Lenovo clones the iPad Pro with the $610 P12 Pro

Android tablets are coming back—honestly—and next out of the gate with a flagship iPad Pro-style tablet (after Xiaomi) is Lenovo. Say hello to the Lenovo Tab P12 Pro, a $609.99 high-end Android tablet with an optional pen, kickstand case, and clip-on keyboard.

In the low-competition world of Android tablets, the P12 Pro looks pretty good. A 12.6-inch, 2500×1600 (16:10) OLED display dominates the front of the device, while the frame and back are aluminum. It’s rare to see the Snapdragon 870 SoC that powers the device, but the chip represents a small clock increase to the Snapdragon 865 from 2020 flagship smartphones. It’s a 7 nm chip with four Cortex A77 cores and four Cortex A55 cores. The starter model comes with 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, and an upgraded SKU comes with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.

There’s a 10,200 mAh battery, a fingerprint reader integrated into the side power button, a USB-C port with 45 W Qualcomm Quick Charge 4.0 compatibility, Wi-Fi up to version 6 (802.11ax) with a 2×2 MIMO antenna, and a microSD slot. There are four speakers, but you’ll need to use the included USB-C-to-3.5 mm adapter if you want to use normal headphones. For cameras, you get a front 8 MP sensor and a ToF sensor (presumably for face unlock), plus two rear cameras, a 13 MP main camera and a 5 MP wide-angle. The device ships with Android 11.

If you can’t tell from the pictures, there are a few accessories for the P12 Pro, none of which we have pricing info for. Four pogo pins on the bottom of the tablet handle power and communication with the clip-on keyboard. This is a full-size keyboard and trackpad combo, and Lenovo is promising “a satisfying 1.3 mm key travel with a compact 19.0 mm key pitch reminiscent of our beloved, bouncier keyboard technologies.” That’s on par with many of Lenovo’s laptop keyboards. The “Lenovo Precision Pen 3” can magnetically attach to the side of the tablet, where it can be wirelessly charged. You can also use the pen buttons as a remote control for the camera or music player. A kickstand folio case is available as well.

With the P12 Pro, Lenovo is also launching “Project Unity,” a Windows and Android pairing system that lets you use your Lenovo tablet as a wireless second monitor for your Lenovo Windows PC. If you’re wedded to the Lenovo hardware ecosystem, you can do things like sharing documents across devices or using pen input on your Windows PC via the Android tablet.

There are still a lot of pricing questions for the P12 Pro and its accessories. The base model—Wi-Fi only, 6GB of RAM, 128GB of storage—will be $609.99 in North America and launches in October. Europe, the Middle East, and Africa will get a cellular version of the tablet, which is not coming to North America, starting at €899.