There’s no shortage of tablets to consider for holiday shopping this year, though arguably only a few offer features and performance worthy of the price tag. Now Engadget has word that a new Lenovo 10.1″ tablet should hit retail before 2012. It’s not the first Lenovo tablet on the market, but it’s got some goodies that the IdeaPak K1 and the ThinkPad Tablet are missing, including the Ice Cream Sandwich OS (Android 4.0), and NVIDIA’s Tegra 3 T33 processor. According to Engadget’s anonymous source, the new tablet will also come with 2GB RAM, a USB port, a back-facing camera, a “Special Fusion-Skin Body” and a fingerprint scanner.
I find myself interested in Lenovo again after reverting to a Lenovo X220 laptop earlier this fall. It’s a competent brand in computing that you’d think could create a decent tablet competitor. Unfortunately, the reviews on early Lenovo tablets aren’t stellar – certainly not good enough to make them truly competitive with the iPad or lower priced offerings like the Kindle Fire or the new Nook Tablet. My hope is that Lenovo takes a step up with its Ice Cream Sandwich debut. Better navigation options (including a handful of physical buttons), stylus-driven input (with better handwriting recognition) and business-friendly features like a longer battery life and strong syncing features could create a standout product. Here’s hoping.