Samsung Galaxy Tab A11 Review: Best Budget Tablet?

The Galaxy Tab A11 is Samsung’s newest, cheapest tablet. And Samsung is offering a full 7 years of updates for it. While it starts at $170, we expect the price to drop to around $100 soon. So, how does the Galaxy Tab A11 match up against other cheaper tablets like the Lenovo Tab One, and is it the new best budget tablet? 

To test that, we used it over the last couple of weeks for everything we could think of. And there are two big issues with it that might be a deal-breaker for you. Let’s talk about that. 

Design & Build Quality

The Galaxy Tab A11 is indistinguishable from its predecessor, the Galaxy Tab A9. It uses the same frame, the dimensions are the same and all the ports are in the same places. But 2023’s Tab A9 had a pretty sleek, mostly metal design, so we don’t mind Samsung sticking with something that works. 

At 8.7’’, the A11 is one of the few choices for a mini tablet on the market. It feels surprisingly thick at 8mm, but that makes it easy to hold since the edges are slightly rounded. It also only weighs 337g. The build is definitely one of the highlights.

What’s not a highlight is the lack of S-Pen support or an official Keyboard cover from Samsung. Still, you can always use something like a Logitech Keys-2-Go for writing on the go. And if you want to sign a document or sketch a little bit, you can pick up a capacitive stylus. We wouldn’t recommend this for people who are serious about notetaking or drawing though.

The display bezels are pretty thick, and you’ll notice there’s only a single webcam on the left side, and no 3d face-scanner. So face unlock isn’t the fastest nor the safest. There’s also no fingerprint reader. You’ll be better off using a password or PIN. 

There’s a single 8MP camera on the back and a 5MP selfie camera on the front side. The Tab A11 is not going to replace your smartphone for photos, but the rear camera is usable for scanning PDFs and the front camera will handle a Zoom call with no issue. 

On the bottom of the frame you can find the Micro-SD slot, and SIM slot if you buy the LTE model. The USB-C port is on the right, and it supports USB 2.0 speeds, which isn’t the fastest but is fine for the price. 

The 3.5mm audio jack is right below, and it’s nice to have it included if you want to use wired headphones or a mic. The output quality is good. 

Display & Speakers 

The display is one of the few areas where Samsung has actually improved something. Instead of a 60HZ panel, it now gets up to 90HZ of refresh rate, meaning animations and games feel smoother.

Besides that, it’s virtually the same as the A9. The panel is 8.7’’ and bright enough at 500 nits. There is one considerable downside – the display only has a 800×1340 pixel resolution. That means you can see individual pixels when you’re close-up, and the overall image isn’t as sharp as on other tablets. This can also make using the tablet over longer periods more straining for the eyes.

We compared the A11’s display against the sub $100 Lenovo Tab One when watching YouTube. Both tablets have the same resolution and similar brightness, so it was a massive surprise that the Lenovo Tab One gets much darker in dark scenes and has more natural looking colours in general. That’s a bit of a letdown. 

The speakers sound okay for YouTube, but watching a movie or playing music isn’t the best experience. They’re clear, but there’s basically no bass and they don’t get very loud. That’s still fine for the price. 

Specs, Performance & Benchmarks

Let’s talk about the performance. 

Our first impressions of the Tab A11 was that the tablet is unacceptably slow. At the beginning, apps would freeze or crash, and the entire system was hard to navigate because of the lag. This got better after the tablet finished initial updates. We also turned off animations in the accessibility settings, which helps with the responsiveness. That does make the 90HZ refresh rate pretty useless since you’ll rarely see it. 

So the Galaxy Tab A11 is usable. But we’re really disappointed in the tablet’s Mediatek Helio G99 processor. That’s the same chip as the one in the Galaxy Tab A9 from 2 years ago. The RAM is also the same as the A9’s at 4GB and the storage still starts at a pitiful 64GB. That’s hardly enough. At least storage expansion through a Micro-SD card is still possible.

Geekbench 6 is a benchmark test that measures how fast a device is compared to others using a standardised speed test. In CPU single-core, the Tab A11 is actually 5% slower than the Tab A9. The CPU multi-core score is also 7% worse. It’s very disappointing that a new tablet is slower than its predecessor.

3DMark’s Wildlife benchmark gives an idea of how well the GPU performs, which is important for gaming performance. Here, the Tab A11 scores the same as the Tab A9. For reference, the iPad Mini 7 is 1100% faster in the same test. 

Weak for Gaming 

Anyone looking to game seriously on a tablet can forget about the A11. Simple games like Clash Royale and Roblox will run fine, even on high settings, but even then the touch responsiveness is worse than any smartphone we’ve used.

Genshin Impact refused to fully install, since the system gave a “storage full” notification while downloading the game, causing it to crash. And that’s with a brand new tablet with nearly nothing else installed. We tried removing as much bloat as possible, but still couldn’t get Genshin Impact working. Installing the game to an SD-Card isn’t possible either. 

By the way, we at MyNextTablet have been independently reviewing tablets since 2008. That means no company can pay for a good review from us. Give us a like and subscribe to our YouTube channel you’d like to support independent journalism. 

Software: 7 Years of Android Updates

There is one silver lining about the A11 that the spec sheet doesn’t mention. That’s the 7 years of software support. For a tablet that we expect to sell for about $100, that’s incredible. Competitors like Xiaomi or Lenovo offer 3 years of patches at max in this price range. That gives the Tab A11 a pretty long life in theory, as long as future Android versions aren’t too taxing for the tablet to the point where it’s too slow to use.

Besides the support, the software experience is OK. Apps like “Block Blast”, “Monopoly GO”
and Temu are preinstalled. You can uninstall them very easily, which you should do to conserve storage space. 

Battery life

The Tab A11 packs a relatively small 5100mAh battery that charges at 15 Watts.

In our YouTube HD video streaming test, the Tab A11 achieves a decent 8 hours of playback at max brightness. The Lenovo Tab One gets just 45 minutes longer playback, and Apple’s iPad Mini is far behind with 5.5 hours. We’re happy with this result. 

What CAN you do with the Tab A11? 

So the Galaxy Tab A11 can’t game well, it doesn’t support a keyboard cover for writing or a pen digitizer for drawing.  The display and speakers also aren’t particularly great. What the hell can you do with it?

Well, when I was testing the A11, I actually used it as my E-Reader instead of my Amazon Kindle. The storage space is enough for E-Books, and with the A11 you have full Android and a real browser, so you can download PDFs and textbooks from online libraries instead of having to send files to your Kindle.

And when I was bored with reading, I listened to downloaded music or watched a YouTube video. Those are things that the Tab A11 can do nearly as well as the most premium tablets. 

The Galaxy Tab A11 is Solid, With a Couple Caveats

If you’re a Galaxy Tab A9 owner and are looking to upgrade, the Tab A11 sadly isn’t it. But it still offers a good entry point for buyers who don’t already have a tablet and just want something for light browsing, streaming and reading.

We feel a bit let down by the weak performance, but if the price drops to below $100, the 7 years of software updates makes this the default recommendation for an 8” budget tablet. 

Before you buy anything, make sure to check out our best tablet recommendations for under $200. In that video, we’ll tell you which tablets are a great deal right now.