Lenovo's brawny Yoga Tab 13 debuts in the US

Lenovo is determined to make its presence felt in the US tablet market, and it’s doing so by launching one of its largest models to date. The tech firm has introduced five new Yoga Tab devices, four of which are headed to the US — including a rebadged version of the hefty Yoga Pad Pro.

The newly renamed Yoga Tab 13 centers on a 13-inch, 2,160 x 1,350 LCD that makes the Lenovo tablet not just a convenient media player, but also a helpful PC peripheral. Hook up the (thankfully included) micro-HDMI to USB cable and you can use the Yoga as a secondary monitor for your laptop. Accordingly, you can use the built-in kickstand to prop up the slate or hang it from the wall.

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Performance also hasn’t changed from the Yoga Pad Pro, although that’s not a bad thing. Lenovo still gives the US tablet a Snapdragon 870 chip, 8GB of RAM, an 8MP front camera, and either 128GB or 256GB of (non-expandable) storage. You can expect up to 12 hours of video playback from the 10,000mAh battery, although your real-life usage is likely to skew that figure.

The Yoga Tab 13 ships in July at a starting price of $679.99. That makes it significantly more expensive the iPad Air, although Lenovo is clearly betting that the larger screen and monitor functionality will give its tablet the edge.

Lenovo has more affordable tablet options as well. The Yoga Tab 11 is a smaller, more modest counterpart to the 13-inch machine with a 2,000 x 1,200 display, a MediaTek Helio G90T chip, and 8MP front and rear cameras. It comes in versions with 4GB of RAM/128GB of storage or 8GB/256GB. Should that still be excessive, a Lenovo Tab P11 Plus (pictured at middle) offers a similar screen and processor, but no kickstand and maximums of 6GB of RAM and 128GB of space. You’ll also get a 13MP rear camera to go with the 8MP front shooter.

Two smaller tablet options are also on the way, although Lenovo is bringing just one of them to the US. The America-bound Lenovo Tab M7 is a reading-friendly 7-inch device with an 600p screen, a Helio MT8166 chip, 2GB of RAM, 32GB of expandable storage, a 2MP rear camera, and a 2MP front sensor. The 8-inch Tab M8 boasts an 800p screen, a Helio P22T, up to 3GB of RAM and a sharper 5MP rear camera, although it’s only due to reach “select markets” (that is, not the US) in 2021.

All the smaller Lenovo tablet variants are decidedly more affordable. The Yoga Tab 11 will start at $319.99 when it ships in August, while the Lenovo Tab P11 Plus arrives that same month for $259.99. The Tab M7 is clearly the bargain option, starting at $109.99 when it appears in July.