R Fast L Tablet
Gaby Zenz
The best tablet for your needs can be tricky to find, regardless of whether you're looking to outfit the kids with cheap, durable tablets for school or just want a beautiful iPad to keep near the couch.
That's because there are so many tablets with different prices and features these days, which is why we maintain this regularly-updated list of the best tablets around, based on our hands-on testing. We can help you find the right tablet because we review the best from all the major manufacturers every year. We test them in our lab and in the real world, and we've come to a few key conclusions about the best tablets out there.
Amazon tablets are generally great for kids and anyone on a tight budget, for example, while Apple's iPads are best for students and creative pros. That's especially true now that an M2 chip powers Apple's latest iPad Air, while the powerhouse M4 chip drives the latest iPad Pro. While most tablets are fine for browsing the web, reading books or watching movies, Apple's new iPads are so powerful they can almost replace your laptop.
I know because I've been reviewing tablets for years, and have reviewed many of the devices on this list myself. Together my team and I have decades of experience testing tablets, and based on our years of hands-on testing and reviews we recommend these slates as the best you can buy right now.
If you just need a tablet for not a lot of money, the $59 Amazon Fire 7 is a solid choice. This no-frills tablet is weak, hobbled by Amazon's FireOS and has a grainy sub-1080p display, but you can't beat it at this price.
Windows 11 is the most touch-friendly version of Windows yet, and if you want to use it on a tablet we recommend Microsoft's Surface Pro 11. It's a solid tablet that works well enough for getting things done if you pay for the detachable keyboard.
If you absolutely must have the biggest tablet possible, you want the Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra. Its 14.6 inch Super AMOLED 120Hz display (bigger than any iPad) is large, luscious and powered by a speedy Snapgradon 8 Gen 2 chipset.
When you want the biggest, best iPad on the block, splurge for the 1TB 13-inch iPad Pro with an M4 chip inside. This is the most powerful iPad yet made, plus it sports a gorgeous OLED display and incredible battery life.
The iPad Air 2024 is the tablet we recommend as best for most people because its light, powerful and delivers 11+ hours of battery life in our testing. This is also the first iPad Air ever sold in two sizes, the classic 11-inch and larger 13-inch, so it's the Air to get if you want the screen real estate of a 13-inch iPad Pro without the extra power.
Plus, the screen looks lovely and the 12MP cameras on front and back do a great job of capturing detail, helping you look your best on video calls. While you can get almost as good of a tablet for $150 less if you go for a basic iPad, we think the extra cost is worth it (if you can afford it) to get the new iPad Air, as its a great tablet that's faster and more capable than the basic iPad.
The Amazon Fire 7 tablet has one standout feature, and that's its $59 price tag. That absurdly low price gets you a surprisingly decent little slate, with a snappy quad-core 1.3 GHz processor, a headphone jack and a microSD card reader so you can slot in extra storage, and a remarkably light 0.6-pound plastic frame.
The OnePlus Pad is a big Android tablet with a huge 13MP rear camera, attractive curved edges and a unique 7:5 aspect ratio on its display. With this unique look, OnePlus' first tablet really stands out from the competition.
Watching videos and reading ebooks is a great experience on the Pad's vivid 11.6-inch 144Hz display, and thanks to its MediaTek Dimensity 9000 CPU and Android 13 OS, apps and games run smooth and fast. This lightweight slate also has exceptional battery life, lasting over 13 hours in our testing (as you'll see in our battery test results chart below).
The Surface Pro 9 is available with your choice of either a 12th-gen Intel Core CPU or a Microsoft SQ3 ARM processor. 5G connectivity is only available on the ARM model, a first for the Surface line. And based on what Microsoft showed us at its Microsoft Surface event, the 5G model is also optimized for advanced neural processing unit (NPU) features.
We tested and reviewed the Intel version, and it's a good Windows tablet that's speedy enough to handle day-to-day work tasks. The touchscreen looks decent and feels responsive, and the whole package is light enough to comfortably carry to work or the coffee shop. The fact that neither the detachable keyboard nor the stylus does knock some of the shine off this otherwise solid Windows 11 tablet, however, so try to get it as part of a sale or bundle deal if you can.
The Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra ($1,199 to start) is the ultimate Samsung tablet for those who prize screen size above all else. If you want the biggest, heaviest tablet possible, this is the best choice on this list.
