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Battery Life
- Roughly 8.5 hours video at max brightness
- 7,000mAh cell
The Lenovo Tab 4 10 Plus has a 7,000mAh battery. That’s just slightly lower capacity than the 7,306mAh of the iPad Pro 9.7, and a chunk lower than the 8,827mAh of the ‘budget’ new iPad.
Some cheaper tablets have amazing stamina when simply playing back video, thanks to a mix of their low-res screens and clever optimization. The Lenovo Tab 4 10 Plus’s longevity is slightly more ordinary, but actually exceeds the 8 hours some retailers list for the tablet.
A 90-minute movie played at full brightness claims 18% of the battery, suggesting that from full to flat it’ll last around eight hours 20 minutes.
Lenovo’s own website claims a fair more ambitious 20 hours of use. You’re unlikely to manage this unless you use very dim screen brightness and barely do anything.
The Lenovo Tab 4 10 Plus holds its charge fairly well in standby. You can leave the tablet sitting for a few days without much of a drop.
Like most new mobile devices, the Lenovo Tab 4 10 Plus uses a USB-C connector rather than the older micro USB sort. Recharging takes a few hours because the power adaptor doesn’t have the high wattage or voltage needed for ultra-fast charging.
Camera
- Better image quality than budget tablets
- Not the fastest shooter around
- Decent selfie quality
The Lenovo Tab 4 10 Plus has both front and rear cameras. There’s an 8MP sensor on the back with a flash and a 5MP one on the front.
The new iPad has a better rear camera, but this one is actually perfectly respectable for a tablet. Such cameras often feel like they’ve been bunged in just because a tablet has to have a camera to feel complete. This one is at least a level above.
Low-quality camera sensors have poor dynamic range, which makes images look flat and lifeless. The Lenovo Tab 4 10 Plus’s daylight pictures look fairly punchy and rich, worthy of a social network post if not printing out and hanging on the wall.
The relatively low 8MP resolution means you can’t crop images much before you lose clarity. However, we're pleasantly surprised by how well most of the shots taken hold up when viewed on a laptop screen. There’s a recurring blue skew and shadow detail could be better, but photos are respectable.
The actual experience of using the Lenovo Tab 4 10 Plus is not great, though, aside from having the large screen to check out images afterwards. Focusing is fairly slow, and while there’s an HDR mode it adds significant processing lag. This isn’t an immediate-feeling camera.
We also feel much less of a social stigma when using a smaller 8-inch tablet to take photos than a giant 10-inch one when out in public. These things just don’t feel made for photography, much as many people may use them to take photos.
Perfectly decent image quality is matched with very usable video too. The Lenovo Tab 4 10 Plus shoots at 1080p 30fps or at 720p.
That’s nothing special, but from the image quality alone you can tell Lenovo hasn’t just bunged in the cheapest 8MP sensor it could find. You can also re-focus during capture. There’s no software image stabilization, though, so if you walk around with the tablet shooting video it’ll look very juddery.
Around the front you get a 5MP selfie camera. Some cheaper tablets have just VGA sensors, whose images would look terrible on a 5-inch screen, let alone a 10-inch one. We’re once again perfectly happy with the Lenovo Tab 4 10 Plus’s selfies. In reasonable lighting, fine facial details like beard hairs make the cut.
Camera samples
