The best Android tablets for 2023: which should you buy?
Choosing from the best Android tablets is a tricky challenge, considering the range of sizes, features and use cases they cater to nowadays. In order to rank below, they need the perfect combination of affordability, features, design, and performance.
We’ve lived with and reviewed plenty of Android tablets over the years, so we know what to look for when seeking out the best tablets. Right now, the Samsung Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra tops the list, but if money is tight, one of the best cheap tablets from Amazon or a mid-range brand like Xiaomi, Realme, or Honor may be more suitable.
To help you find what you need, we’ve listed all the pros and cons, along with who they’re best suited for. A link to the full review gives you everything else you could need to know.
The best Android tablets for 2023
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The Samsung Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra is the ultimate Android tablet, but with its enormous 14.6-inch screen it won’t be for everyone. That size sees it dwarfing even the largest iPad Pro, but with its included S Pen stylus this also makes it a superb device for creating artwork, editing documents, taking notes, and other productivity tasks.
The display is crisp at 1848 x 2960 and smooth at 120Hz, there’s tons of power from the Tab S8 Ultra’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset. It also has a great 12MP ultra-wide camera on the front, making this an ideal device for video calls.
In our review, we were very impressed with its four speakers too, plus its masses of storage, and its premium – if fragile-feeling – design. The Samsung Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra then has it all. You can even buy a keyboard folio if you want to use it like a laptop. The size does make it less portable than some slates though, and it sure is expensive.
Read our full Samsung Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra review
The Lenovo Yoga Tab 13 is a bit different to most tablets, and that helps it stand out. While the slate works brilliantly as a conventional tablet, it also has a built-in stand, so you can prop it up without a case, and there’s a micro HDMI port, so you can easily use it as a second screen for a laptop or other device – two features which we found very useful,.
The Lenovo Yoga Tab 13 also has an enormous speaker by tablet standards, making it great for anything involving audio. Beyond that, you get a big 13-inch 1350 x 2160 screen, a moderately powerful Snapdragon 870 chipset, and a respectable amount of storage.
What you don’t get – in another unusual move – is a rear camera, but then tablets are never ideal for taking photos anyway, and we also found the design made it hard to use with a case. Still, if a kickstand or micro HDMI are important to you then this is the Android tablet to get.
Read our full Lenovo Yoga Tab 13 review
The Samsung Galaxy Tab S7 Plus was at launch the best tablet Samsung had ever made, and it’s still great now, as well as being a serious rival to the iPad Pro range. In fact, its screen arguably has those slates beat, as it’s a 12.4-inch Super AMOLED one with a 2800 x 1752 resolution and a 120Hz refresh rate. The iPad Pro range can match much of that, but those slates have LCD screens, which aren’t quite as good – we were seriously impressed with this screen.
You also of course get a whole lot of power from the Samsung Galaxy Tab S7 Plus’s Snapdragon 865 Plus chipset, enough that we found it the smoothest Android tablet experience we’d come across at launch. Plus, it has a premium metal build that’s incredibly slim at 5.7mm thick.
There’s also a 5G model for speedy mobile data, and Samsung’s S Pen stylus comes bundled with the slate. Chuck in a keyboard (sold separately) and this is a serious productivity machine. But even without that this is a high-end slate and great for media.
Read our full Samsung Galaxy Tab S7 Plus review
Samsung has long been ruling the high-end Android tablet world, but it now faces an unlikely challenger in the form of the Lenovo Tab P11 Pro. Lenovo isn’t well-known for Android tablets, but with the Tab P11 Pro it’s delivered a real rival to the likes of the Samsung Galaxy Tab S7 Plus.
This slate has an 11.5-inch 1600 x 2560 OLED screen, so it’s big, sharp, and packs punchy OLED tech. It also supports HDR10, so we found it a joy to view content on, with the only slight let-down being its conventional 60Hz refresh rate. Coupled with loud quad-speakers, the Lenovo Tab P11 Pro makes for an accomplished media machine, and with its long-lasting 8,600mAh battery it’s a great travel companion.
The Lenovo Tab P11 Pro packs an attractive metal build too, and it supports both a keyboard and a stylus, transforming it into a capable productivity device – though one that’s still no match for a typical laptop. We found its performance middling and its cameras aren’t up to much, but with its surprisingly reasonable price tag, those are sacrifices we can live with.
Read our full Lenovo Tab P11 Pro review
It might not be the best of the bunch for Android tablets but the Amazon Fire HD 10 Plus (2021) has a lot going for it thanks to its attractive 10.1-inch display with a 1920 x 1200 resolution. That means it’s ideal for watching your favorite movies or shows, especially as we also found that it manages around 12 hours of battery life, so you won’t run out of juice at a pivotal moment.
In our review, we were also fairly impressed with the speakers for the money, so this is a capable budget media machine. Storage is limited at either 32GB or 64GB and we’d like speedier performance in an ideal world, as the chipset was a little bit dated even at launch, but at this price, it’s not bad at all.
