Upside
Optical Finger Navigation--that's what Lenovo calls the physical home button on the K1. For those who are used to having such a feature (such as iOS users), this button is a useful crutch until they get used to the Android interface. It supports basic gestures like scrolling down to return to the previous page and you can even press and hold the button to do a screen capture.
The K1 comes with plenty of preloaded apps--Lenovo claims that the total value of these apps add up to more than US$50. There are some gems among them, notably the full version of DataViz's Documents To Go, which allows users to open their Microsoft Office documents on the tablet and costs S$18.99 on the Android Market. Then there's Angry Birds HD, which is currently only available for the iPad. Although the version on the K1 is ad-supported, we doubt that users will have too many complaints.
Downside
At 750g, the K1 is one of the heaviest tablets in the market. In fact, it even trumps the HP TouchPad and the Acer Iconia Tab, two of the larger tablets we have tested. As first impressions go, it doesn't bode well for Lenovo that its first tablet weighs more than the typical 10.1-inch Android tablet. The chubby feel of the K1 is not helped by the relatively thick black bezel around its screen.
From our hands-on with the pre-production units at the launch event, the plastic chassis of the K1 felt hollow and loose. The tablet's back cover comes in three colors--red, brown and black--but unlike the interchangeable lids found on some notebooks like the Dell Inspiron R, the choice of color is decided when buying the tablet and consumers cannot change it themselves. This seems like a missed opportunity for Lenovo to add even more personalization options, like snap-on designer covers.
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