Lenovo Idea Tab Pro Review: The Budget Flagship Killer?

Lenovo finally announced the long-awaited successor of the popular Tab P12 during CES 2025. The Idea Tab Pro features a MediaTek Dimensity 8300, 8Gb of RAM and plenty of storage at an affordable $370. We’re very excited to see how this tablet compares to competitors in the price range like the Xiaomi Redmi Pad Pro, and what kind of upgrades we get over the Tab P12.

In some tests, the Idea Tab Pro seems almost too good to be true, trading blows with competitors way out of its price league. Other times, we notice its shortcomings in key aspects, especially for use as an entertainment tablet. We’ve tested the tablet extensively, so, let’s get into it.

Performance

Perhaps the biggest upgrade we see over the Tab P12 is the pure increase in performance. The MediaTek Dimensity 8300 in the Idea Tab Pro packs some serious punch, and at this price point there is simply no tablet with performance that even comes close, with the exception of the Apple iPad 10. 8GB of DDR5X RAM is also more than enough for multitasking and gaming. You can get the Idea Tab Pro with a base 128GB of storage, or 256GB for just $20 more directly from Lenovo.

In Geekbench, we see about 40% better performance over the Tab P12 in CPU single-core and almost double the score in CPU multi-core. We almost couldn’t believe the scores we were getting. For reference, the Idea Tab Pro beats the similarly priced Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 FE and the $550 S9 FE+ by 30%.

Geekbench GPU testing allows the Dimensity 8300 to show some teeth. We are confronted with nearly triple the score of the Tab P12, which is also just 20% lower than the premium Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 packing the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset. 

After impressing us in Geekbench, the Idea Tab Pro proceeds to sweep the competition in 3D Mark benchmarks. These tests should give us a rough idea of how the Idea Tab Pro lines up in gaming performance compared to other tablets. The results, though slightly less impressive than in Geekbench, are still great for its price range.

In the Wildlife Extreme test, the Idea Tab Pro sits ahead of the Galaxy Tab S8 and iPad 10. In Steel Nomad Light, our tablet barely gets beaten by the Xiaomi Pad 7 Pro with the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 – a tablet that costs $550 right now. It also humiliates the budget-oriented Xiaomi Redmi Pad Pro with a massive 300% higher score, again in Steel Nomad Light. 

Gaming Performance

As you’d expect, the Dimensity 8300 equipped Idea Tab Pro performs wonderfully in games. We experienced almost no issues running even more demanding titles like Fortnite and Genshin Impact. 

In Fortnite, we aren’t really able to crank settings all the way up without losing too much performance. In the Epic preset with 100% 3D resolution, we only get an average of around 30 FPS, which can sometimes dip all the way down to 15 FPS. For a more playable and competitive experience you’d have to lower the preset to medium and also reduce the 3D resolution. Unfortunately, Fortnite seems to be capped at 30 FPS no matter what you do on this tablet. 

PUBG Mobile has no issues running on the Idea Tab Pro. On the maximum supported HDR preset, we get an average of 40 FPS. Uncapping the refresh rate in display settings allows PUBG to run at a stable 90 FPS at the “smooth” preset with 4x MSAA antialiasing.

We also gave Genshin Impact a try on this tablet, and we were able to achieve the highest available 40 FPS cap in all graphics presets. 

Thermals seem to be great on this tablet as well, as it always stays nice and cool even during gaming. We think the Idea Tab Pro offers great value for gamers who want to stay at a reasonable budget.

Design & Build

The Idea Tab Pro is a large tablet that measures 11.5’ by 7.45’. There’s little aside from a selfie camera on the front side (aside from the large display). This tablet features a design with flat edges, but is surprisingly comfortable to hold compared to other flat tablets most likely due to the thicker 6.9mm sides, which we think is thin enough.

The volume rocker sits alone on the horizontal top side of the Idea Tab, and to the left we find the power button with an integrated fingerprint reader – which works wonderfully, by the way – as well as a MicroSD card slot with support for up to a 1TB card. 

