3 Best 8-Inch Mini Tablets Review & Comparison | 2026 Edition

Finding a really good 8-inch tablet is still rare in 2026. Most manufacturers focus on 10 and 11-inch models, and the small ones they do ship are usually cheap throwaway devices. We review pretty much every 8-inch tablet that gets released, and we’ve narrowed things down to three picks, each built for a very different buyer.

Best 8-Inch Tablets: A Quick Overview

Here’s a fast rundown of all three picks. Scroll down for the full breakdown.

• Cheapest Pick: Lenovo Tab One (on Amazon)* Around $100, gets the basics done for reading, YouTube, and light browsing. Nothing more, but also nothing less.
• Best for Gamers and Best Android Pick: Lenovo Legion Tab Gen 3 (on Amazon)* 165Hz display, Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, and the only real premium 8-inch Android tablet you can buy.
• Best Overall: Apple iPad Mini 7 (on Amazon)* A17 Pro power, Apple Pencil Pro support, and the best small tablet money can buy.

All Our Picks In Detail

Let’s check them out in more detail.

Lenovo Tab One: Cheapest Pick

The Lenovo Tab One is the one to grab if you just need a tiny, cheap Android slate that handles the basics. It sells for around $100, and for that price you’re obviously not getting anything fancy. But if all you want is something to read e-books on, browse the web a bit, and watch YouTube or Netflix in bed, it actually delivers more than you’d expect.

Inside, you get a MediaTek Helio G85 with 4 GB of RAM and 64 GB of storage. That’s a pretty weak chip by 2026 standards, and you’ll feel it the moment you try to push the tablet beyond single-app use. Jumping between a bunch of apps, loading a dozen Chrome tabs, or playing a demanding 3D game is just not going to happen. But running one app at a time it’s perfectly usable. YouTube, Netflix, Kindle, and a few Chrome tabs all work fine. We even had a surprisingly good time with Asphalt Legends and PUBG Mobile on low settings. Don’t expect Fortnite to run, though.

The 8.7-inch IPS display is the part that surprised us the most. The resolution is only 1340 by 800, so text isn’t as crisp as on a Full HD panel, but colors are decent, contrast holds up, and at a maximum brightness of 480 nits it’s perfectly readable indoors. Lenovo even bothered to get Widevine L1 certification, which means Netflix actually streams in HD on this thing. For a $100 tablet, that’s not a given. The two speakers sound decent thanks to an earpiece and a main driver working together for a light stereo effect, and battery life in our YouTube loop at max brightness came in at a really solid 8.75 hours.

Here’s the honest part. We only really recommend the Lenovo Tab One if you genuinely want the smallest and cheapest option, or you’re buying for a kid or a grandparent who just needs something simple to watch videos on and make the occasional call with the LTE version. If you can stretch your budget by 50 or 100 bucks, you get a noticeably better device. But as a bare-bones, grab-and-go mini tablet, it does its job.

Display	8.7″ IPS | 1340 x 800 | 480 nits
Processor	MediaTek Helio G85 | 4GB RAM | 64GB
Stylus	No stylus support
Connectivity	USB-C 2.0 | microSD | 3.5mm jack | Wi-Fi or optional LTE
Software	Android 15 | 7 years of security updates (promised)
Battery	8.75 hours (our test)
Our Score	6/10

Read our full review: Lenovo Tab One Review

Lenovo Legion Tab Gen 3: Best for Gamers and Best Android Pick

If you want a small Android tablet that’s actually premium, the Lenovo Legion Tab Gen 3 is basically the only game in town. Almost every other Android maker in the 8-inch segment is chasing the budget market, which means this is your one option if you want flagship specs in a device you can hold in one hand. Lenovo aims it squarely at gamers, but it’s also a fantastic all-around small tablet.

On the inside, it packs a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 with 12 GB of RAM and 256 GB of storage. That’s the same chip class you’d find in a high-end phone, and in Geekbench 6 it trades blows with the Samsung Galaxy Tab S10+. It does fall about 30 percent short of the iPad Mini 7 on single-core, but on multi-core the two are basically neck and neck. In real use, this thing flies. Demanding games, heavy multitasking, video editing in Adobe Premiere Rush, it all runs without breaking a sweat.

The display is an 8.8-inch 2.5K IPS panel with a 2560 by 1600 resolution and a 165Hz refresh rate. That’s the real headline here. The iPad Mini 7 is capped at 60Hz and shows a noticeable jelly effect when you scroll fast, and the Legion Tab Gen 3 has neither of those problems. Gaming at 120 FPS on a screen this small looks fantastic. Maximum brightness is around 500 nits, which is fine indoors but could be brighter for direct sunlight. Everything looks sharp thanks to the high pixel density.

