Lenovo Idea Tab Review: How Good Is It, Really?

Lenovo surprised us with the new Idea Tab, a more affordable version of the Idea Tab Pro we tested a few months ago. I think it’s sort of the successor to the Lenovo Tab M11.

For around 200 Dollars, we’re getting a surprisingly high-resolution display, a pen is included, and you can get it with an optional keyboard.

Will the Idea Tab be our new budget tip? Well, that’s what you’ll learn in this review.

Design & Build Quality

And we’ll begin with the design. We’re getting an aluminum back, which makes it feel quite high-quality for the price. The display bezels are a bit wider than on more expensive tablets and it weighs in at 480g. It’s somewhat protected against dust and splashing water according to IP52.

Overall, the build quality is very good. The buttons are firm and the ports are well embedded.

On board are a USB-C 2.0 port, a 3.5 mm headphone jack, a microSD slot for up to 2 TB of storage expansion, and a port for the keyboard cover. A fingerprint reader is unfortunately missing.

The headphone jack and the SD slot are plus points in particular. It’s a shame, however, that we’re not getting USB 3 and it’s also a shame that you can’t connect external monitors, even though it even has a desktop mode.

Display

It has an 11-inch IPS LCD with a resolution of 2560×1600 pixels, supports 90 Hz and has a maximum brightness of 500 nits.

The display is undoubtedly the Idea Tab’s greatest strength. The combination of high resolution and 90 Hz ensures a sharp and smooth picture. We’d wish it were a bit brighter outdoors, but for the price that’s already pretty good. The more expensive iPad 11 is just as bright.

For this review we’ve compared it with the Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 Lite 2024 Edition from time to time. And compared to that, the Lenovo has the better display.

One disadvantage, however, are the rather weak viewing angles. The panel looks bright and high-contrast head-on, but the brightness visibly drops off even with a slight side view. That’s not a problem if you’re using it alone, but it is if you’re sitting on the sofa with friends or family and watching a movie or something.

You can watch Netflix in HD quality, by the way. That’s not always the case with cheap tablets.

Speakers

Four symmetrically arranged speakers provide stereo sound with Dolby Atmos. The volume is pretty good, but the sound’s a bit unbalanced and tinny. There’s also largely a lack of bass.

It’s still sufficient for YouTube and streaming and the stereo effect is also good. In a direct comparison, the Galaxy Tab S6 Lite (2024) is a bit quieter, but sounds much warmer and more balanced with more bass.

Pen

The Idea Tab supports the Lenovo Tab Pen Plus as well as the included Tab Pen.

That one supports pressure levels and a pretty good palm rejection. Otherwise, the pen unfortunately doesn’t have any buttons or anything, but it’s well suited for notes.

We’ve tested it in Nebo, Noteshelf 3 and Lenovo’s Notepad app and it performed well in all apps, without great latency and with a moderately good writing feel. We prefer it over the pen of the Lenovo Tab M11. For a few notes and a little scribbling it’s good. But the Apple Pencil and Samsung S Pen are noticeably better.

If the pen is particularly important to you, we therefore recommend the Galaxy Tab S6 Lite 2024 as an alternative. Unfortunately, however, there’s no keyboard cover for that.

Performance

Inside runs the MediaTek Dimensity 6300 with 8 GB of RAM and 128 GB of storage. There’s no 4G or 5G version yet, but maybe more options will appear later.

For everyday use, the performance is sufficient, especially for YouTube, light internet browsing, and so on. Even a small Adobe Rush export of a few clips with music underneath worked, but it did take quite a long time.

In Geekbench 6, the Idea Tab performs comparatively poorly, especially in GPU performance. Devices like the Redmi Pad Pro or the more expensive Idea Tab Pro are miles ahead of it. The Galaxy Tab S6 Lite (2024) is also ahead in some tests.

The 3D Mark Gaming Benchmark shows similar results. Here too the Idea Tab performs rather poorly and also ranks significantly behind the Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 Lite (2024). The Redmi Pad Pro is second in this lineup. It’s usually just a bit more expensive.

Sure, the Redmi Pad Pro and Samsung S6 Lite have already dropped in price and the recommended retail prices are well above this Lenovo. Currently the prices are similar. But we’re assuming that the Idea Tab will quickly drop more towards 180, 170, maybe even down to 150 Dollars.

Gaming

Unfortunately, you can’t play Fortnite unless you want to experience a visually unique experience with a continuous 3-15 FPS with low textures and 0% 3D resolution.

Less demanding titles like Minecraft or PUBG Mobile, on the other hand, run well and without major drops. The performance is therefore sufficient for casual gamers, but not for serious gaming.

Software

Android 15 with Lenovo ZUI 17is preinstalled out of the box. Lenovo promises two major OS updates up to Android 17 and four years of security patches.

The ZUI looks tidy and only comes with a few pre-installed apps. That’s great, since other cheap tablets often come with a bunch of bloatware.

If you buy the keyboard, you can benefit from a desktop mode, because with the keyboard connected and desktop mode, the Idea Tab should even create a slight laptop feeling. The desktop mode in particular isn’t typical in the budget price range.

Cameras

There’s an 8MP camera in the back and a 5MP camera in the front. The quality’s sufficient for video calls or document scans. But really not for high-quality photos or videos. Videos can be recorded with a maximum of 1080p at a fixed 30 FPS.

Battery

The battery has a capacity of 7040 mAh and can be charged with 20W. In our test, the Lenovo Idea Tab came in at 7 hours when playing an HD YouTube video at maximum brightness. Doesn’t sound like much, and it isn’t, but that’s actually often normal in this price range.

The rather new Honor Pad 10, which is even more expensive, for example, only comes in at 6.5 hours in our test.

Conclusion

For under 200 Dollars, we quite like the Lenovo Idea Tab. It offers a well-put-together set of features that combines a high-resolution 11-inch display, four speakers, a sufficient update guarantee, and a usable pen.

But it’s not perfect. We’d wish for a bit better gaming performance and a fingerprint reader. It would also be great if the otherwise good display had better viewing angles. Because of this, for example, we can’t recommend it as a family tablet for two kids who want to watch cartoons together.

But apart from that, it’s a solid tablet if you’re using it alone and want something as cheap as possible. For browsing the internet, YouTube, and simple games it’s good. Especially when the price drops more towards 150 Dollars and I suspect that on days like Prime Day it’ll cost roughly that much.

If you want a noticeably better tablet, I recommend our review of the Lenovo Idea Tab Pro. It’s actually already dropped a lot in price, is a bit larger, and has significantly better performance, especially for games.