Lenovo Tab One Review: Can A $100 Tablet Really Cut It?

Can a tablet for around $100 even be usable, or should everyone stay away from it? We’ve thoroughly reviewed the Lenovo Tab One, played tons of games, used it for reading and watching YouTube, and compared it with competitors like the Samsung Galaxy Tab A9.

In this review, you’ll find out who the Lenovo Tab One is good for and when you’d be better off choosing a different tablet.

Hardware and Performance

The Lenovo Tab One houses the MediaTek Helio G85 processor, a rather slow chip. It also comes with 4 GB of RAM and 64 GB of internal storage. The storage can be expanded via MicroSD, and we think it’s great that even the WiFi version has GPS. You can get it with LTE, too.

As expected with that chip, the benchmark results aren’t particularly good. In Geekbench 6, the CPU performance is comparable to the Lenovo Tab and the Redmi Pad SE 8.7—the latter being a direct competitor. The older Samsung Galaxy Tab A9 is a bit more powerful, especially in graphics performance. The Lenovo Tab also has a GPU performance that’s about twice as good as the Lenovo Tab One’s. Both currently cost around $100.

In reality, it’s fast enough to run one app at a time decently. So, we were able to watch YouTube and surf the web well. But if you switch between lots of apps quickly, it’s not smooth at all. When you do that, the Tab One tends to stutter and lag. You can also work well with two to three tabs in Chrome. But it’s too slow for power users.

In the 3D Mark benchmark comparison, the Lenovo Tab One is almost on par with the Lenovo Tab. This benchmark compares graphics performance, which is important for gaming. The Samsung Galaxy Tab A9 is almost twice as good.

Gaming Test

We tested a few games on the Lenovo Tab One, and the results are better than the benchmark scores suggest. It’s great with Android that many games are optimized even for very affordable devices, because developers want their games to be playable on as many devices as possible.

And indeed, Asphalt Legends runs surprisingly smoothly on low graphics settings. Although the game looks significantly worse than on more powerful tablets, the frame rate remains stable enough to play it really well. It’s actually fun to play on here.

Blasphemous also runs very well most of the time. Most of the time, but not always. It lagged quite a bit when first starting up, which also shows that the system can quickly become overwhelmed, especially if you try to do two things at once.

What’s also nice: PUBG Mobile runs surprisingly smoothly on low settings. The graphics are reduced, but the overall gaming experience is very pleasant. If you like to game in your spare time, you won’t be disappointed here. But, clearly, demanding games like Fortnite won’t run at all.

Display

The Lenovo Tab One offers an 8.7-inch IPS display with a resolution of 1340 x 800 pixels. That’s roughly equivalent to 720p and means that text doesn’t look quite as sharp as on Full-HD displays. Nevertheless, colors are decent, contrast is solid, and thanks to IPS, the viewing angles are stable too.

The maximum brightness is stated as 480 Nits. That’s a very good value for this price range. Indoors, the display is easily readable at all times; outdoors, it gets a bit more difficult in direct sunlight, but it’s still usable.

Good news: Despite the low price, the tablet officially supports Netflix in HD resolution. This means it has the Widevine certification at Level L1. Movies and series look good on the small display.

However, if you’re specifically looking for a tablet for watching movies, you can also get the Lenovo Tab for about the same price. It’s a bit larger and has a Full-HD resolution, and the prices are similar.

Speakers

We shouldn’t expect miracles when it comes to sound—yet we’re positively surprised. The Lenovo Tab One has an earpiece and a speaker which together create a kind of stereo effect. We were actually positively surprised by the sound quality for such an affordable device. You can certainly watch YouTube and Netflix with it just fine.

If you have the 4G version, you can also make calls with the tablet, which is what the earpiece is for. Sure, most people won’t use a tablet as a phone. But I’ve already given a similar device to my grandma. She doesn’t need more performance, handles an 8-inch display better than a small phone, and wants to be able to make calls every now and then.

Design and Ports

The body of the Lenovo Tab One is made of plastic. You notice that right away, but the build quality is solid; nothing creaks or anything. The tablet is 8.5 mm thick and weighs 320g.

If the size doesn’t matter to you, the Lenovo Tab offers a higher-quality metal body for the same price, by the way. However, it lacks the earpiece.

There’s a USB-C 2.0 port on the bottom, which is used to charge the device. Additionally, there’s a microSD card slot for memory expansion, as well as a 3.5 mm headphone jack.

The LTE variant also has a SIM card slot, and GPS is integrated into all versions.

Software

The Lenovo Tab One runs Android 15. And supposedly, updates will be provided for a very long time: According to the European product database, Lenovo guarantees seven years of security updates. Whether that will actually happen remains to be seen; somehow, I don’t quite trust it, simply because it’s so affordable. But that would be great, of course.

The software is nearly pure Android. However, during setup, the system tries to install tons of third-party apps. Most of these can be deselected, but a few apps like Opera, WPS Office, June’s Journey, and Fitbit are still pre-installed. The good news: these can be uninstalled afterward.

In daily use, the system runs smoothly as long as you limit yourself to simple tasks. The Google apps like Chrome, Gmail, YouTube, and Drive run well, and we’ve already talked about games.

Battery Life

In the battery test, where we play an HD YouTube video in an endless loop at maximum brightness, the Lenovo Tab One achieves a runtime of 8.75 hours. That’s a good value, especially for a tablet of this price.

Lenovo Tab One Review: Final Verdict

We were actually positively surprised by the Lenovo Tab One. It currently costs around $100, and for that price, you get a solid display, decent build quality, decent speakers, potentially long updates, and you can play games on it too. If you want the smallest possible tablet for the least amount of money, it’s a good choice. I can particularly see it being great for children and seniors.

If you’re not specifically looking for a small tablet, you can currently get a similar device, the Lenovo Tab, also for around $100. It has a slightly larger display, a higher resolution, and the metal body feels more premium.

On paper, the Samsung Galaxy Tab A9 is better, especially for gaming. But the OneUI interface is quite demanding, so in reality, it doesn’t feel any faster. Furthermore, the A9 has been on the market for quite a while now, and the probability is high that the Lenovo Tab One will receive updates for longer. So, we don’t recommend it as an alternative.

But before you misunderstand something here: The praise at the end relates to the hardware relative to the price. It’s still a $100 tablet, so please don’t expect top performance or a super sharp display.

For many, it’ll be worth spending an extra 50 to 100 bucks. We’ve just reviewed the Lenovo Idea Tab which is quite a bit better in almost everything.