Like its predecessor, the Samsung Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra, the Tab S9 Ultra features a gorgeous 14.6-inch OLED display, an ultra-slim svelte design and plenty of power thanks to its speedy Snapdragon 8 processor.
As you can see in our breakdown of iPad Pro 2024 benchmarks, this new tablet blows every other slate out of the water in terms of raw speed. It's faster than any other tablet we've ever tested and lasts longer on battery to boot, going for 13-15 hours in our battery test before running out of juice.
But there's more to love about this premium tablet besides what's under the hood. The cameras are as good as ever and the display has been upgraded to OLED on both sizes of iPad Pro, so you can count on one of the best tablet screens ever no matter which size you buy. And while you pay a premium for these powerful, long-lasting OLED-equipped tablets, it's worth it if you want the best of the best.
We test and review dozens of tablets every year, and even though they can't all make this list that doesn't mean they aren't good machines. There are also some really great slates that maintain their value over years, so we sometimes recommend them as good alternatives to the best tablets that are often sold at a discount.
So while these tablets didn't quite achieve the level of excellence needed to be leaders of the pack, they're good alternatives well worth considering if they meet your unique needs, or if you can't find your first choice on sale.
The iPad 2022 is a bit more expensive than its predecessors, but Apple justified the price hike with a sleek new redesign that slightly expanded the display, removed the Home button, upgraded the power button with Touch ID support and added USB-C charging.
Sadly, you're still pretty limited in what accessories you can get for this basic iPad. It doesn't work with the new Apple Pencil Pro, for example, but does work with the 1st-generation Apple Pencil. These limitations are easier to stomach when you remember this iPad starts at $349, which is $250 cheaper than the entry-level iPad Air.
The interesting thing about the 2022 redesign of the basic iPad is that it brought it a lot closer to the iPad Air in terms of design (thinner, bigger screen, USB-C charging, etc), so for the $349 you're getting an iPad 2022 that's not far behind the iPad Air (our top recommendation for best tablet) in terms of capabilities. It lasted nearly 11 hours in our battery testing, too, so it's plenty long-lived enough to see you through a day on the couch.
For some shoppers this will be a useless gimmick, but this obvious attempt on Google's part to stand out from the pack pays off if you want to get started with a Google smart home. This is the only tablet on the market that doubles as a solid smart home hub out of the box, and it's a great value.
The speakers on the tablet's charging dock are also great, delivering more satisfying bass at the expense of some treble. It's a good Android tablet too, comparable to Apple's iPad 2022 despite costing $50 less. But its support for various smart home technologies varies, and it's not a great choice for all smart home owners as it can't match the capabilities or sound quality of some of the best smart home hubs.
Take almost everything we know and love about the iPad Air, but shrink it down to a size and weight that's super-easy to use with just one hand and you have the iPad mini 6 (2021), which may be the iPad you've been waiting for. It has the Apple Pencil 2 support with the flat-edged design, the much-smaller bezels and nearly everything else we love about an iPad. Currently, Amazon has the market cornered on sub-10-inch tablets with the pricing of its Fire slates, but the new iPad mini gives quality-focused folks an alternative worth investing in.
On top of that, you've got the super-fast A15 Bionic system-on-chip, which outpaces the iPad Air and every non-Pro iPad out there. Its display is also super bright (over 500 nits of brightness), plus surprisingly good sound for a device this small. Oh, and speaking of outperforming its size, the iPad mini 6 has terrific battery life. The only thing that isn't small about the iPad mini 6? Its $499 price tag is a bit higher than the normal iPad, but it's another case of "you get what you pay for."
If you're a writer who loves pen and paper, you know that the iPad and its Apple Pencil don't really feel right. That's where the reMarkable tablets have jumped into the fray, offering a real-feeling writing experience, with a unique screen technology that uses digital paper and the Marker stylus, which feels more authentic when you press its nib against the screen. The reMarkable 2, however, is a much more seductive device, now measuring a sleek 0.2 inches and ditching its plastic frame for a sleeker metallic chassis.
Oh, and it's not just a notebook. Your documents sync to the cloud so you can read them on iPhones, iPads, PCs, Macs and Android. The reMarkable 2 also translates your handwriting to editable text, so you can share your notes with your whole team, or turn your draft ideas into a manuscript. And its two weeks of battery life means you can just leave it on your coffee table, for when inspiration strikes, rather than keep it plugged in all the time.
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