The Lenovo Ideapad Miix 510 looks like a worthy successor to the crown. It’s been over a year since Microsoft has released its Surface Pro 4, and the lack of a 2016 refresh means there’s room for a new king of detachable two-in-one laptops. The durable aluminum design is understated, yet attractive.
The display is colorful with a clear picture, and under the hood is a competitive collection of specs at nearly half the price of the Surface Pro 4. With all of that, you’d expect the Lenovo Miix 510 to be a shoo-in for the next must buy detachable. Unfortunately, all of that is held back by lackluster battery life. The Lenovo Miix 510 runs incredibly well, but it doesn’t run for very long.
Lenovo Miix 510 Features
1. Design
The Lenovo Miix 510 offers a premium look and feel, with a beautiful silver magnesium-alloy unique design. The tablet is rounded at the corners and slants outward towards the screen. The silver on silver “Lenovo” lettering adds a nice understated look to the back panel. Below that sits a pair of mechanical watchband hinges. The hinges provide consistent reliable resistance while remaining easy to maneuver. This makes it possible to prop the tablet up at virtually any angle you want.
In addition to the tablet, the Miix 510 ships with a detachable keyboard. The back of the keyboard is coated with a synthetic faux leather finish. The material won’t fool onlookers, but it’s still pleasing to senses and helps to create a clean complete aesthetic when the keyboard is closed up against the display.
Along the bottom of the tablet is a magnetic dock that guides the prongs of the keyboard to quickly lock into place. This makes connecting and disconnecting the keyboard a breeze. No guiding is necessary; simply over the device over the metal prongs and the magnets will do all the heavy lifting.
2. Display
The Miix 510’s screen offers excellent color and picture. As I watched a trailer for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2,” I noticed that the green of Gomorra’s skin popped, the red “death button” glowed vibrantly and a beast’s yellow guts were well-illuminated. The 1920 x 1200-pixel screen is also sharp, showing the details in Baby Grout’s brown irises, the tattered leather on Rocket Raccoon’s armor and the intricate tribal marks on Drab’s body.
According to our colorimeter, the Miix 510 produces 114 percent of the sRGB spectrum, which beats the scores of the Surface Pro 4 (100 percent), Switch Alpha 12 (101 percent) and HP Specter x2 (72 percent), as well as the average for ultraportable (97 percent).
The 2-in-1’s detachable tablet emits an average 307 nits (a measure of brightness), a mark that edges out the 303-nit ultraportable average. However, the Surface Pro 4 (382 nits), Switch Alpha 12 (432 nits) and Specter x2 (322 nits) all outshine that showing. Unfortunately, the panel isn’t bright enough for several people to sit around and watch, as the display’s colors darken when viewed from 45 degrees to the left or right. The Miix 510’s touch-screen display speedily and accurately recognized input from fingers as navigated the desktop. It even kept up with me when pinched and zoomed web pages to make them more legible and doodled as fast as could in Paint.
3. Keyboard
The Miix 510’s attachable keyboard is adequate. When I used the 10fastfingers test, I clicked my way to 74 words per minute, which is a short of my 80-wpm average. I couldn’t help but notice the flex in the keyboard as I typed, which was particularly bothersome when I used the hybrid in my lap. My lackluster experience is probably due to the keys’ rather-shallow 1.34 millimeters of travel and light, 55-gram actuation force.
Lenovo also opts to give full-size directional keys instead of a full-size right-Shift key. This led me to click the up arrow every time I meant to click that Shift key, something of a problem every time I wanted to write an email address, use a hash tag or insert an asterisk.
The 3.3 x 1.8-inch button less touchpad accurately tracked my fingers and offered a solid feel to each click. Both two-finger vertical scrolling and three-finger horizontal scrolling registered correctly and worked without hiccups.
4. Audio
The Miix 510 is no mix master, producing enough ho-hum volume to fill a medium-size conference room. When I listened to At the Drive-Inn’s “Governed by Contagions,” I could hear the high-pitched guitars clearly, but vocals came through with some fuzziness, and bass sounded flat. The included Dolby Audio software lets you choose from among music, movies, games and voice profiles, but none of these dramatically improved the sound.
5. Performance
The Miix 510 Armed with 2.3 Ghz Core I5 6200U CPU and 8GB of RAM, offers solid speed that productivity-minded users will appreciate. I saw no lag or slowdown after splitting my screen among a YouTube video streaming in 1080p and a dozen tabs (including Slack, Gmail, Tweet Deck and Taoist). Scrolling and switching tabs stayed buttery smooth, even when I ran a full-system scan in Windows Defender in the background.
The Miix 510 turned in a fairly solid score of 6,313 on the Geek bench 3 general performance tests, beating the showing by the 1.2-GHz Core m7-6Y75-based Specter x2 (5,814) and the average for ultraportable (5,520). The 2.4-GHz Core i5-6300U-based Microsoft Surface Pro 4 (6,811) and 2.3-GHz Intel Core i5-6200U-based Switch Alpha 12 (6,398) hit higher marks.
The 256GB PCIe SSD in the Lenovo Miix 510 performed adequately on the Laptop Mag File Transfer test, duplicating 4.97GB of multimedia files in 28 seconds, for a rate of 181.76 MBps. That bests the 256GB SSDs in the Switch Alpha 12 (152.37 MBps) and the Specter x2 (149 MBps) and is only slightly better than the ultraportable average (173.41 MBps). The 256GB SSD in the Surface Pro 4 (318.1 MBps) is much faster, however.
