Best tablet 2024: Fully tested tablets from Apple, Amazon, Samsung and more | Expert Reviews

14. Lenovo Tab P11 Pro: Best-value laptop alternative

Price when reviewed: £430 | Check price at Amazon

• Great for… lightweight design and top-notch display
• Not so great for… fiddly keyboard and middling performance

If you’re in the market for a laptop alternative, Lenovo’s Tab P11 Pro should be your first stop. The tablet itself is here bundled with a detachable keyboard, a magnetic stand and a stylus pen, all for an incredibly competitive price. Not only that, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a laptop that is as lightweight as the P11 Pro – at just 485g, this is a seriously portable machine.

The slim build doesn’t come at the expense of quality, either: the 11.5in OLED screen delivers exceptional colour reproduction and apparently reaches a peak brightness of 500cd/m², meaning that it can do a movie justice as well as handle your daily workload. With the Qualcomm Snapdragon 730G chipset running the show, it’s nippy enough, too, producing respectable scores in our benchmark tests.

Though speeds aren’t on the same level as some competitors – such as the lightning-quick Apple iPad Air – the P11 Pro has a secret weapon in its battery life. In our standard video-rundown test, with the brightness set to and flight mode on 170cd/m², it lasted for 17hrs 28mins. If all-day battery life is an important feature for you, there’s not much better out there than the P11 Pro.

Read our full Lenovo Tab P11 Pro review 

Key specs – Processor: Octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 730G; Screen: 11.5in, 2,560 x 1,600; Storage: 128GB; Size: 171 x 264 x 6mm; Weight: 485g; Operating system: Android 10

How to choose the best tablet for you

On paper, all tablets do mostly the same things. The difference comes in how well they perform. If you just want a tablet for browsing the internet, watching Netflix and maybe a little light gaming, a 12.9in iPad Pro is overkill in our opinion, even if it does handle all of the aforementioned tasks brilliantly.

Likewise, if you want to use your tablet for any kind of demanding work – chopping up 4K video or playing the greatest mobile games – the cheap and cheerful Amazon Fire 8 HD isn’t going to cut it, either. If you’re caught somewhere in the middle, you’re looking at a price between the two. Set aside a budget of somewhere between £250 and £350 and you’ll have plenty of choice – especially if you’re happy looking at some of the favourites from the previous generation of hardware for bargains.

Which operating system do I need?

Tablets come with three main operating systems: iOS for iPads, Android or Windows for everything else. Amazon’s Fire tablets come with their own Fire OS but in reality, this is a heavily modified version of Android designed to sell you Amazon goods more effectively.

In some respects, it makes sense to stick to what you know when in search of the best tablet. It’s certainly easier to stay within the same ecosystem, as everything will have a great familiarity about it – and we’ve found that Apple products, in particular, are very good at syncing between Mac, iPhone and iPad. Likewise, if you’ve only ever used iPhones and Windows laptops, taking the plunge with Android will take a little getting used to. But, in truth, it doesn’t matter which one you use that much, what with cloud storage being what it is. It’s very easy to move documents and files between all three, be it through Dropbox, Google Drive or OneDrive.

Do you want to draw or type with your tablet?

Tablets are designed to be poked with the finger, although in our experience, iOS and Android have a better handle on this than Windows. All the same, certain devices have their own pressure-sensitive stylus for drawing or note-taking. In the case of iPads, this is the Apple Pencil for the iPad and first-gen iPad Pro tablets or the second-gen Apple Pencil for the more recent iPad Pro tablets. Sadly, you won’t get a stylus included with your iPad so you do need to factor the cost into the overall price if you plan on using one.

Microsoft Surface devices all support the Surface Pen, which is again sold separately. A number of Samsung’s tablets come with the company’s own S Pen in the box, too.

We see bundled keyboards even less frequently, but as a rule of thumb, you can use any Bluetooth keyboard with a tablet. Some, such as Logitech’s K780, are designed to be used with multiple Bluetooth devices and even contain a raised lip to hold your tablet in place.

For our money, the better solution is to buy a cover with a keyboard built-in so it’s there whenever you need it. Apple’s official iPad keyboard case starts at £159, while similar options for the Tab S and Microsoft Surface go for broadly the same price. You can save a few quid by going for third-party alternatives, which exist for all the most popular tablets, but be sure to check customer reviews before investing as they may behave oddly or not be up to snuff.

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