14 DAY TRIAL // Some days ago, Lenovo made a few headlines when it was discovered that the company had apparently halted sales of its 8-inch tablets in the US.
So, if you’re currently residing in the country, you won’t be able to pick up the ThinkPad 8 or Miix 8 tablets. A lot of voices were quick to declare that the company was in fact abandoning smaller tablets altogether, because American consumers are actually into larger tablets with 10-inch and above screens.
But as Lenovo itself clarified a while back, the company wouldn’t stop selling 8-inchers in the US and was actually planning a new one, which is set to arrive on the market before Christmas. And judging by a new report coming from Mobile Geeks, it appears that this new slate will be a refresh of the original Miix 2 8, which can’t be purchased in the US anymore.
The Miix 2 arrived with an 8-inch IPS LCD screen, which offered 1280 x 720 screen resolution (189 ppi). The tablet’s powerhouse is an Intel Bay Trail Z3740 SoC (1.3GHz quad-core CPU) with HD Graphics plus 2GB of RAM and backed up by 32GB of internal storage.
The small tablet had Wi-Fi a/b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0, and ran Windows 8.1 (it had Microsoft Office too) out of the box.
But what about the new variant? The new version’s only enhancement is the full HD screen instead of the bland 1280 x 720 res offered before.
The processor remains unchanged, so it’s still the quad-core Intel Atom Z3740 chip clocked at 1.33GHz or 1.86GHz in Turbo Boost. But Lenovo is currently throwing in 1920 x 1080 pixel res, in what constitutes a much needed update.
Apart from that, nothing has changed, with the exception of the fact that the new model will most likely be offered as a 64GB exclusive.
Anyway, customers residing in Europe should know that the tablet has already made an appearance in some online webshops in France and the UK, where it available in small quantities. However, the price tag is quite high and you’ll need to pay up to €350 / $470 if you want one.
We currently don’t have confirmation that the slate will arrive in the US too, but it makes a lot of sense that it will, although the pricing will be a lot smaller.
So far, the Lenovo Miix 2 8.0 has been hailed as a decent multimedia tablet, so the FHD addition is a welcomed one. However, the price bump is certainly likely not.