Other Tablets to Consider
We test tons of tablets every year. Here are a few others we like, just not as much as our picks above.
Apple iPad Pro (M4). Photograph: Brenda Stolyar
Apple iPad Pro (M4, 2024) for $899: Save yourself some cash and buy the 2024 iPad Pro instead of the latest model. Just make sure you actually buy it at a decent discount. There are two size options—11 or 13 inches—and both are insanely thin and light, enhanced by brilliantly bright OLED displays with 120-Hz refresh rates. They're the only iPad models with Face ID for authentication, and sport the nano-texture glass add-on to reduce glare—a must-have for anyone frequently using an iPad outside or near a window. They offer MacBook-level performance thanks to the M4 chipset, and you can take advantage of the new multitasking features in iPadOS 26.
Photograph: Julian Chokkattu
Boost Celero 5G Tab for $200: I didn't particularly love using the 10.95-inch Boost Celero 5G Tab—performance can be stuttery, making it a little annoying to operate—but it's $200 and perfectly fine for entertainment, whether that's playing some very lightweight games or catching up on Netflix. You can only buy it on Boost, meaning you might be able to get it for even less if you bundle it with your Boost data plan. Since it has 5G, you can add a cellular plan for always-on connectivity. That's really this tablet's calling card, because you'll be hard-pressed to find a cheap tablet with built-in cellular radios. If you don't want to have to connect to Wi-Fi or tether from your phone, the Celero is a decent option, especially considering the cheapest iPad with cellular will still set you back more than $400.
Lenovo Tab Plus. Photograph: Julian Chokkattu
Lenovo Tab Plus for $200: There are a lot of cheap Android tablets on the internet, and I urge you to be careful with what you buy. If Amazon's Fire tablets don't interest you (see below), consider Lenovo's Tab Plus. I used it for a month for pure entertainment. The 11.5-inch screen is nice and big compared to a phone screen, yet it's portable enough for travel. The built-in kickstand is excellent and should be standard on all tablets. It's not the snappiest, but the performance was more than adequate. While the software is largely fine, on rare occasions, a few preinstalled apps caused full-screen ads to pop up on the screen (one was for “virus protection”). It's crazy that Lenovo would allow that kind of garbage to show up, but the easy fix is to uninstall all the bloatware.
Google Pixel Tablet. Photograph: Nena Farrell
Google Pixel Tablet With Dock for $354: Google's Pixel Tablet (7/10, WIRED Recommends) is part tablet, part smart display. This 11-inch slate is like a big Pixel phone, with a sharp LCD screen, good speakers, and slick software. It runs pretty well thanks to the Tensor G2 processor inside. However, it comes with a hub, so when you're done using it as a tablet, you can magnetically dock it to start recharging automatically. This hub doubles as a speaker, and since the Pixel Tablet is the first tablet to support Google's Cast technology natively, you can cast music or shows to it from your phone or laptop, resulting in better sound quality from the system. When you're not using it, you can turn the display into a screensaver of the Google Home Hub panel, allowing you to see and control your smart home devices at any moment. It features multi-user support with up to eight profiles, so every family member can switch to a personalized profile, securely locked via fingerprint. I don't think it's worth the MSRP anymore, so try to catch it on sale.
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