Lenovo Idea Tab Pro Gen 2: The Best Value 13-Inch Tablet?

Lenovo’s newest Idea Tab Pro Gen 2 is the cheapest current-gen 13’’ tablet you can find right now. I’ve spent the last 2 weeks using and testing this tablet for video streaming, gaming, taking notes with the stylus and even working using the desktop mode, and there is a fatal flaw that makes us hesitate to recommend it for everyone, but also plenty of great features. So let’s get into it. 

Display and Speakers

The big selling point of the Idea Tab Pro Gen 2 is its massive, 13’’ LCD display. The only other real options at this price is Samsung’s Galaxy Tab S10 FE+, which really isn’t the best value tablet out there, or the OnePlus Pad 3. 

This display gets up to 800 nits of brightness under the sun, which makes it usable outdoors. There is also a matte screen version, but that hasn’t been released at the time of recording. The resolution is a massive 3504x2190p, so the image is crystal clear, and you won’t be able to make out individual pixels at all. The 16:10 aspect ratio also means that most video content scales great, and leaves very small black bars on the top and bottom display corners. On the OnePlus Pad 3 or an iPad, that’s a real issue for video streaming. Animations and games feel smooth thanks to the 144HZ refresh rate, although for that you have to enable “extreme” refresh in the display settings. Otherwise it defaults to a 120FPS peak. 

This tablet also has a quad JBL speaker setup that creates a really nice, immersive stereo effect. It’s especially great for watching movies. These speakers are loud, spacious and sound very clear. In direct comparison with the OnePlus Pad 3, the OnePlus tablet sounds better for music since it just has way more bass. But that’s the best speaker system in any tablet, pretty much. 

We think that the Idea Tab Pro Gen 2 is practically the best tablet at this price you can pick up for watching movies or shows. The screen has great colours and good contrast, though of course it’s not an OLED display like the most premium Samsung tablets. And the brightness and saturation is significantly better in HDR mode in direct competition with the OnePlus Pad 3. 

Battery Life 

The Idea Tab Pro packs a 10200mAh battery with 45W wired charging. To gauge the battery life, we let an HD YouTube video play on a loop with the screen at max brightness until the tablet went dark. The Idea Tab lasts just 5 hours and 52 minutes here. The Idea Tab Pro Gen 1 lasted a whole 7 hours, and the OnePlus Pad 3 lasted a good 9 hours and 40 minutes in the same test. The battery life could be a lot better.

Performance and Specs

One of the big upgrades the Gen 2 got is the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 chipset, an upper midrange chip that we’ve tested in plenty of devices. Of course, switching between apps, scrolling social media and even running multiple apps in parallel in the desktop mode is smooth. The tablet comes with a standard 8GB RAM and 128GB storage, and you can get up to 12GB of RAM and 256GB storage. We are testing the base model, which also uses slower UFS 3.1 storage instead of UFS 4. 

One nice feature is that you can actually expand your storage using a Micro-SD card, so you can save some money and get the 128GB version. 

Let’s compare the Idea Tab Pro Gen 2 against the competition in benchmarks. In the Geekbench 6 CPU single-core test, the Idea Tab Pro Gen 2 is pretty impressive, just 32% slower than the OnePlus Pad 3, which is the fastest Android tablet we’ve tested so far. The far more expensive Lenovo Yoga Tab Plus is also just 3% faster in CPU single core, and actually 2% slower in Multi-Core. The GPU performance is also about on-par. The Idea Tab Pro Gen 2 also beats the Gen 1 by 50% in CPU single core, so tasks like launching apps and browsing speed should be a lot faster now. 

Using 3DMark, we can measure the GPU and gaming performance of the Idea Tab; here, in the Wildlife Extreme test, the Idea Tab Pro Gen 2 is just 28% slower than the OnePlus Pad 3. It’s also 95% faster than the Idea Tab Pro Gen 1 in this test. That’s a huge upgrade. 

Gaming

With that Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 chip, the tablet is quite a beast when gaming. We could run practically every game at 120FPS with the right settings, which feels great on the massive display. We started with Fornite, where the FPS hovers around 90 at low settings with native resolution. Using some balanced Qualcomm upscaling boosts the FPS to a smooth 120, although the image quality suffers a bit. 

Delta Force also yields good results. You can run the game at 60FPS at the HD preset, or 120FPS with standard graphics. The resulting gameplay is really smooth, and the framerate is constant. 

In Rainbow Six Siege: Mobile, you can uncap the FPS limit, and the Idea Tab Pro manages to squeeze out a 95FPS average at the ultra settings. However, the tablet gets 50 degrees warm with these settings, so you might want to lower them a bit. The game does look great though. Overall, gaming performance is really formidable, and gives more premium tablets like the OnePlus Pad Gen 3 a run for their money. 

