In a day and age where most Android brands are happily content with slapping mediocre specs onto a compact tablet and calling it a day, it might be a bit hard to come across tablets which don’t necessarily sacrifice performance and hardware for size. Take for example Lenovo’s new Legion Y700 Ultra-Control Edition tablet, which features a list of impressive hardware components that make it a formidable challenger to a throne mostly occupied by the iPad Mini.
As you can probably tell by the “Legion” branding, it’s also designed for heavy-duty gaming performance. So what exactly is Lenovo trying to sell with the Ultra-Control Edition? Let’s take a look.
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As far as looks are concerned, the Y700 Ultra-Control more or less shares a look that’s seen on a lot of other tablets these days, iPads excluded. There’s a dual-camera setup with an accented island on the rear panel accompanied by a bold and striking “Legion” logo, although unlike other gaming-centric devices like the ASUS ROG phones for example, it doesn’t add a lot of angular styling. Nevertheless, it manages to look a lot better than your run-of-the-mill compact Android tablet.
It’s a compact device thanks to its relatively-small screen size – there’s an 8.8-inch display upfront, and it features a super-smooth 165Hz refresh rate, something that isn’t a common sight on a lot of Android tablets. It’s relatively sharp at 2560 x 1600 pixels, and comes with 343 PPI density. All in all it’s a solid display, and fits in nicely with the tablet’s intended purpose as a gaming device.
Of course another big highlight is its processing power – beating inside the Y700 Ultra-Control is none other than Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip. Sure, it’s not the latest 8 Elite flagship SoC, but it’s nevertheless an impressive chip which has time and again proven its worth especially when it comes to gaming. It’s accompanied by 12GB of RAM and 256GB of internal storage, which are decent sizes in 2024. There’s also a slightly souped-up variant that features 16GB of RAM and double the storage at 512GB.
Of course considering all the gaming that’s going to be done on the tablet, Lenovo has equipped it with a 6,550 mAh capacity battery. It’s not the largest battery we’ve seen on a tablet, but given its overall compact size it isn’t too bad, and should be enough for most gaming sessions with the power efficiency of the 8 Gen 3.
As for pricing and availability, it should be noted that the Legion Y700 Ultra-Control is currently an exclusive device for Chinese markets, so it might be harder than usual to track down a unit, unless you’re willing to buy one and ship it over to the UK. That’s not mentioning the possible differences in software, something that’s often seen on Chinese variants of Android devices. It’s priced starting at around £370 when converted.