Read our full Amazon Fire HD 10 Plus (2021) review
Happy to sacrifice a few of the features of the Galaxy Tab S6 in trade for a cheaper tablet? If yes, the Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 Lite could be the best Android tablet for you. The chipset isn’t as powerful as its sibling, the cameras aren’t as impressive, and the screen isn’t as beautiful… but it’s around half the price, and all of its specs are still quite impressive for a slate at this price.
It’s a remarkably good product considering how much (or should we say little) you’re spending on the Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 Lite. We were particularly impressed with the robust build and the inclusion of a stylus. It isn’t particularly smaller than the Galaxy Tab S6 – and ironically, it’s actually heavier too – but if you don’t want to spend top-dollar you may love this.
Read our full Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 Lite review
While it’s not the newest model, the Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 is still a great Android tablet, with a plethora of brilliant features. It comes with an S Pen stylus in the box that you can use to take notes, draw and much more on the tablet’s display. You can also buy a smart keyboard to make it an experience that is close to a laptop.
The 10.5-inch AMOLED display on the Galaxy Tab S6 is one of the highlights with an impressive resolution of 1600 x 2560. This tablet also comes with two cameras on the rear which we were fairly happy with by tablet standards, so you can get better photography than on many other slates. It’s not the perfect device – there isn’t a 3.5mm headphone jack and we found that the user interface had its own quirks – but it’s still a top Android slate.
Read our full Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 review
By opting for the Amazon Fire HD 8 (2020) rather than the Plus model, you get slightly less RAM and no wireless charging, but an otherwise near identical slate at a lower price. It’s an upgrade on its predecessor thanks to 30{f5ac61d6de3ce41dbc84aacfdb352f5c66627c6ee4a1c88b0642321258bd5462} more power, improved battery life, double the storage, and the presence of a USB-C (rather than micro USB) port, but that aside this is familiar territory if you’ve used an Amazon slate before.
We weren’t big fans of the screen quality, and you’re locked in to Amazon’s ecosystem, which isn’t quite as rich as full-fat Android. However, if you’re an Amazon Prime subscriber then much of your content will be front and center, and you’re paying a lot less than you would for most of the other best Android tablets.
Read our full Amazon Fire HD 8 (2020) review
The Huawei MatePad Pro is Huawei’s attempt at taking on the iPad Pro range, and in a lot of ways it’s a very strong rival, from its high-quality 10.8-inch screen, to its top-end power and its long-lasting battery. The Huawei MatePad Pro also has a stylish, slim, and lightweight design, plus an optional stylus and keyboard, so it’s premium and built for productivity.
However, in our tests we found that those accessories were simply okay, and the big problem faced by the MatePad Pro is its lack of Google services – meaning no access to the Google Play app store, and no Google apps, such as Maps. That’s going to be a major issue for a lot of people, but if you can live without that then this comes closer than most Android slates to matching the iPad Pro experience.
Read our full Huawei MatePad Pro review
The Amazon Fire HD 10 (2021) isn’t the speediest tablet, but at a low price it creeps onto our best Android tablets list for good reason. For the price, you get a good quality and large screen with a 1920 x 1200 resolution, which we found was ideal for watching films or your favorite YouTube videos.
This is a slate you can use all day too, as our reviewer found that if anything the battery life is even better than Amazon’s 12-hour estimate. In our tests we found the software was a bit limited and the processor a tad slow, meaning there are better options out there. However, if you’re on a budget and don’t mind making some compromises, you could do a lot worse than the Fire HD 10.
Read our full Amazon Fire HD 10 (2021) review
How to choose the best Android tablet for you
Size and price are the two biggest considerations when buying a tablet. Consider whether you want the biggest screen possible – which is great for media and productivity, or something smaller and therefore more portable.
Consider how much you want and need to spend too. If you don’t need top-end power then you can usually save some money.
Beyond that, other things to pay attention to are the screen resolution (higher is better), and the battery life – obviously longer is better, but how important that is will depend on whether you mostly plan to use your tablet at home (where you can plug it in at any time) or when out and about (where you might have to rely heavily on the battery).
If you plan to use your tablet for work or creative endeavors then it’s also worth seeing whether it supports a keyboard or stylus, and whether any such things are included.
Is mobile data important?
Some tablets come with the option of 5G or 4G, but getting a data plan adds to the cost, so consider how much you’d need data when away from Wi-Fi – and remember that you can always tether your smartphone to your tablet to share your phone’s connection instead.
How we test
Every tablet included in this guide has been reviewed in full, so we’ve spent a lot of time with each of them working out what’s good, what’s bad, and how they compare.
We’ve made sure to fully test out their performance with apps and games, how good content looks on their screens, whether their interface is intuitive, how long the battery lasts, and how the cameras hold up, as well as assessing their design and build quality.
With that experience we’ve also considered how they’re priced and whether there are newer models in the range, to come up with this ranking.