Lumia 2520 price drops to £299 at John Lewis (UK)

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UK retailer John Lewis, as part of a special promotional offer, is selling the Lumia 2520, Nokia's Windows RT 8.1 tablet, for £299, a reduction of £100 over initial pricing. John Lewis was initially the excluisve UK retailer for the 10 inch screen, Qualcomm Snapdragon 800, powered device, though it is now available from a number of other retailers.

The £299 price point, which is similar to the $499 price point for the Lumia 2520 in the US, make the tablet a better buy in terms of value for money. It takes the Lumia 2520 below the £359 price point for the Surface 2 (and that's without considering the extra value provided by LTE). It is also below the £399 entry level price point for the iPad Air (16GB WiFi only model) and almost half the cost of the equivalently specified iPad (£579 for 32GB WiFi+Cellular).

In fairness a direct iPad comparison misses the main point of the Lumia 2520. As a productivity focused tablet, centred on the Windows platform, it offers a very different experience to the iPad. The iPad should remain the tablet of choice for most consumers, but a lower cost Lumia 2520 is worthy of consideration for business users and/or those heavily invested in the Microsoft ecosystem.

John Lewis is also selling the companion Power Keyboard accessory, which transforms the tablet into a productivity workhorse, for £100, down from initial pricing of £150, though currently John Lewis are out of stock.

From our video review of the Lumia 2520:

A quick glance at the Lumia 2520 shows that Nokia has brought much of the signature Lumia design to the ten inch tablet product segment. That's true of both the colours available (red, cyan, black, and white) and the shaping of the polycarbonate casing, but also extends to the camera, screen, and connectivity technology that make up the device.

This sense of familiarity extends into the software. Windows 8 RT very deliberately shares the look and feel of many elements of Windows Phone, best exemplified by the Live Tile-based Start screen. Furthermore, Nokia has ported a number of the software gems from the Lumia smartphone range onto the Lumia 2520, with the chief among these being HERE Maps and Nokia Mix Radio.

Read on in the full review here.