Lenovo Miix 510
A cheaper Surface Pro clone, but note its flaws before you’re lured in by the price
SCORE ✪✪✪✪✪ PRICE £707 (£848 inc VAT) from shop.bt.com
Aless expensive sibling of the Miix 720, the Miix 510 hopes to give you a taste of the premium 2-in-1 experience at a lower price. However, it’s not hard to spot signs of the reduced budget. The type cover has the same faux-leather style as the 720’s, but feels thinner and less luxurious. Meanwhile, the keyboard loses its backlighting, there are fewer connectivity options and the screen drops in resolution from 2,880 x 1,920 to 1,900 x 1,200.
Don’t be too disappointed, though. Clipped onto the tablet section at a raised typing angle, the keyboard cover bounces more than the Miix 720’s or the Surface 2’s, but it has the same comfortable, spacious layout and a crisp action. The touchpad may be smaller with an odd, rough surface, but it’s effective enough in general Windows use, while the touchscreen works brilliantly with the optional Active Pen, which is sensitive enough to handle some creative work.
While the Miix 510’s screen can’t match the 720’s for definition or brightness – it topped out at 335cd/m² in our tests – it’s still sharp with lovely rich, vibrant colours. Don’t expect photographer-friendly levels of accuracy, though, with an average Delta E of 2.7. Sound is somewhat disappointing: bright and clear at low volumes but it grows shrill as you push the levels up.
The Miix 510 has a single USB 3 port along with one USB-C, but curiously the latter isn’t used for charging, forcing you to use a proprietary power connection instead. With the only other connection a headphone output, you’ll need either an adapter or Miracast if you want to connect to an external display.
The Miix 510 comes in a few configurations, scaling up from a cheap and cheerful Core i3 with 4GB of RAM to a Core i5 with 8GB. Our sample arrived with a Core i5-7200U, 4GB of RAM and a 128GB SSD, and while this left it languishing near the bottom of our benchmarks table, there’s still enough power here for any mainstream app. It’s just a shame that it has such a noisy fan. Battery life also lags behind, with the Miix 510 only just scraping through six hours of video playback.
All of this adds up to a decent, cut-price Surface Pro alternative, but one that can’t hold pace with the more serious contenders.