Hands on: Nokia Lumia 2520 review

 

Not yet rated

For

• Strong design
• Low price

Against

• Windows RT underpowered
• Slightly unbalanced design

It's a tablet that kind of wants to be a phone

Nokia's finally done what we've been thinking it will do for years: brought out a tablet.
Alright, you could argue that the likes of the N800 were pretty close, but in the Lumia 2520 it's finally got something to rival the iPad.

Perhaps it won't do so on sales. Nor on user opinion. But it's the first salvo in a war its newly-acquired sugar daddy, Microsoft, desperately wants it to fight in.

And on paper, it doesn't look terrible. Say what you want about Windows RT 8.1 (and you can reasonably say a fair amount of nasty things) it doesn't stink as a tablet OS.

On the Lumia 2520 it's fast, fluid and flicks along happily under the finger. The sometimes unresponsive Windows key happily takes you back and forth between apps, and there will be a number of users becoming much more au fait with Windows 8 in general.

That's down to the improved Snapdragon 800 processor, clocked at an impressive 2.2GHz to allow you to do what you need to on this tablet.

They may miss some of the functionality of the full fat version on this cut-down OS for the tablet, but the Lumia 2520 does a lot more than the Surface 2, especially when it comes to design.
Like it or loathe it, the Lumia unibody polycarbonate design at least has some decent thinking behind it, and as soon as you pick up the 2520 you're struck by how premium it feels - albeit it in a user-friendly, rather than businessfolk-professional, way.

The rounded edges feel nice in the hand, although the weight feels a little unbalanced... holding it one hand isn't the most pleasant experience around when compared to the likes of the Sony Xperia Tablet Z.
There's no expandable memory on offer, but there are a multitude of slots, including an HDMI out and two USB 3.0 slots when used with the optional battery cover. On top of this, you'll get SkyDrive storage to fling files up and down from this tablet.

Battery life is clocked at 11 hours, although this can be improved through the battery cover, which Nokia is shifting for $149 (around £95 or AUS$155). However, this adds considerable heft to the device, taking it from something portable to definitely needing a bag to cart around.
However, it also comes with a keyboard attached, with lots of lovely clicking magnets to turn the Lumia 2520 into something approaching a laptop at times.

The screen is supposed to be less than 10% reflective, which did seem to stand up to scrutiny when watching video.
The screen actually is really impressive, with both brightness and colour reproduction looking great on the 10.1-inch device. However, it's only 1080p, which means it can't hold a candle to the iPad or Google Nexus 10 (although the candle's colours would look good).

The reflective nature of the screen is higher in general use though, with the Lumia 2520 proving to be one of the hardest devices to photograph thanks to the glossy Gorilla Glass 2.

Nokia has been hard at work customising its large-screen device, believing that it can take the tablet from a primarily sofa-based experience to something that will go all around with you when you need to work.
To that end, it's popped a 3G / 4G micro Sim slot on the side to allow you to take the device on the go, something Nokia believes the networks of this world ar clamouring for as they endeavour to farm more data out to users.

Early verdict

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