Nokia Lumia 2520 review

The Nokia Lumia 2520 is a Windows RT tablet that’s available in a range of colours, which gives the device more personality than many tablets. At 615g it’s slightly lighter than the Microsoft Surface 2, but both tablets are 8.9mm thick.

The rounded edges of the Lumia 2520 might be comfortable to hold, but they don’t leave much room for connectivity. The power and volume controls are on the top edge, while the 3.5mm audio and proprietary power sockets are on the left-hand side. A Micro HDMI port is a welcome inclusion, as it lets you connect the tablet to a TV or monitor. The Lumia 2520 even has USB3 micro B port, but you’ll need a cable to connect flash drives and cameras.

Bluetooth and Wi-Fi are standard inclusions, but near-field communication (NFC) is slightly less common on tablets. NFC means the Lumia 2520 can stream photos and videos from a Lumia smartphone with a tap, or pair instantly with Nokia’s Purity Pro wireless headset.

Perhaps the Lumia 2520’s best features are its SIM card slot and 4G LTE modem. These features are great if you need internet access on the move, but it does mean you’ll be paying extra for a feature you won’t use if you don’t plan on adding a SIM card.

The Nokia Lumia 2520 has a rear camera with a 6.7-megapixel sensor. However, the Windows RT camera app is disappointingly basic, so it’s good to see that Nokia’s added its own app with extra features such as ISO, exposure and shutter speed control. Sadly, image quality is average. Tap to focus works well in bright light, but as soon as the light begins to drop it struggles to maintain sharpness and loses detail.

The Lumia 2520 might not impress with the quality of its own photos, but the 10.1in, Full HD screen makes other images look superb. Colours are vibrant and viewing angles are exceptional, so even though the 1,920×1,080 display can’t match the iPad Air for sheer number of pixels, it still looks gorgeous for everyday tasks such as web browsing or watching videos. Nokia’s ClearBlack screen technology helps contrast significantly, and we could pick out the details in dark images even under bright light, although the screen coating attracts fingerprints like no other tablet we’ve seen.

The Lumia 2520’s Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 chipset, with its four 2.2GHz cores, is certainly fast and makes Windows RT feel incredibly smooth. The Surface 2’s Nvidia Tegra 4 chip might compete with the Lumia 2520 in terms of raw performance, but we found that apps loaded slightly faster on the Lumia 2520 and everything felt a little more responsive.

The Lumia 2520 only completed the SunSpider JavaScript test in 502ms, putting it behind the Surface 2, which completed the test in 365.8ms. However, it beat the Surface 2 in 3DMark’s Ice Storm benchmark, where the Lumia 2520 scored maximum marks in the Basic and Extreme tests, and scored 16251 in the Unlimited test. This means the Lumia 2520 will have no trouble running apps from the Windows Store, but there are still fewer apps than on the Apple App Store or Google Play, even though the number of apps is growing.

The Lumia 2520 has 32GB of internal storage, but only 25GB is visible to the operating system and a paltry 16GB is available to the user. Thankfully, there’s a microSD card slot next to the SIM card slot, so you can add extra capacity later if you run low on storage space.

A keyboard dock with a built-in battery is to be released as an optional extra. It’ll also provide extra USB ports. However, you won’t probably won’t need the extra battery power of the keyboard dock, as the Lumia 2520 lasted an impeccable 14 hours 53 minutes in our video rundown test. Expect lower battery life between charges if you use 4G regularly. It’s still the best battery score we’ve seen from a 10in tablet, though, outlasting Apple’s iPad Air by more than two hours.

Our major concern is the 2520’s operating system. Windows RT has improved significantly following the recently launched Windows 8.1 update, but it still lacks many of the apps we take for granted on a tablet device. In particular, multimedia apps such as LoveFilm, ITV Player and Twitch TV were missing at the time of writing.

Considering Microsoft’s heavy focus on gaming with the excellent Smartglass app, there’s little other support for gaming apps such as Battlefield Battlelog or Call of Duty Elite. It’s also worth noting that you can’t install desktop Windows apps, which means you’re completely reliant on the Windows Store.

You do get Microsoft Office RT, though, which includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook and is great if you’re looking for an inexpensive work machine. Office RT has far more features than you’d find on QuickOffice for Android or the host of iOS productivity apps, but Office hasn’t been redesigned to suit a touchscreen. The high-resolution display makes it tricky to tap on icons and select menus accurately.

If you’re looking for a portable device purely for web browsing and Microsoft Office, the Nokia Lumia 2520 is a good buy. The Microsoft Surface 2 is cheaper, but we think the extra cost is justified given the Lumia 2520’s integrated 4G, faster processor and better battery life.

Windows RT is still an awkward middle ground between desktop and mobile operating systems, but if you’re willing to give Windows RT a chance there’s no doubt the Lumia 2520 is the best device to try it on.