As always, I like to preface with a disclaimer so that people know where I'm coming from when they judge my reviews and can say, "oh, he's just a noob to win8.. no wonder he doesn't know."
Disclaimer(s):
- This is my first tablet, though I've been running windows mobile devices for as long as my sig shows.
- This is my first win 8 device (8, 8.1, ANY type of RT), though I've been on the windows platform since 95 when I started building my own, 15 years ago.
- While I played with it a good several hours... I've only used it for several hours.
- I loathe apple products and am not an Android ******, though I do like a lot of google products.
- I'm an avid gamer, but also a web/sql developer, so I need my device to do a lot of stuff.
Why so many disclaimers you ask? Well... I'm not really impressed with the 2520... and I was really hoping I would be. I'm definitely not going to give it up, because it was only $200 and I need to get used to win 8, but it's falling short so far.
Let's start with the things that are good:
- Beautiful display! Very nice screen, great viewing angles.
- HD youtube vids were playing with ease and looked VERY good.
- Because it pretty much matches the specs of the surface 2, I'm hoping I can do a lot of these things (specifically the voice stuff) with it: Why I Love my Microsoft Surface 2 : Tips and Tricks - YouTube
- The speakers are placed perfectly and are very powerful! My gf was playing something on her laptop and I started playing the same clip to compare quality on the 2520. I heard hers loudly, so I turned mine up more. The 2520 got VERY loud and drowned her laptop out, and I thought it might be just too much noise. However, when I turned it to her to show her how loud it got, I noticed that the noise cut down considerably! This means that the person using the 2520 can get a GREAT audio experience personally (or with a few shoulder to shoulder friends), while having low impact on those around them. However this also means that it wouldn't be the best device for sharing audio with a crowd.
- The form factor is very nice. I got to play with a co-worker's surface for awhile, and it felt pretty boxy. The Lumia feels great to hold for hours.
- The battery charge!! WOOW. People said it went up to a full charge in an hour, and I thought, "no way a 8000 mAh gets charged in an hour!" Um. yeah.. it does.
- Because you are logged in with a federated logon (read: windows live account), any web pages needing a federated logon default to the one you're logged into the device with. This is cool for a lot of things, though being a MS Dynamics CRM developer and wanting to look at different online clients can be kind of a pain. I'm guessing most of the rest of you aren't though, so this feature is a good thing
.
Things that are so-so:
- The weight factor. My 1520, which is a beast in it's own right, felt light as a pebble after using the 2520 for awhile, but I think that would be similar to most tablet experiences. It's definitely lighter than the surface, however looking up the specs of the 2520 compared to the air and galaxy note 10.1, I'm kind of wondering where the added weight comes from. Apple obviously strips down a lot of features to save weight, but the note 10.1 has more features and a bigger battery, yet is still lighter. It leaves me scratching my head.
- The construction. I've read a handful reviews that said the plastic on the back felt "flimsy." I did notice some give, but probably only *because* I read those reviews. It's certainly not as sturdy as the surface, but the build materials still feel pretty good, as long as you're not actively trying to bend it in half. I think I would be pretty worried if someone sat on it though, and I was hoping I could allow kids to play with it, but the give in the unit gave me a second pause on that note. I don't have enough experience with other tablets to compare to, so it stays in the middle column for now.
The not so good:
- Fingerprint (and fingergunk) magnet! I saw this in a lot of reviews and hoped it was only a nitpicky item.. but MAN does this thing collect gunk! I'm trying to swipe and I notice all kinds of debris on the screen.. and I keep my hands very clean! My lumia 1520 feels infinitely better in this regard.
- Crashes, and lots of them. Had several while trying to run Dragons Adventure, which is supposed to be one of the big games to promote the device. Crashed while loading, crashed while trying to turn GPS on (SEVERAL times), crashed once out of nowhere. Had the camera crash on me and lock the unit up for a bit when I tried to force quit it (after it crashed, the light was still on in the front because the program was still running, even though completely unresponsive). Crashed when going to the networking panel to check and see if bluetooth/NFC was on. Some crashes just crash back to desktop, some lock the device up.. it all depends. I've had quite a few crashes back to the desktop, even of the basic programs (video/photo/camera).
