Clever keyboard and high-res screen for Miix 2

Some hybrids are laptops that want to be tablets. Some are tablets that want to be laptops. None to date is especially apt at paying equal attention to both sides of the coin.

Lenovo tries different approach than most in the Miix 2, an oddly named $599 slate-style tablet with a feature-rich keyboard docking station. In the UK and Europe the tablet can only be had with a 64GB hard drive (it can be expanded up to 128GB in the US), and begins at £399.99 and €499, respectively. The tablet itself has a 10.1-inch screen, which is larger than most Windows 8 tablets we’ve seen, with 8-inch screens being the most common. The screen resolution is an unusually high 1,920×1,200, which can be either a blessing or a curse, depending on how well the apps you want to use scale in Windows 8. Personally, I’m never going to say no to extra resolution.

What makes the Miix 2 an especially interesting take on the hybrid concept is its included keyboard dock. Some hybrids, such as the Yoga line from Lenovo, keep their keyboards attached, folding them out of sight. Others, such as the Microsoft Surface Pro or Asus T100, have detachable keyboards which range from nearly-flat keyboard covers to full clamshell-style ones.

The Miix 2’s keyboard feels primarily like a dock with additional USB ports and a slot for holding the screen up at a slightly reclined angle. The dock also includes a full keyboard and touchpad, although both are on the small side. Both magnets and a multi-pin connection keep the screen and dock attached, and the two sides can slot together to form what looks like a closed clamshell laptop shape for travel.

So far, so good. And for under $600, it’s a nice package that allows you to enjoy some of the portable and entertainment features of tablets, while still having the ability to set it up as a mini-desktop. The problems come when you rely on the keyboard dock too much for productivity.

I found the keyboard layout just different enough from the norm to be annoying, and the hint of occasional lag with both the keyboard and touchpad is a common Windows tablet problem this system has not fixed. The pokey Intel Atom processor, on paper fine for Windows 8 use, felt sluggish at times — especially with the larger screen and the increased expectations that come with it.

The Miix 2 still offers a nice set of features, including a big 128GB SSD for a budget price (only in the US), and Lenovo’s typically excellent build quality (a 64GB SSD version is $499). But I found the tablet more satisfying to use than the keyboard combo, so if you anticipate needing to type all day, you might want to stick with a traditional laptop.

	Lenovo Miix 2	Asus VivoTab Note 8	Acer Iconia W4-820-2466
Price	$599 (£399.99, €499 for 64GB)	$329, £300	$349, £299
Display size/resolution	10-inch, 1,920×1,200 touchscreen	8.1-inch, 1,280×800 touchscreen	8.1-inch, 1,280×800 touchscreen
PC CPU	1.33GHz Intel Atom Z3740	1.33GHz Intel Atom Z3740	1.33GHz Intel Atom Z3740
PC Memory	2048MB DDR2 SDRAM 1066MHz	2048MB DDR2 SDRAM 1066MHz	2048MB DDR2 SDRAM 1066MHz
Graphics	32GB Intel HD Graphics	32GB Intel HD Graphics	32GB Intel HD Graphics
Storage	128GB SSD hard drive (available only in 64GB outside the US)	32GB SSD hard drive	64GB SSD hard drive
Optical drive	None	None	None
Networking	802.11 b/g/n wireless, Bluetooth 4.0	802.11 b/g/n wireless, Bluetooth 4.0	802.11 b/g/n wireless, Bluetooth 4.0
Operating system	Windows 8.1 (32-bit)	Windows 8.1 (32-bit)	Windows 8.1 (32-bit)

Design and features

When closed, the matte grey Miix 2 looks much like any ultraportable clamshell laptop. But, what you’re actually seeing is the 10-inch tablet screen held against the keyboard dock with a magnetic connection. The dock has a small lip that rises up at the back end, forming a perfectly sized pocket for the screen to slot into. That, plus the magnet, keeps the package securely fastened, and the two parts did not come apart, even when shaking it or tossing it form one hand to the other. Still, keep in mind, they’re not actually latched together, so exercise some care when throwing the unit in your shoulder bag.

When set up in its docking station, the Miix 2 looks like a small all-in-one desktop. Taking the tablet screen and flipping around to face out from the non-keyboard side of the dock gives you a kiosk look, with the dock’s speaker grille pointing towards you, for a decent multimedia setup.

One nice benefit from the magnetic connection is that switching between tablet and keyboard modes doesn’t require you to fumble around with a latch or switch, which is a pain point of some other convertible hybrids.

The keyboard itself makes good use of its limited space, with keys as big as you’d find on any 13-inch laptop, plus Lenovo’s clever key shape, which adds a curved edge to the bottom of each key, making for fewer missed keystrokes.

The typing experience itself was fine, although the keyboard has a lot of flex in the middle, even under light typing. More frustrating were tiny tweaks from the standard keyboard layout. It’s understandable given the compact footprint, but it definitely takes some getting used to, and will continue to cause trouble if you switch from this to a full-size laptop or desktop keyboard regularly. For example, the Esc key has been shifted to the number key row (and there is no separate Function key row), the Backspace key is half-size, making long-form writing more difficult.

Sometimes the keyboard and small clickpad-style touchpad responded well, but I occasionally ran into a hint of lag, something that seems to be common with hybrids featuring separate keyboards. Apps designed for the Windows 8 tile interface fared best overall.

The 10.1-inch display, with a very high native resolution of 1,920×1,200, is one of the things that really sets this system apart. That resolution number, and the slightly different dimensions of the screen, tell us this is a 16:10 aspect ratio display, rather than the more common 16:9 aspect ratio. The latter is found in nearly every laptop today, as well as HD television and monitor screens.

The extra screen real estate is handy for working with larger photos or big Excel docs, although you’ll have to squint to see clearly in the traditional desktop view, or in non-optimized apps such as Photoshop. Viewing angles are excellent, as one should expect from a tablet, but the very glossy screen picks up a lot of glare, and the thick black bezel around the perimeter make the screen feel smaller than it is.

At 10.1-inches, the Miix 2 isn’t really large enough to be your all-day, every day computer — for that the cut-off is really a 13-inch laptop. But, for a long afternoon in a conference room or cross-country flight, it will work. An 11-inch version of the Miix 2 has also been announced, and it will include full Core i-series Intel CPUs, and presumably cost more.