Read: 11 Best Gaming Tablets For Playing Games Reviewed

Keyboard 

So the Idea Tab can play, but can it work? 

We got the pretty affordable official Lenovo keyboard pack for the Idea Tab Pro Gen 2, which is a grey, plastic keyboard and trackpad tablet cover that feels surprisingly high quality. The keys have a good amount of travel, which makes them comfortable to type on. The only downside is that it’s a little bit loud.

The integrated trackpad works like a charm as well. It has a rather large, smooth surface, and clicks register properly. Overall, this keyboard pack makes the Idea Tab good for taking on a trip if you need to quickly write up an email and browse the web on desktop mode, pretty much replacing a laptop.

Stylus 

As for taking handwritten notes, the Lenovo Tab Pen Plus is the supported stylus that you can pick up for the Idea Tab. It’s not nearly as expensive as an Apple Pencil Pro, which is good. 

However, the tablet feels just average for writing and drawing. There aren’t any significant problems with it. Pressure sensitivity works properly, apps don’t lag when drawing and it doesn’t even require a bluetooth connection. But the Apple Pencil Pro, or S-Pen from Samsung just feel much higher quality in the hand, and feel better to write with. Serious digital artists should consider a tablet that supports one of those. Taking handwritten notes with the Idea Tab is fine though. 

The stylus charges via USB-C, and connects to the side of the tablet magnetically. Battery life seems solid, and Lenovo claims that it lasts 35 hours per charge. Overall it’s fine for occasional use, but better alternatives exist. 

Design

Versus last year’s Idea Tab Pro Gen 1, the Gen 2 has had a huge glow-up. It’s now a lot thinner at 6,2mm, 22g lighter at 598g and the screen even grew to 13’’. It’s a unibody aluminium design, so the tablet feels reasonably high-quality in the hand. There’s a mini camera bump on the back that houses the rear camera and LED flash, but the tablet doesn’t wobble when laid flat on a table despite it.

On the bottom side, 3 pogo pin connectors let you snap on the keyboard. The Lenovo Tab Pen Plus stylus connects magnetically on the top right side, like with most other tablets. On the left-top corner are the power and volume buttons. Sadly, Lenovo chose to do away with the integrated fingerprint reader on the power-button from the Gen 1 Idea Tab Pro. Now you’re stuck with less secure face-unlock or using a PIN. 

On the right side of the tablet, you’ll find the USB-C port with USB 3.2 speeds. It allows you to output a display signal to an external display, and wired file transfers are speedy. That’s a nice addition that many similar-priced competitors lack. 

Cameras 

The cameras here are above average. The 13MP wide camera on the back takes decently sharp snapshots. Sharp enough for photographing a whiteboard or presentation slide, or even for photos in a pinch. It can also record 4k 30p videos, which come out surprisingly sharp. 

The 8MP front selfie camera isn’t as strong in comparison, delivering only FHD 30p video, but it can take pretty accurate and detailed selfies and works very well for videocalling or zoom. 

Software 

So far, so good, but Lenovo’s achilles’ heel has always been their software. This Idea Tab is going to receive only 2 Android version upgrades, and just 4 years of security patches. That’s not a lot, and it’s not even legal according to the newest EU regulations, as far as we understand it. And that’s the fatal flaw I mentioned in the intro. Other chinese companies like OnePlus and Xiaomi are even outdoing Lenovo now, offering up to 6 years of support for flagship tablets. 

Now, Lenovo did improve on the software setup experience. There’s no more bloatware like Booking.com or Temu preinstalled. Instead, setting up the new tablet actually feels like a NEW tablet. That’s an upgrade over the last generation. But the newest Android 16 based ZUI 18 introduces other problems. In order to get splitscreen, desktop mode and display extension working properly, we had to enable developer options and turn on “One Vision Controller”. Hopefully that gets fixed soon. 

Conclusion

The Idea Tab Pro Gen 2 is really good value for a 13’’ tablet. The display is bright and vibrant, the speakers are great and it even has good gaming performance. It’s a great tablet for students who like to take notes with the keyboard and stylus – although the stylus could be a bit better – and you can even use it as a laptop replacement for work.

The only real downside is the software support duration. If it’s something you can look past, getting the Idea Tab Pro Gen 2 is practically a no brainer. 

If you’re still hunting for a tablet with a large display and want something with zero compromises, make sure to check out our review of the Samsung Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra. It’s one of the best tablets on the market, and the price has dropped steeply since the release.