- Video codecs out of the box are pretty poor... no avi, no MPEG4, no asf... basically just MOV and WMV. For a phone this isn't even acceptable anymore. I've read some reviews (though buried and hard to find) and apparently this is just part of what you get w/windows 8/rt. No clue how someone like MS can offer a full office suite of their latest products, but leaves out common codecs in use for decades. I'm hoping I can DL a codec pack, but I hear that RT has a problem installing things that aren't directly from the app store.
- Brightness is an issue while viewing videos. I was viewing a rather dark video and tried to change the brightness. It changed while I had the settings panel pulled in from the side, but went back to dark when it went back to the movie. Of course Xbox video didn't have an option for brightness by itself, which brings me to my next point...
- Settings for applications are practically non-existent. I have more settings on any given windows phone app compared to win8 apps. I don't get that.
- PC Settings are NOOOOOOT intuitive! I honestly do not have the space and time to go into all the problems with the arrangement of PC Settings items as well as what all is missing. Some of it can be handled by going to the control panel in the OS itself, but that's a stupid level of tediousness to get to, and it's sad that I have to go to 2 different places to edit global settings. These should all be stored in one place.
- Photos don't seem to want to pull from other devices. As mentioned earlier, I pulled some movies off a computer on my network, because I could tell xbox video to look in those spots (same is available for music). Same is not available for photos... don't know why. This is a pain because I want to customize my tablet, but now I have to go to the OS, find my comp on the network, browse to the correct folder, grab the photo and put it in the correct folder on my tablet, then make the changes. Once again, a stupid level of tediousness. Also, this is apparently the same process I need to go through to SHARE photos. Can't even send them directly from the tablet to my skydrive!
- No back/quit buttons. Being an avid WP fan, I kept wanting a back button or now (with the addition of handy red x's made available on my 1520 via the Lumia Black release) at least x's to kill a program. If I want to make sure a program is gone, I have to go into the task manager and kill it. For now I just pin the task manager to the task bar, which is kind of foolish IMO.
- Which brings me to my next point... memory management is terrible! 50-60% is constantly being taken up, even with little to nothing going on. 37 processes just kind of running all the time, and they definitely don't add up to 60% memory, so I'm wondering where the drain is. I have used two windows mobile devices, and the biggest problem with them was the fact that MS tried to cram an entire OS on a tiny device. Windows phone was a major upgrade because they designed an OS for a mobile device. Now it seems they went back to the way of windows mobile, but they still don't have the internal RAM to run it as an OS! I just added up memory from all listed processes, and it adds up to 277.23MB. Where is the extra drain coming from????
- Seems to lose connectivity to my network. Last night I could see other PCs on my network. This morning I had to restart the device for it to see anything.
- Fixing problems seems to be a bit of a task. On my desktop, I'm used to hitting my windows key and then typing in for what I want (i.e. "update" to get to windows update, "notepad" to get to notepad, "cmd" for a command promt, "programs" to look at the list of programs and features installed).
- Programs do not install properly to the point I'm afraid to pay for anything for fear I won't even be able to use my own purchase. I've had to reinstall 3 apps now because they were messed up when they were originally installed.. including one that shipped with the tablet! Of course, there are some that never install properly, like this one:
- With that, the apps that are available seem pretty few and far between, and lackluster when installed, and I'm one of the crowd who hardly uses apps for anything and stands up for the WP market. The WPCentral app was pretty worthless, which kind of surprised me.
- Finally, one tiny little nit-picky item; I wish the numeric pad were oriented like a numeric pad, instead of a phone dial pad :/.
Reclaimed/readjusted complaints (read: my own stupidity)
- At first, I thought stored video playback was pretty bad. This was due to viewing video clips from videos I had saved to my desktop HDD. My xbox 360 made them look pretty close to HD, while I caught a lot of fuzziness on the 2520. To be fair to it, I played the same clips on my actual computer and they looked just as bad. So... point BACK to the 2520, and apparently an extra point awarded to my 360 because of it's video processing!
I really want to at least like this device, and I'm assuming a lot of my problems are with windows 8 and/or windows 8.1RT. Overall, the design and build of the 2520 itself is fairly solid, which is to be expected from Nokia at this point. I could have used a slightly more rigid outer body and DEFINITELY more RAM, because those are two physical things that Nokia could control, but other than that, it's a good build. Audio is great, video is great, buttons are decent quality and the fact that most other top end devices have better resolution doesn't really affect me when it comes to a tablet, IMO. Windows 8, on the other hand, has a LONG way to go...
