Lenovo Tab Review: A True Budget King or E-Waste?

With the standard Lenovo Tab, Lenovo introduced a very affordable tablet that is lacking pretty much all premium features. But if you want a budget device just for watching movies and browsing the web, you actually don‘t need much. In this review you‘ll learn whether the Lenovo Tab gets basic tasks done and how it compares to other budget tablets like the Samsung Galaxy Tab A9, Lenovo‘s own Tab M11, as well as the two Redmi Pad SE tablets.

Size and design

The display of the 10.2-inch Lenovo Tab has relatively thick, even bezels. In the very top center sits the webcam. It has a metal body which is 7.5 mm thick and weighs 425 grams. For its price, the build quality is surprisingly good but the transition from the display to the body is not as high-quality as with premium devices. That‘s to be expected, for course.

We find the USB-C 2.0 port with support for only 15 watts of top charging speed on the right side. You cannot connect an external monitor. The good news is that there’s a 3.5mm audio jack on the top right corner, which is still common on cheap tablets. There’s even an SD card slot on the top edge with support for up to a 1TB card.

There is unfortunately no inbuilt fingerprint scanner but you can unlock it using facial recognition. It works but is quite slow sometimes.

Display and Speakers

Corners are often cut on budget tablet displays, which seems to be what happened here. The peak brightness is passable at 400 nits, which is fine indoors but no match against the sun. But the biggest letdown are the terrible viewing angles. We notice that colours shift dramatically and the display looks pretty dim when looking from beyond a 45° angle.

The resolution is high enough at 1920x1200p, ensuring that text is very readable. Don’t expect smartphone-level pixel density on this display, though.

This display is limited to 60Hz which is normal for this price, although both Redmi Pad SEs have a 90Hz display.

We find that watching video content actually feels pretty alright on the Lenovo Tab thanks to the above average sounding dual speaker system we find here. Dolby Atmos is supported and works really well. These speakers are definitely more pleasant than the ones found on the Redmi Pad SE and Honor Pad X8a, which is another budget tablet around $150.

Performance

Let’s not beat around the bush; you’re not looking for olympic sprinter speeds and mind-blowing specs at this price range. But performance is still important, nonetheless, even for just running the Android system and loading basic applications without crashes. 

Lenovo outfits the tablet with an absolute veteran of a mobile chip, namely the Mediatek Helio G85, which was released all the way back in 2020. Even in the best cases, this chip is well beyond its years, and here the Helio G85 is handicapped further with a meager 4GB of DDR4 RAM and 64GB of slow eMMC storage. In short, it’s not great.

Even just having many tabs or applications open on the Lenovo Tab makes the entire tablet pretty laggy, and we found that gesture navigation is basically useless when the tablet is doing anything demanding since it’s so laggy that it doesn’t recognise swipes like it’s meant to. Definitely a huge letdown. 

Launching Genshin Impact after fully downloading the game also took longer than an hour just to compile the shaders, which we can’t help but think is because of the lethargic storage speeds – The game does start faster after the initial launch – Running a CPDT storage speed test confirms our suspicions. In short, the eMMC storage here is around as slow as the storage on a Samsung Galaxy S6 smartphone from 2015, possibly explaining why navigating and opening apps feels so sluggish.

Compared to the Samsung Galaxy A9 and Redmi Pad SE, performance just feels lacking. Let’s see how these tablets perform in benchmarks: 

In Geekbench, the Galaxy Tab A9 clearly takes the win with almost double the single core speed as the Lenovo Tab, which is no wonder, considering that it’s using a far more modern processor. The GPU is only slower by 33%, though, so they shouldn’t be worlds apart in gaming.

The Redmi Pad SE has a marginally faster CPU score. In reality though, both Redmi tablets shown here run much smoother than the Samsung Tab A9 and the Lenovo Tab. The Samsung Tab A9 feels a bit faster than the Lenovo Tab in practice as well, but tends to lag sometimes, probably because its 4GB of ram just isn’t enough for Samsung’s bloated OneUI.

3DMark tests paint a slightly different picture. The Samsung Galaxy Tab A9 steals the show with a 70% lead in 3DMark Wildlife, but the Lenovo Tab actually is 20% faster than the Redmi Pad SE in the same test.

Gaming

This tablet can game surprisingly well for its price. Genshin Impact runs at above 30FPS with the lowest graphics settings, and lighter games like Clash Royale and Brawl Stars seem to have zero issues running as well. RTS games, Minecraft and Terraria will also run perfectly here, so it’s probably good enough for some light gaming to distract your child in the back of the car. Serious tablet gamers should invest more for a more powerful tablet.

Read: Lenovo Legion Tab Gen 3 Review: 8-inch Mini-Tablet is a Gaming Monster

Battery life

In our HD Youtube video playback test, with the brightness all the way up at 400 nits, the Lenovo tab delivers a disappointing result of 6,4 hours of continuous playback.  

Both the Redmi Pad SEs, the 8,7’ and 11’ versions, are able to last much longer in the same test. The Amazon Fire HD 10 also performs well here with a strong 10 hours of battery life. Even Lenovo’s own larger Tab M11 lasts longer at 7,5 hours.

Software support

The Tab ships with Android 14. Lenovo promises 2 years of Android system updates and another 2 years of software patches, so 4 years of support ending in 2029. Actually, this is surprisingly good for a budget tablet compared to the other budget tablets mentioned earlier. The Redmi Pad SE has received support until now, and even an Android 15 update, but official support will most likely not last much longer. The Galaxy Tab A9 will also lose support by 2027.

Lenovo will try to push you to install sponsored apps and games during setup, but avoiding those is not too hard. There’s not too much to say about Lenovo’s implementation of the Android UI, aside from their excellent desktop mode. With the “PC-Mode” enabled, you get a desktop experience similar to Samsung DeX or ChromeOS that runs without any problems.. We think that this is a great option if you’re considering using the tablet for remote work instead of a laptop. But it’s good for light office work only.

Accessories

We were able to get the Lenovo Play Suite for the default price at 150€ during a promotion. This includes a robust light blue case with a large and practical yellow ring at the back, as well as a capacitive pen. If you’re buying this tablet for your child, this combo should be great for the kid to make some doodles. The pen is pretty inaccurate and not pressure sensitive, so taking notes or making digital art with it is out of the question. The Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 Lite can be found for a bit more money if you’re looking for a good pen tablet.  

Camera

The 8MP rear camera and 5MP front cameras here are pretty standard and usable. Selfies look alright in good lighting and the back camera is able to scan a document in detail, or take an occasional picture when no better cameras are available. 

Value for money

If your budget is around $150, the Lenovo Tab is never going to be the best deal unless you specifically need 4 years of updates. The used market has some very appealing tablets if you’re looking to get the most value for your money. In Germany, where we’re based, the far better Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 Lite and Redmi Pad Pro both cost under $120 used, for example. Obviously, used prices will depend on region and availability.

You should also check out Lenovo’s other budget tablet. Although we expect prices of the Lenovo Tab to drop, the Lenovo Tab M11 often goes on discount for around $120, and the tablet is larger and even ships with an included stylus. We prefer the M11 over the Lenovo Tab.

Final verdict

The Lenovo Tab is not a terrible tablet, it just has a bad price. The Tab has an okay 10,2’ display, decent speakers and long software support. However, better tablets like the Redmi Pad SE 8.7, Lenovo Tab M11 and Samsung Galaxy Tab A9 can be found for a lower price. 

We think that the Lenovo Tab is only worth recommending if the price is reduced significantly, but it makes no sense to buy at the release price of $159.