Lenovo built a real gaming layer on top of Android here. There’s Legion Hub for launching games, an overlay that shows FPS and temperature while you play, and three performance modes. The coolest feature is bypass charging. When you plug the tablet in during gameplay, power goes straight to the motherboard instead of the battery, which keeps thermals in check and protects the battery long-term. In our Call of Duty Warfare test, bypass charging held the tablet steady at 80 FPS for half an hour, while without it the frame rate dropped into the 50 to 60 range.

Battery life is also a pleasant surprise. In our standardized YouTube loop at max brightness, the Legion Tab Gen 3 ran for 8.5 hours, which is significantly better than the iPad Mini 7’s 5.5 hours in the same test. The stereo speakers are loud and work great for games, and the all-metal body feels premium. The stylus is sold separately and is only okay for simple notes, so don’t buy this one for drawing. There’s also no 5G, no SD card slot, and no fingerprint reader. But if you want a high-end 8-inch Android tablet for gaming, comics, or just a pocketable Android powerhouse, this is the one.

Display	8.8″ IPS | 2560 x 1600 | 165Hz | ~500 nits
Processor	Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 | 12GB RAM | 256GB
Stylus	Lenovo Tab Pen Plus (sold separately)
Connectivity	2x USB-C | Wi-Fi 7 | Bluetooth 5.1 | no SD card
Software	Android with ZUI 16 | 3 years OS updates
Battery	8.5 hours (our test)
Our Score	9/10

Read our full review: Lenovo Legion Tab Gen 3 Review

Apple iPad Mini 7: Best Overall

The Apple iPad Mini 7 is the best small tablet you can buy, and honestly it’s not even close for most people. Apple is one of the only companies that still treats the mini tablet form factor like a serious product, and the iPad Mini 7 gets the full high-end treatment. It starts at $499, and if you want a small tablet that’s fast, looks great, and has real app support, this is where you should be looking.

At the core is Apple’s A17 Pro, the same chip family that launched in the iPhone 15 Pro. It’s an absolute monster in a device this small. In Geekbench 6, it’s about 30 percent ahead of the Lenovo Legion Tab Gen 3 on single-core, and the GPU goes toe to toe with the best Android tablets out there. In day-to-day use, everything just flies. Apps open instantly, multitasking is smooth, and demanding games like Genshin Impact and Resident Evil Village run without a hiccup.

The 8.3-inch Liquid Retina display is sharp, laminated, and looks really nice. It’s capped at 60Hz though, which is disappointing at this price, and if you scroll fast you will still notice the slight jelly effect Apple has never really fixed on this line. Maximum brightness is around 500 nits, so fine indoors and okay outdoors, and colors and contrast are excellent. It supports the Apple Pencil Pro, which is currently the best stylus you can buy on any tablet, with haptic feedback and barrel roll. If you want to use your mini as a digital notebook, a pocket sketchpad, or for marking up PDFs, nothing else in this size class comes close.

Where the iPad Mini 7 genuinely stomps the Android competition is in the app library. iPadOS is still the platform developers target first, and that means apps like Procreate, Affinity Photo, LumaFusion, and a really good version of Photoshop are all available and properly optimized. You also get long software support. Apple has been updating the iPad Mini 5 from 2019 for years now, so you can safely expect this one to get major iPadOS updates well into the 2030s.

The one real downside is battery life. In our YouTube loop at max brightness, the iPad Mini 7 managed 5.5 hours, which is honestly not great and noticeably worse than both the Lenovo Tab One and the Legion Tab Gen 3. Drop the brightness and you’ll obviously get a lot more, but side by side, the Android tablets on this list last longer. The other thing worth mentioning is the price. At $499 and up, this is by far the most expensive option here. But you do get what you pay for. The best performance, the best stylus, the best app ecosystem, and the longest software support in any 8-inch tablet you can buy today.

Display	8.3″ Liquid Retina | 2266 x 1488 | 60Hz | ~500 nits | laminated
Processor	Apple A17 Pro | 8GB RAM | 128GB-512GB
Stylus	Apple Pencil Pro (sold separately)
Connectivity	USB-C | Wi-Fi 6E | optional 5G
Software	iPadOS | many years of updates
Battery	5.5 hours (our test)
Our Score	9/10

Read our full review: Apple iPad Mini 7 Review

Which 8-Inch Tablet Should You Buy?

If you want a cheap, simple small tablet for reading, YouTube, and light browsing, the Lenovo Tab One at around $100 does the job fine and battery life is strong. If you want a premium 8-inch Android tablet, especially for gaming, the Lenovo Legion Tab Gen 3 is basically your only option and it’s a really good one. And if you want the overall best small tablet and don’t mind paying Apple prices for it, the iPad Mini 7 remains the king of this category thanks to its chip, its Apple Pencil Pro support, and its unmatched app library.

If you want more details on any of these, we’ve linked the full reviews above. And if an 8-inch tablet isn’t quite what you need, check out our best large-screen tablets list for some great bigger alternatives.