A2109 Screen, is it as bad as the reviews say?

[Bonobo]

Hi all,

I am contemplating my first Android tablet purchase and the A2109 has caught my eye. But all the reviews I have read (Android Authority, Mobiletechreviews etc.) say the screen really lets the device down.
Unfortunately, due to my circumstances, I can't get to a store to have a proper test of the tablet, so I was wondering what the opinion of owners of the tablet was, is it as bad as the reviews say? Do you regret the purchase? Or is it pretty good for the budget?

I will be using the tablet for web browsing, movies, games and reading books and magazines.

I currently have a Pentium 3 Thinkpad (So I'm happy with the Lenovo brand)with a 14" screen, but that's proving a bit long in the tooth now.

Could anyone post their own opinion/review, maybe with pics or a video?

Thanks in advance.

 

[vampirefo.]

The screen is very nice, tablet is great, as far regret only time will tell.
So far I am disappointed with Lenovo not with tablet just the company behind the tablet.
It is already march and no updates we only have 4.1 which most under $100 tablets have. A tablet at this price should have 4.2 period.
So basically Lenovo sucks, their tablet is great for 2012, but this is 2013.

 

[Bonobo]

So basically Lenovo sucks, their tablet is great for 2012, but this is 2013.

My budget is very 2012!

I'm currently in Bulgaria and the selection available here is not very good. You've got the big brands like ASUS and then you have Prestigio and MPMan. So for the money I can spend it's either the A2109 or perhaps the Prestigio Multipad 9.7 Ultra Duo (a 9.7" RK3066 tablet with an IPS screen, but the few reviews I can find on that say the screen is very dull), they are about the same price.

Thanks for your reply.

 

[vampirefo.]

I don't know anything about the other tablets you listed. The a2109 is a good tablet, the lack of software keeps it from being a great tablet.
This is my opinion, if Lenovo would release 4.2 for this tablet, it would be a great 2013 tablet.

 

[flopower1996]

Most high end tablets run 4.1 at the moment.

 

[vampirefo.]

Android 4.2 tablets in USA

Depends what you consider high end, to me high end tablets have 4.2.

 

[vampirefo.]

Double post.

 

[Linsalata28]

This screen is beautiful. The only way it would look remotely bad is if your holding it side by side with a tablet that has a better screen. It does have a glare if your out in the sun but IMO there aren't many that don't and you can get an anti glare screen protector if you are going to be using it in the sun often.
This is a great tablet even if you weren't looking at the price. Like vamp said though, it is a little disappointing that we don't get regular updates but for the price and quality of the tablet its not bad at all.
Hopefully vamp can bring us 4.2 [hint:hint] lol. :sly:
I don't know about the other tablet that you mentioned so I can't comment on it.

Sent from my IdeaTabA2109A using Tapatalk HD

 

[arbarnhart]

It's about the viewing angle. If I lay it flat on a desk out in front of me, it is very washed out. But just a slight tilt fixes that. Inside normal view angles it looks really good.

 

[ownjoouk]

I agree with the above. Screen is fine until you hold it at a dodgy angle but to watch at such angles would mean sitting on my head with my toes gripping the tablet.

 

[dieseltown]

The screen is much better than I anticipated prior to purchasing.. The viewing angles are sub par, and sometimes holding it in portrait, I get the wash out effect. However, I typically have it landscape, right in front of me or on a stand, and have no complaints at all.

I even have a Matte protector which makes it worse, and still have no issues.

 

[stal2k]

Think of it as a built in privacy screen lol. IM with everyone on this. Great screen but what the reviews are saying is true to an extent, like if you look at it dead straight in portrait mode it can seem washed. But a but of tilt fixes it, landscape is fine which is what you are in usually anyway. With the ROM and kernel you have on this site I think it's a beast personally. The hdmi output is such a great feature. Xbmc to your TV! For money I couldn't find a better buy. Tegra3 is a nice touch to.

Sent from my Motorola Galaxy s3 using Tapatalk 2

 

[drcrash]

dieseltown is right, it's better than the reviews say, and it's worse with a matte screen protector---and the reviews never really explain what's suboptimal about it.

Assuming you have it in landscape mode, it's got a pretty big sweet spot in terms of moving left and right, but a much smaller one in terms of moving up and down---if you tilt the top of the screen toward you a few degrees, it gets darker and more color saturated, and if you tilt it away a few degrees, it gets brighter and less saturated.

There is essentially no sweet spot in that axis---it's not clear what the "right" angle is to view it, just a continuous gradation of more saturated vs. brighter.

I got used to that very quickly, and unconsciously hold it at a "good enough" angle in landscape mode. 95 percent of the time, it seems like a very nice screen, even beautiful.

One silly problem is that the automatic brightness levels are too low, adjusting to ambient lighting to keep the screen just a little too dark. So I turn that off, and I put the brightness adjustment widget on the center home screen so I can turn the brightness up or down as needed easily.

Portrait mode is different. The continuous gradation of brightness-vs-saturation with the left-to-right angle means that the image in your left eye is always subtly different from the image in your right eye, and I find that noticeable when the stuff on the screen is mostly light-colored, and especially with a matte screen protector. (The matte texture introduces a fine "grain" that's hard to describe. In landscape mode it mostly looks like there's a bit of dust on the screen, but in portrait mode, it's got an odd depth to it, like a scintillation but static, somehow---it's not that it changes over time, but that it changes eye to eye all at once, and it's subtly noticeable but very hard to describe.)

Whether this matters to you likely depends on how much you use the tablet in portrait mode, e.g., as a single-page book reader. If I were buying a tablet intending to spend a lot of time reading ebooks, and I liked my text fairy large, this would probably not be the best choice. It also wouldn't be a great choice if you need the screen color-calibrated for fine color/contrast adjustments. (E.g., for reviewing or editing precise photo exposures.) For most casual photographic purposes, the problems with the a2109 aren't with the screen, but with the cameras. (They're not good in low light.)

As it is, I like the screen pretty well. I prefer to read most ebooks in two-column mode with small text (e.g., using Aldiko), and for most other purposes it's just fine. It's as high-res as you can expect on a machine in this price range---higher, really---and generally looks good.

 

[aniym]

It's better than the reviews say, but you might run into occasional annoyances because of the angles and the overall glossiness of the screen. I have an IPS screen tablet that I'm selling, so I have been able to compare and contrast the two directly. My opinion is that the A2109's screen is good enough for my uses in 90% of all instances. The times when it's a little annoying to use is during the daytime....even a small bit of natural sunlight (through a window, not outside) can cause the screen to become super reflective and hard to see...setting it to 100% brightness fixes that, but it's annoying nonetheless. The other issue is with angles. If you're holding it in your hand or placing it face up on a flat surface, it's on par with the brightness and clarity of an IPS screen. But if you put it on a tablet stand or hold it at certain angles, the colors get washed out....this is especially prominent when watching video...during web browsing, there's not too much of a difference.

All in all, the online reviews overstate how bad the screen is, but if you've used an IPS tablet, you WILL notice the difference. If you haven't, you're golden.