Lenovo calls its new Ideapad Miix 700 “recognizably different” with a “progressive design,” but it’s hard to see it as anything but a Microsoft Surface clone. Designed with Windows 10 in mind, the Miix 700 is a 12-inch tablet with an adjustable kickstand at the rear. That all sounds similar to Microsoft’s Surface Pro 3, and if you look at the Miix 700 then you’ll see the similarities aren’t minor.
They start with the kickstand. The Miix 700’s hinge is one of the more interesting aspects of this tablet. Lenovo calls it a watchband hinge, and it works in a similar way to the recent Yoga hinges available on the company’s convertible tablet. It also works very much like the Surface Pro 3, but during our brief testing, it doesn’t seem to resist as well as Microsoft’s tablet or feel as sturdy and strong.
While the kickstand looks similar, Lenovo has gone a step further and created a keyboard that even magnetically snaps onto the screen of the Miix 700. That’s something Microsoft did with its latest Surface Pro 3 keyboard to improve lap use, but Lenovo’s feels thicker and bulkier in the process. There’s even a stylus that attaches to a spare USB port. With the kickstand, keyboard, and stylus in place, it’s hard to tell the Miix 700 and Surface Pro 3 apart. We’ve seen Surface clones before, but not by the world’s biggest PC maker.
Similarities aside, Lenovo is shipping its Miix 700 with Intel’s latest Skylake processors. Models go all the way up to the Core i7 coupled with up to 8GB of RAM. There’s even the option of adding LTE or Intel’s RealSense 3D camera if you want to capture depth images from the rear camera. Lenovo is planning to release its Ideapad Miix 700 in November priced from £460.
