Lenovo announces the $299 8-inch Miix 2 with Windows 8.1 and Intel Bay Trail-T SoC

Lenovo is welcoming a new tablet to its growing Miix family with the budget-friendly 8-inch Miix 2. Running on Windows 8.1, the Chinese giant is marketing the slate as a productivity device, and we'll gladly give them this one, for apart from coming with Microsoft's latest, full-fledged desktop OS, the tablet also ships with a full Office Home & Student 2013 license and touts a dedicated stylus.

Unlike most other tablet manufacturers on the market these days, Lenovo prefers to conduct business with Intel, which means that we have the latest ultra-mobile SoC from the Santa Clara-based company on-board the Miix 2 – a quad-core Intel Bay Trail-T. While we don't know the exact model that will go into the Miix 2, it's likely that we'll get the 1.5GHz Atom Z3770 or the 1.3GHz Atom Z3740, both of which offer performance rivaling that of competing solutions from Qualcomm and ARM.

The rest of the internals are also pretty decent, considering that Lenovo will be pricing these quite competitvely: $299/$349 for the 32GB/64GB models respectively. These include 2GB of LPDDR3 memory, 2MP front/5MP rear cameras and a microSD slot that will allow you to expand the internal storage already on-board. The Lenovo Miix 2 is also fairly compact, at 131.6x215.4x8.1mm and a weight of around 12.32 ounces (or 350 grams). It would appear that the 8-inch 1280x800 (16:10) IPS display is the tablet's weakest link, though battery capacity hasn't been shared, but Lenovo has promised up to 7 hours of battery life.

In terms of connectivity, there's nothing out of the ordinary considering we're closing in on 2014: Bluetooth 4.0, 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, 3G and GPS3.

Lenovo says the tablet will be made available by the end of the month, though it hasn't provided any specifics as to which part of the globe will see the Miix 2 first.