Samsung Galaxy Tab S10 Lite Review: Best Budget Tablet With S Pen?

The Samsung Galaxy Tab S10 Lite is the successor to the Galaxy Tab S6 Lite, which was sold for five years. Samsung released three editions of the S6 Lite, simply because it’s so popular. And the reason is clear: At a relatively low price, it offers an S Pen that’s just as good as the S Pen of the expensive S10 Ultra.

We tested the S10 Lite very thoroughly to find out if we can recommend it just as much as its predecessor. To do this, we wrote and drew with the S Pen, played Fortnite and other games, but also wrote with the keyboard and worked with the tablet for a while.

Lots of things are new and that starts with the design.

Design & Ports

Samsung has moved away from the S6 Lite’s design, with the S10 Lite now closely resembling the S10 FE and its predecessor, the S9 FE. Even the same accessories are compatible, like the keyboard cover, case, and protective cover.

The design appears modern and high-quality. Samsung relies on a flat case with a matte finish that feels pleasant in your hand. The edges around the display are evenly thin, the back is simple, and overall, the device looks much higher-quality than the name “Lite” would suggest. We also really like that you can get it in more than just gray.

Compared to the FE models, two features are unfortunately missing: a fingerprint scanner and an IP68 certification. If you want that, it’s worth it to invest about $100 more in an S10 FE.

And typical for Samsung, it only has a USB-C 2.0 port. If you wanna connect an external monitor, grabbing the FE isn’t enough either. You need a regular S-Tablet like the new S11. But Samsung DeX is supported—that’s a desktop mode.

A headphone jack is of course missing, but at least we get a MicroSD card slot.

The front camera has a resolution of 5 megapixels and is sufficient for video chats. The 8-megapixel main camera is also okay. But yes, tablet cameras are generally not suitable for photographers.

Display & Speakers

The Galaxy Tab S10 Lite offers a 10.9-inch LCD with a resolution of 2112 x 1320 pixels. Compared to the predecessor, the increased refresh rate is noticeable: 90Hz instead of 60Hz ensures much smoother scrolling.

The maximum brightness is 600 nits for HDR content, which is pretty bright for this price range. In a direct comparison to the iPad 11, the S10 Lite is almost as bright outside of HDR, just a tiny bit darker. But the iPad has better viewing angles.

Also in comparison to the S10 FE, the S10 Lite is a tiny bit darker. But overall, the brightness is good and it’s better than the Lenovo Idea Tab Pro, for example,  which also is a direct competitor.

The speakers deliver good sound for this price. It’s a stereo setup with Dolby Atmos support. In a direct comparison, they sound similar to the Galaxy Tab S9 FE and S10 FE, which means: sufficiently loud, solid mids, but hardly any bass. It’s fine for Netflix or YouTube, but music lovers are better off using headphones.

S Pen

The included standard S Pen is one of the highlights of the Galaxy Tab S10 Lite. It works wonderfully and feels pleasant in your hand. As with other Samsung tablets, the pen can be attached magnetically to the side—but it doesn’t charge wirelessly, because it doesn’t have a battery at all. That’s right, this S Pen never needs to be charged.

In Samsung Notes, the S Pen writes precisely and without lag. Since the display is laminated, there’s no annoying gap between the tip and the digital ink. Especially compared to the iPad 11—whose display isn’t laminated—the S10 Lite offers a much better writing feel here. This makes it the best lower mid-range tablet with a pen from now on. Better than the competitors from Xiaomi, Lenovo, and Honor.

We think Samsung’s really great on this. The S Pen works almost exactly like on the much more expensive S10 Ultra. Sure, that was already the case with the S6 Lite. But with Apple, Lenovo, Honor, and Xiaomi, you always have to make compromises compared to their flagships. Not with Samsung.

It’s only a shame that there aren’t quite as many professional apps for drawing compared to iPads. But an iPad Air with a laminated display is also twice as expensive as the S10 Lite.

Keyboard Cover

Samsung offers two keyboard covers for the S10 Lite: the regular Book Cover Keyboard and the Book Cover Keyboard Slim. We tested the standard Book Cover, which offers a detachable keyboard with a touchpad and a separate back cover with a built-in kickstand.

This keyboard is identical to the one you can also get for the Tab S7, S8, S9, S9 FE, and S10 FE—so it’s tried and tested for years. The key travel is good and the touchpad reacts reliably. The keyboard’s definitely suitable for longer texts, even if you first have to get used to the slightly smaller layout. But I’ve already written many, many thousands of words with exactly this keyboard and can definitely recommend it.

