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Lenovo's Yoga Tab 3 Pro can project a 70-inch image on your wall

Lenovo is doubling down on pico-projector-equipped tablets with the new Yoga Tab 3 Pro, which can spit out a 70-inch image. That's a pretty decent step up from its predecessor's 50-inch projector. Otherwise, though, the new Android tablet is just a further refinement of Lenovo's unique tablet design. It has a rotating hinge that serves as a kickstand and also gives you something to grip onto when holding the Yoga Tab 3 Pro with one hand. While that hinge makes it a bit bulkier than most other tablets, it also packs in a huge 10,200mAh battery, which Lenovo says will last for around 18 hours of typical usage. Curiously, Lenovo chose to step down from the Yoga Tablet 2 Pro's 13-inch screen: The new model sports a 10-inch Quad HD display. The tablet market is rough, especially for the Android arena, so it seems like Lenovo is experimenting to see what consumers like best.

Under the hood, the Yoga Tab 3 Pro is powered by a quad-core Intel Atom x5-Z8500 processor and 2GB of RAM. There's a 13-megapixel camera on the rear and a 5MP front-facing shooter, along with four JBL speakers on the front. Overall, Lenovo is positioning it as the ideal entertainment tablet -- one that can last pretty much all day and also share content easily with your friends. We didn't get to test out the projector capability, but being a pico unit it wouldn't hold a candle to a dedicated projector. Still, it's better than nothing when you want to watch cat videos in a group.

And what of Lenovo's other tablets? There are also new 8-inch and 10-inch Yoga Tab 3 models, but they've been downgraded from last year's devices. Whereas the Yoga Tab 2 lineup all had 1080p screens, Lenovo bumped the newer models back down to 1,200 x 800 displays (a bit higher than 720p). They're also running quad-core 1.3GHz Qualcomm chips, instead of Intel Atom processors. That means you're stuck with Android; there's no longer an option to run Windows.

If I had to guess, I'd say the spec changes were likely about cost savings. Indeed, the 8-inch Yoga Tab 3 will sell for $169 when it lands in October, while the 10-inch model will go for $199 in November. That's around $70 to $100 less than the launch pricing for the last models.

Dana Wollman contributed to this report.


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