Nokia Lumia 2520

Nokia Lumia 2520 Review – The Lumia 2520 is Nokia’s first tablet in years and the first to run Windows RT. It’s nothing if not eye-catching – the curvy, glossy plastic build is available in either red or black. While it’s not as rigid as the metal iPad Air, it’s still robust enough and, with 32GB of storage and built-in 4G, it’s £179 cheaper than the equivalent Air.

Nokia Lumia 2520, A colourful tablet with built-in 4G as standard

 

The Lumia 2520 weighs 615g, which is reasonably light for a 10in tablet, although there are other similarly sized tablets that are lighter still. Battery life was very good at just under 12 hours when playing videos continuously. Because the 2520 runs Windows RT rather than the full version of Windows 8, it can’t run existing Desktop programs. The exception to this rule is the preinstalled copy of Microsoft Office 2013, which is a very useful extra. It can run apps downloaded from Microsoft’s app store, but there are far fewer apps than are available for the iPad, and their quality isn’t great.

If you’re looking to use Office a lot, then a keyboard would be a wise purchase. Any Bluetooth model should work or one of Nokia’s own keyboards that connect to the dedicated port on the bottom of the tablet. The Modern tile interface was a joy to use on a touchscreen that was incredibly responsive and free from lag or judder. The 2520 is also a fast performer, thanks to the quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor. It had no trouble handling either complex web apps or apps with detailed 3D graphics. The 10in screen has a 1920×1080-pixel resolution, less sharp than the higher-resolution screens on the iPad Air and Kindle Fire HDX 8.9. If the 32GB of storage isn’t sufficient you can supplement it using micro SD cards. Unlike most tablets, the 2520 features a micro USB3 port, so copying files to the tablet from your PC is fast.

You can also connect USB peripherals using a USB On The Go adapter (£3.50 from Expansys), although this only works at slower USB2 speeds. One quibble – it’s far too easy to accidentally plug headphones into the power socket and vice versa as the two ports look almost identical. Despite the ongoing paucity of Windows RT apps, the Nokia Lumia 2520 is a good tablet if you want plenty of storage, a USB port and built-in 4G at a low price. If you can make do without the USB port, however, the equivalent Amazon Kindle Fire HDX 8.9 is slightly more expensive but 231g lighter, making it the better 4G tablet by a whisker.

Spesification

• 10.1in 1920×1080-pixel touchscreen
• QualcommSnapdragon 800 quad-core processor
• 2GBmemory
• 32GB storage
• Windows RT 8.1
• 615g
• 168x267x9mm (HxWxD) • One-year warranty