It’s nice that you can get the keyboard used or at a discount for a pretty low price. Anyone who often uses the tablet in DeX mode or wants to work productively with it should definitely grab the keyboard. I also recommend the version with a touchpad because when you’re writing in office apps with it, you can jump between lines and words much faster with a mouse than you can with a touchscreen.

Hardware & Gaming Test

Inside the S10 Lite sits the Exynos 1380, the same processor as in the older Tab S9 FE. Depending on the model, there’s 6GB or 8GB of RAM and 128GB or 256GB of internal storage. A 5G version is also available.

In practice, the system with 6GB of RAM mostly runs smoothly. Apps start quickly, multitasking with a split screen works well. However, the tablet quickly reaches its limits when you use several demanding apps at the same time or let games run in the background. In our test with Samsung DeX, there were small lags when we had a game running in the background.

Obviously, at this price, we can’t expect top performance and it’s more intended for office tasks and simple games. Our benchmark comparison also shows that. In Geekbench 6, it’s significantly weaker than the Xiaomi Pad 7 and the Apple iPad 11. If you don’t need an S-Pen and are looking for a gaming tablet, for example, you’re much better off with these two.

We also see that the performance is on par with the S9 FE with the same chip. And the S10 FE is a little stronger, it has the Exynos 1580. In comparison, you won’t notice much of a performance difference, however.

In the 3D Mark tests, the results are very similar; this benchmark tests graphics performance. Many tablets like the Xiaomi Pad 7, Samsung S10 FE, and iPad 11 are significantly more powerful. And our gaming test actually also shows that the S10 Lite isn’t a gaming tablet.

We extensively tested Fortnite with various settings. With the highest, it only runs with between 3 and 9 FPS, so it’s unplayable. Even with medium graphics, it can drop down to 15 FPS. With low graphics settings and 75% 3D resolution, it’s actually playable with a good 30 FPS.

But only to a limited extent. While it runs smoothly, we often noticed strangely flickering textures and glitches. So often that we could even capture it on video several times. That’s not fun. We suspect that’s more due to the Exynos chip and less to the pure performance. We’ve actually often observed that some games are poorly optimized for Exynos chips.

But other games can be played well. Genshin Impact runs with the highest settings at around 45 FPS, which is really solid. We were also able to play War Thunder Mobile with 46 FPS. Sure, better tablets easily manage more, but at least it runs decently.

Software: Android 15 & 7 Years Updates

The tablet is shipped running Android 15 and OneUI 7 and should get Android 16 soon. A real advantage over others: Samsung promises 7 years of Android updates, which is fantastic in the lower mid-range.

The interface is as extensive as usual: In addition to Samsung Notes, Health, Kids, and SmartThings, third-party apps like Notion and LumaFusion are also pre-installed. Many of these apps make sense, hardly anyone will need some, but you can uninstall them anyway.

Samsung DeX is also on board, but with limitations: External monitors can’t be connected via USB-C. So DeX only works on the tablet’s display itself. This may be enough for some, but if you want a real desktop setup, you have to grab a higher-quality model.

Read: Best iPad Alternatives: These Tablets Beat Apple In 2025

Battery Life

In our standardized battery test, the battery lasted exactly 8 hours. For this test, we always let an HD YouTube video run on an endless loop at 100% brightness. And these 8 hours are definitely better than the iPad 11’s, but there are also some tablets that last longer. Overall, the battery life is good and I think most people will get through a school or university day well with it.

Samsung Galaxy Tab S10 Lite Review: My Final Verdict

Overall, the Galaxy Tab S10 Lite is a very good lower mid-range tablet. But it’s clear that it’s not the perfect choice for everyone. We think it’s great if you’re looking for the cheapest possible tablet with a great pen and keyboard. Both accessories are really good and it’s also good for Netflix and YouTube. The 7 years of updates are also great. We think it’s a very nice choice for students, for example.

But one prerequisite is that the price drops. We think the MSRP of $350 is too expensive and we would wait until it drops more in the direction of 300 and lower.

If you’re looking for a gaming tablet, we don’t recommend it at all. The Xiaomi Pad 7 and iPad 11 are much better suited for that. A used iPad 10 would also be better.

A comparison with the Galaxy Tab S10 FE, which we also reviewed of course, is also worth doing. That one costs a little more, but in return, it has a fingerprint reader, an IP68-protected body, and a little more computing power.