a fan. During our test, the device reached a maximum case temperature of 41.4 °C after prolonged load, which we could feel with our hand, but it wasn't uncomfortable.

The SoC's performance also remained largely unchanged, with frame rates dropping only minimally after several repetitions of a test.

Thanks to its two tweeters and four subwoofer speakers, the Lenovo Yoga Tab Plus has a great sound system that can reproduce both music and movie sound quite well.

Of course, at maximum volume, its sound is a little undefined and tends to be a little overpowering. But if you turn the sound down a little, you get a rounded, multi-layered sound in which you can easily distinguish individual instruments, voices or sound effects.

For even better sound, we would recommend connecting external speakers or headphones, which you can do via USB or Bluetooth. If you prefer to use the wireless option, you can use the most commonly used audio codecs such as AAC, aptX or LDAC. However, those who prefer to use more exotic codecs will have to limit themselves.

Its power consumption in idle mode is nice and low compared to other tablets. Under load, on the other hand, the Lenovo Yoga Tab Plus isn't the most frugal, consuming up to 18.5 watts.

The tablet can be charged at a maximum of 45 watts using a suitable charger. However, a full charge takes up to 2:15 hours due to its large battery.

The Yoga Tab Plus features a battery with a capacity of 10,200 mAh. This is almost exactly the same as the iPad Pro 13, although Apple manages to offer significantly better efficiency in some cases.

Nevertheless, the Yoga Tab Plus' runtimes are decent overall: It managed 12:48 hours in our WLAN test, but in comparison to more compact tablets or smartphones, it's clear that such a large screen with a high resolution takes its toll. We noted 3:39 hours under full load but again, Apple came ahead in this scenario.

Usually, a working day or even a day of watching a full series is easily possible without needing to recharge the tablet.