You also have the option of setting up face-unlock using the selfie camera. It’s only a single camera setup without any IR scanning security features. If you are using this tablet for banking or storing important personal files, it’s probably wiser to stick with the fingerprint reader or traditional password/passcode. Otherwise, the face unlock works pretty well and is definitely more convenient than having to fumble with the power button’s fingerprint reader.

On the right side we find the USB-C 3.2 Gen 1 port, which also works as an HDMI output for an external monitor. The port supports charging up to 45 watts, which is pretty standard these days. The lack of a 3.5mm audio output port might be frustrating for some, though.

The entire backside has a pleasant metal coating, and there is a standard Lenovo logo on the center. We find the build quality about on par with competitors at the midrange. 

Battery Life

Battery life is one of those shortcomings of the Idea Tab Pro. 

Charging is fast enough at 45 Watts, similar to competitors like Samsung and Apple. It takes a little under 2 hours to fully charge the tablet from 0% battery. There is no included power brick. 

Although this tablet packs a large 10200mAh battery, battery life is still mediocre at 7 hours of continuous YouTube playback with peak brightness in HD resolution. This puts it close with most other tablets featuring an LCD display like the Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 FE and iPad 10. This score is by no means bad, but unlike most other features on this tablet, it’s not setting a new standard in the midrange.

It’s not looking too great for users who just want an entertainment tablet. The Honor MagicPad 2 achieves a whole 13 hours of runtime in the same test due to its OLED display. And it gets brighter, provides better contrast and has better colors. It’s not available everywhere, but if it is, it’ll cost you just around $100 more.

Display

Lenovo claims that the Idea Tab Pro can produce “captivating pictures” with its 12.7’ 3K LCD display. We had no reason to doubt their claims, but putting this display to the test makes us question what Lenovo’s marketing team really meant.

While the 144hz variable refresh rate and 273 ppi pixel density sound great on paper, this display is unfortunately crippled by its disappointing peak brightness of 400 nits. At max brightness in a well lit room, it’s already challenging for the dim screen – although still usable – but don’t even think about using it outside on a sunny day. Even the Redmi Pad Pro goes up to 600 nits of brightness – at 2/3 of the price.

(Right side: Idea Pad Pro, compared to Galaxy S10+, Lenovo Yoga Tab Plus and Honor MagicPad 2)

We notice that this display can produce some really deep blacks compared to other tablets with LCD displays at peak brightness, like Lenovo’s own Yoga Tab Plus – but only because of how dim it is. Definitely the biggest weakness of this tablet by far.

Additionally, while the Idea Tab supports HDR in theory, there seems to be no option in Netflix to display content in HDR, or above full-HD – in case that’s a deal breaker for you. 

Lenovo Tab Pen Plus

The Lenovo Idea Tab Pro comes with the Lenovo Tab Pen Plus as a package deal. The pen charges with USB-C, and battery life seems solid with up to 35 hours of usage. 

This pen feels pretty good ergonomically and Lenovo has also stepped up their game with integrated pen features, like being able to pause a video or music. It’s neat that you have the option to use the Tab Pen Plus as a remote control if needed, although there is some pretty significant delay between pressing a button on the pen and something actually registering in the remote control mode. 

Considering that Lenovo gives away the pen together with the tablet, we don’t have many complaints about the functionality of this pen. The tip could be a bit softer for quieter writing, and magnetic wireless charging through the tablet would be great. This pen also feels a bit cheap and light compared to something like the Samsung S Pen Pro, but the overall experience is good. 

We would still recommend you to stick with a cheaper Samsung S Pen tablet like the Tab S6 lite 2024 if you only plan on taking notes or drawing, and don’t care about performance. 

Speakers

Lenovo has a great track record of packing excellent speakers into their tablets. We’re glad that the Idea Tab Pro is no exception. 

The quad stereo JBL speakers with support for Dolby Atmos produce some amazing sounding audio. We can say with confidence that these are the best speakers in its price range by far.

