The Lenovo Tab 3 7 Essential (8GB) was easy to use for a wide variety of functions. It was easy to move from screen to screen using finger swipes, and to move app icons among screens. The onscreen keyboard may be used in "gesture" mode to type by swiping to each letter.
The rear-facing camera was only fair in performance. Photos can be displayed full height without interference from the navigation bar. Turning from portrait to landscape while reading a book worked well. A voice-typing feature lets you dictate emails and text documents. You can sync and transfer files to and from a PC using USB. The memory card was more difficult than most to insert and remove.
The display quality was very good overall. Colors were accurately reproduced, realistic, and natural-looking. The screen was brighter than on most tablets and readability in daylight was good. Viewing angle was extremely wide in landscape orientation, making it easy to share viewing of photos or video with several people. Viewing angle was quite wide in portrait orientation, making it easy to share the screen with another person.
Touch response was excellent. The capacitive touchscreen responds to a light finger touch, and allows multiple fingers to perform gesture actions. Moving objects and using finger gestures is easy and precise. Icons were easy to move and place precisely.
This tablet has some useful features - see the "About" section for more details. There is full access to the Google Play app market, with a large and varied selection of apps. There is also access to a large media market through Google Play, for downloading movies, music and books.
There are a variety of sensors to provide positional and environmental info to apps and games. These include a global positioning system (GPS) receiver to locate the user geographically and allow the use of navigation apps, and an accelerometer to give motion feedback to apps.
This tablet ranks high in portability among tablets in the 7- to 8-inch category. Its battery life of 10 hours is middling for tablets. It's compact for its screen size, and at 0.65 pounds, it's a very lightweight tablet for its size.