Disclaimer(s):
- This is my first tablet, though I've been running windows mobile devices for as long as my sig shows.
- This is my first win 8 device (8, 8.1, ANY type of RT), though I've been on the windows platform since 95 when I started building my own, 15 years ago.
- While I played with it a good several hours... I've only used it for several hours.
- I loathe apple products and am not an Android ******, though I do like a lot of google products.
- I'm an avid gamer, but also a web/sql developer, so I need my device to do a lot of stuff.
Why so many disclaimers you ask? Well... I'm not really impressed with the 2520... and I was really hoping I would be. I'm definitely not going to give it up, because it was only $200 and I need to get used to win 8, but it's falling short so far.
Let's start with the things that are good:
- Beautiful display! Very nice screen, great viewing angles.
- HD youtube vids were playing with ease and looked VERY good.
- Because it pretty much matches the specs of the surface 2, I'm hoping I can do a lot of these things (specifically the voice stuff) with it: Why I Love my Microsoft Surface 2 : Tips and Tricks - YouTube
- The speakers are placed perfectly and are very powerful! My gf was playing something on her laptop and I started playing the same clip to compare quality on the 2520. I heard hers loudly, so I turned mine up more. The 2520 got VERY loud and drowned her laptop out, and I thought it might be just too much noise. However, when I turned it to her to show her how loud it got, I noticed that the noise cut down considerably! This means that the person using the 2520 can get a GREAT audio experience personally (or with a few shoulder to shoulder friends), while having low impact on those around them. However this also means that it wouldn't be the best device for sharing audio with a crowd.
- The form factor is very nice. I got to play with a co-worker's surface for awhile, and it felt pretty boxy. The Lumia feels great to hold for hours.
- The battery charge!! WOOW. People said it went up to a full charge in an hour, and I thought, "no way a 8000 mAh gets charged in an hour!" Um. yeah.. it does.
- Because you are logged in with a federated logon (read: windows live account), any web pages needing a federated logon default to the one you're logged into the device with. This is cool for a lot of things, though being a MS Dynamics CRM developer and wanting to look at different online clients can be kind of a pain. I'm guessing most of the rest of you aren't though, so this feature is a good thing
.Things that are so-so:
- The weight factor. My 1520, which is a beast in it's own right, felt light as a pebble after using the 2520 for awhile, but I think that would be similar to most tablet experiences. It's definitely lighter than the surface, however looking up the specs of the 2520 compared to the air and galaxy note 10.1, I'm kind of wondering where the added weight comes from. Apple obviously strips down a lot of features to save weight, but the note 10.1 has more features and a bigger battery, yet is still lighter. It leaves me scratching my head.
- The construction. I've read a handful reviews that said the plastic on the back felt "flimsy." I did notice some give, but probably only *because* I read those reviews. It's certainly not as sturdy as the surface, but the build materials still feel pretty good, as long as you're not actively trying to bend it in half. I think I would be pretty worried if someone sat on it though, and I was hoping I could allow kids to play with it, but the give in the unit gave me a second pause on that note. I don't have enough experience with other tablets to compare to, so it stays in the middle column for now.
The not so good:
- Fingerprint (and fingergunk) magnet! I saw this in a lot of reviews and hoped it was only a nitpicky item.. but MAN does this thing collect gunk! I'm trying to swipe and I notice all kinds of debris on the screen.. and I keep my hands very clean! My lumia 1520 feels infinitely better in this regard.
- Crashes, and lots of them. Had several while trying to run Dragons Adventure, which is supposed to be one of the big games to promote the device. Crashed while loading, crashed while trying to turn GPS on (SEVERAL times), crashed once out of nowhere. Had the camera crash on me and lock the unit up for a bit when I tried to force quit it (after it crashed, the light was still on in the front because the program was still running, even though completely unresponsive). Crashed when going to the networking panel to check and see if bluetooth/NFC was on. Some crashes just crash back to desktop, some lock the device up.. it all depends. I've had quite a few crashes back to the desktop, even of the basic programs (video/photo/camera).
