What is it?  The Lenovo A2109A is a 9.3” diagonal screen that comes with Android’s “Ice Cream Sandwich” operating system.  It has a very fast processor, which makes loading graphics and web pages a real snap.  It has some of the best stereo speakers we’ve heard on a tablet.  It boasts 10 hour battery life, and has a very viewable screen, though not a stunner.  The device comes with Lenovo’s own overlay, which features some very slick transitions between pages of tiles and icons.  It has both front facing and rear facing cameras, though the rear camera is adequate at 3 megapixels, it is not worth writing home about.  It also comes with a hidden SD card slot so you can expand the memory.  And it has a micro HDMI output if you want to feed HD video to a television or other device. The tablet weighs in at 1.3 pounds, and is thinner than an iPad though by no means the thinnest tablet we’ve seen.

Is it Boomer Friendly?  I found the tablet easy to navigate, but the on-screen tiles and icons should be bigger.  In particular the icon to open up all the apps is tiny as is the magnifying glass for the search function.  As always, one of my major beefs with Android is that while you can zoom in on a web page, you cannot zoom in to make the home page icons larger.  That’s not Lenovo’s fault – it’s Google’s.

Frustration Factor? – very low.  Once I went through the usual rigmarole of setting up my Google account, I was off to the races.

Is It Worth the Money?  The Lenovo IdeaTab A2109A will set you back just about $300  That makes it cheaper than many of the 10” tablets we’ve seen, cheaper than the iPad, but about $100 more than the smaller Nexus 7.  This is a solidly built tablet, with good functionality.  Not the best in breed, but no slouch either.