Productivity power-users will be happy to hear that the Miix 510 finished our Open Office Macro Test in a short time of 4 minutes and 31 seconds. That’s less than the time posted by the average ultraportable (6:34) and the Specter x2 (5:34), and a hair less than the Switch Alpha 12 (4:32).
The Miix 510’s Intel HD 520 Graphics give the machine enough kick to turn in a decent score of 62,498 on the 3DMark Ice Storm Unlimited graphics test. That score ranks higher than those posted by the Intel 520 HD graphics based Surface Pro 4 (60,424), Intel 515 Graphics-based Specter x2 (52,450) and average ultraportable (51,695). The Switch Alpha 12 (64,550) did slightly better.
6. Battery Life
The Miix 510 may be an ultraportable computer, but its short life on a single charge means you’ll be carrying the machine’s power cable everywhere you go. When we tested the 2-in-1 on the Laptop Mag Battery test, the Miix lasted only 5 hours and 25 minutes. That time falls short of the showings by the Surface Pro 4 (6:05) and the HP Specter x2 (6:31), and the category average (8:00), but it still beats the Switch Alpha 12’s time (4:49).
7. Webcam
The tablet display’s dual cameras are good enough for photography, but not for video. Its 2 MP Webcam renders color accurate, though grainy images that make this camera good enough for Skype calls and of better quality than most cameras. The Miix 5 MP rear-shooter is better, and when I took it out on our office’s rooftop, it captured the strong blue of the Manhattan sky as well as sharp details, including faraway architectural patterns.
Video recorded on the camera includes too much stutter, though, for any usage besides documenting a short instance, as you could get motion sick from watching too long.
8. Heat
The Miix 510 gets warm only in its tablet display, while its keyboard stays cool. After we streamed 15 minutes of HD video on the detachable notebook, our heat gun registered acceptable temperatures on the Miix’s touchpad (75.5 degrees Fahrenheit) and G and H keys (77 degrees). The back of the 2-in-1’s screen measured 91.5 degrees, but that’s still below our comfort threshold (95 degrees).
9. Software
The Miix 510 comes with just a little preloaded software. Lenovo’s given the 2-in-1 the company’s proprietary apps, including Account Portal (for access to Lenovo forums and services), Companion (for getting updates and support from Lenovo) and App Explorer (which is obviated by the Windows app store).
A Wacom pen settings utility is included to provide input sensitivity settings and button customization for those who use a stylus with the tablet display. Standard fare such as the Twitter client (free) and the city-building Paradise Bay game (free) are apps you’ll find on most new Windows 10 machines.
10. Bottom Line
If you want a notebook with fast performance and a display that detaches, providing a great tablet to stream on, the Mix 510 is calling your name. Unfortunately, this machine’s keyboard and battery life may test your patience.
The $699 Core M Specter x2 offers a little over an hour extra battery life, but it’s not as fast. The Core i5 Surface Pro 4 may be faster than the Miix 510, but at $1,017 on Amazon, it charges you more for that speed. If you can adapt to a different keyboard and aren’t bothered by carrying a power cord, the Lenovo Miix 510 is a solid solution for your laptop and tablet needs.
11. Storage
At the heart, Lenovo Idea pad Miix 520 Laptop is powered by a Core i7 processor belongs to the 7th generation family with a clock speed of 2.7 GHz. Processor supported by 16GB RAM offers a lag free performance in heavy multitasking situations. The laptop comes with 1TB HDD SATA hard disk offers enough space for storage of music, videos and additional documents.
12. Connectivity
The Lenovo Idea pad Miix 520 Laptop houses a 2-cell Li-Ion battery that keeps the entertainment going for more than 11 hours. The connectivity includes WLAN, Bluetooth v4.0, 1 x USB 3.0 port, HDMI out, DVD writer, touchpad with multi-touch gesture support and detachable keyboard.
Lenovo Ideapad Miix 520 Price 40, 000
Lenovo IdeaPad Miix 520 Laptop Specification
GENERAL INFORMATION |
Brand | Lenovo |
Model | Miix 520 |
Dimensions | 300 X 205 X 15.9 mm |
Weight | 1.2 kg |
Colors | Silver |
SOFTWARE | |
Operating System | Windows 10 Home (64 bit) |
DISPLAY | |
Display Features | FHD + IPS LED Multi Touch with Gorilla Glass |
Resolution | 1920 x 1200 @ 60Hz |
Size (in inches) | 12.3inches |
PERFORMANCE | |
Processor | Intel Core i7-7500U (7th Gen) |
Clock-Speed | 2.4 Ghz |
Graphic Processor | Intel HD |
MOMERY | |
Capacity | 16GB |
RAM type | DDR4 |
RAM Speed | 2133 Mhz |
Memory Layout | 2 x 8 Gigabyte |
STORAGE | |
HDD Capacity | 1 TB |
HDD Speed | 5400 Rpm |
HDD type | SATA |
MULTIMEDIA | |
Web-cam | Yes |
Resolution | 2.0 MP |
Secondary Cam | Yes |
Camera Resolution | 5.0 MP |
Audio Solution | Dolby Advance Audio |
Speakers | 2 X Stereo Speakers with built Microphone |
BATTERY | |
Type | Li-Polymer |
Battery sell | 2 sell |
Capacity | 40Wh |
CONNECTIVITY | |
Wi-Fi | 802.11 A/C |
Bluetooth | 4.1 Bluetooth |
GRAPHICS | |
Graphics Coprocessor | NAVIDIA N1 4P-GV2 |