- Video codecs out of the box are pretty poor... no avi, no MPEG4, no asf... basically just MOV and WMV. For a phone this isn't even acceptable anymore. I've read some reviews (though buried and hard to find) and apparently this is just part of what you get w/windows 8/rt. No clue how someone like MS can offer a full office suite of their latest products, but leaves out common codecs in use for decades. I'm hoping I can DL a codec pack, but I hear that RT has a problem installing things that aren't directly from the app store.
- Brightness is an issue while viewing videos. I was viewing a rather dark video and tried to change the brightness. It changed while I had the settings panel pulled in from the side, but went back to dark when it went back to the movie. Of course Xbox video didn't have an option for brightness by itself, which brings me to my next point...
- Settings for applications are practically non-existent. I have more settings on any given windows phone app compared to win8 apps. I don't get that.
- PC Settings are NOOOOOOT intuitive! I honestly do not have the space and time to go into all the problems with the arrangement of PC Settings items as well as what all is missing. Some of it can be handled by going to the control panel in the OS itself, but that's a stupid level of tediousness to get to, and it's sad that I have to go to 2 different places to edit global settings. These should all be stored in one place.
- Photos don't seem to want to pull from other devices. As mentioned earlier, I pulled some movies off a computer on my network, because I could tell xbox video to look in those spots (same is available for music). Same is not available for photos... don't know why. This is a pain because I want to customize my tablet, but now I have to go to the OS, find my comp on the network, browse to the correct folder, grab the photo and put it in the correct folder on my tablet, then make the changes. Once again, a stupid level of tediousness. Also, this is apparently the same process I need to go through to SHARE photos. Can't even send them directly from the tablet to my skydrive!
- No back/quit buttons. Being an avid WP fan, I kept wanting a back button or now (with the addition of handy red x's made available on my 1520 via the Lumia Black release) at least x's to kill a program. If I want to make sure a program is gone, I have to go into the task manager and kill it. For now I just pin the task manager to the task bar, which is kind of foolish IMO.
- Which brings me to my next point... memory management is terrible! 50-60% is constantly being taken up, even with little to nothing going on. 37 processes just kind of running all the time, and they definitely don't add up to 60% memory, so I'm wondering where the drain is. I have used two windows mobile devices, and the biggest problem with them was the fact that MS tried to cram an entire OS on a tiny device. Windows phone was a major upgrade because they designed an OS for a mobile device. Now it seems they went back to the way of windows mobile, but they still don't have the internal RAM to run it as an OS! I just added up memory from all listed processes, and it adds up to 277.23MB. Where is the extra drain coming from????
- Seems to lose connectivity to my network. Last night I could see other PCs on my network. This morning I had to restart the device for it to see anything.
- Fixing problems seems to be a bit of a task. On my desktop, I'm used to hitting my windows key and then typing in for what I want (i.e. "update" to get to windows update, "notepad" to get to notepad, "cmd" for a command promt, "programs" to look at the list of programs and features installed).
- Programs do not install properly to the point I'm afraid to pay for anything for fear I won't even be able to use my own purchase. I've had to reinstall 3 apps now because they were messed up when they were originally installed.. including one that shipped with the tablet! Of course, there are some that never install properly, like this one:
- With that, the apps that are available seem pretty few and far between, and lackluster when installed, and I'm one of the crowd who hardly uses apps for anything and stands up for the WP market. The WPCentral app was pretty worthless, which kind of surprised me.
- Finally, one tiny little nit-picky item; I wish the numeric pad were oriented like a numeric pad, instead of a phone dial pad :/.
Reclaimed/readjusted complaints (read: my own stupidity)
- At first, I thought stored video playback was pretty bad. This was due to viewing video clips from videos I had saved to my desktop HDD. My xbox 360 made them look pretty close to HD, while I caught a lot of fuzziness on the 2520. To be fair to it, I played the same clips on my actual computer and they looked just as bad. So... point BACK to the 2520, and apparently an extra point awarded to my 360 because of it's video processing!
I really want to at least like this device, and I'm assuming a lot of my problems are with windows 8 and/or windows 8.1RT. Overall, the design and build of the 2520 itself is fairly solid, which is to be expected from Nokia at this point. I could have used a slightly more rigid outer body and DEFINITELY more RAM, because those are two physical things that Nokia could control, but other than that, it's a good build. Audio is great, video is great, buttons are decent quality and the fact that most other top end devices have better resolution doesn't really affect me when it comes to a tablet, IMO. Windows 8, on the other hand, has a LONG way to go...
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