We compared the speakers of the Idea Tab Pro to the quite well received Samsung Galaxy Tab S10+, and to our surprise, we find that the Idea Tab not only gets way louder than the Samsung tablet but also trumps it in audio quality. To Samsung’s credit, the S10+ is quite a bit slimmer than the Idea Tab. Still, we couldn’t be happier with how great the sound experience is. 

Relatively short software support

The Idea Tab Pro ships with Android 14, but will only receive OS updates up until Android 16 and a total of 4 years of patches and security updates.

Although this is quite normal in the world of budget tablets, we are still disappointed that Lenovo only does the bare minimum for their tablets. Samsung’s Tab S9 FE comes with 4 years of OS updates and 5 years of security patches, and Apple’s base iPads with 5-6 years of support, for reference.

While Lenovo isn’t the worst offender in providing software support, users who intend to keep their tablets until the bitter end should look elsewhere.

The usual bloatware

Speaking of software, setting up this tablet feels like navigating through a minefield of bloatware. Even after unselecting every app Lenovo tries to automatically install during setup, we still end up with a suite of sponsored apps like Booking.com, LinkedIn and Block Blast.

It’s a shame that Lenovo seems to have synthesized the perfect tablet in most ways and still manages to make setting up the device feel terrible.

After uninstalling all the bloatware, the Lenovo version of Android 14 is pretty vanilla and has the usual range of great Android features and a nice option for entering “PC-mode”, an alternative presentation for Android that appears more like a Windows laptop or Mac and is intended to be used with a keyboard and trackpad. 

Combined with an external monitor in PC-Mode, the Idea Tab makes for a great laptop alternative. Using the Tablet display and an external display for 2 different desktops at once is also possible, which is pretty neat.

Additional Features 

Lenovo no doubt felt the pressure to integrate at least a few AI features into their newest tablet releases, considering that every other major manufacturer seems to be focusing on AI as well. To do this, they teamed up with Google to add the circle-to-search function as well as the Google Gemini AI voice assistant. Both features work pretty much the way you’d expect, and can definitely come in handy occasionally.

For us, the most interesting feature is the integrated “Smart Connect”, which allows the Idea Tab to be connected to a laptop or desktop either through the USB cable or over the same wifi network. Plenty of useful functions like file sharing can be found here, but the objectively coolest one is the option to use the tablet as an external monitor. You can either mirror the PC’s display or use the extra display as a second monitor, where you can run a second desktop simultaneously. 

We find that it’s even feasible to use the Idea Tab as a drawing tablet when running something like Photoshop or OneNote on the connected PC. There is minimal input lag and occasional freezing, but the experience is more than usable.

It’s also possible to stream any application to a laptop display, for example. This gives you the option of playing a game or watching content on your PC while you make use of the Idea Tab Pro’s processing power. Additional features like using the tablet front camera as a webcam also exist. 

Cameras

There’s not much to say about the cameras on the Idea Tab Pro. 

There’s an 8 megapixel front camera that looks pretty good for selfies and on video calls. The rear camera with 13 megapixels makes acceptable photos with little dynamic range and lots of autosharpening. Video recording supports up to 4k resolution at 30 fps. 

Final Verdict

The Lenovo Idea Tab Pro is an unbelievably good tablet, and not just for its release price of $380. It’s hard to find anything with similar performance and amazing hardware even at a higher price. It handily beats its predecessor, the Tab P12, in pretty much every metric and sells for the same release price.

Gamers will find more performance in the $500 OnePlus Pad 2 if it’s available in your region and if you’re willing to invest a bit more.

This tablet has great performance for its price, comes with a pen and packs some excellent speakers. The only weaknesses to speak of are the dim display and mediocre battery life.

In case you haven’t noticed, all the relevant competing tablets come at a far higher price and usually only outperform the Idea Pad in specific features. We recommend the Lenovo Idea Tab Pro as one of the best mid-range tablets for all users.