The best 10 tablets in comparison

Mobile devices are great for working on the go or making a long commute entertaining. But a smartphone might be too small for watching videos or playing games, and carrying around a laptop is inconvenient. This is where tablets enter the scene.

Smaller, thinner, and much lighter than laptops, yet still providing a significantly larger display size compared to smartphones, tablet computers offer both computing power and portability. You'll also note that it's becoming more popular to sell a tablet with a keyboard or stylus pens, essential accessories for boosting your productivity. If you are looking for the best gaming tablets, a device with a powerful processor and a large screen is a perfect choice.

With so many options available, finding the best tablet of 2021 is a difficult task. However, there are some key aspects you should take into account, and focusing on them can help you choose the right tablet for your needs.

Design and build

Tablets should offer a balance between portability and utility. All else equal, a tablet with a high screen-to-body ratio is always desirable as it maximizes the viewing area while keeping the bezels small, thus saving precious space.

Most tablets have screen sizes of approximately 9.2 inches when measured diagonally, but users find that tablets between 7 to 8 inches often offer the best balance between portability and utility. A critical aspect of the tablet's design is the material used for the chassis. The materials used in a tablet also influence the price tag of the device.

• Plastic: Typically in the form of polycarbonate, most tablets in the lower price range are made out of plastic. Even though it is the cheapest option, plastic has some important advantages, such as being lightweight and having relatively good heat resistance.
• Metal: For the more expensive devices, metals are widely used to encase the components. Metals used in the production of tablets, usually in the form of aluminum alloys, can sometimes be even thinner and lighter than their plastic counterparts. Another advantage of metal is that it disperses the heat produced by the tablet's components, thus making it possible for manufacturers to use more powerful processors. Aluminum alloys are also aesthetically pleasing.
• Glass: While glass is widely used in the form of strengthened glass for protecting displays, some tablets have it as casing in combination with metal. It provides a sleek look and is also the most scratch-resistant among the three materials mentioned. The principal disadvantage is that dropping a tablet with glass panels often results in a wholly shattered tablet, and glass panels are expensive to replace.

Types of tablets

There are two main types of tablets: stand-alone tablets, which are also called slates or booklets, and 2-in-1 tablets, which can be convertible or hybrid PC tablets.

Stand-alone tablets are made of just a single slate, like an enlarged smartphone. With on-screen keyboard and navigation buttons, these tablets are a reasonably good choice for those who don't use their tablets primarily for writing since on-screen keyboards have never been the best for this job. An on-screen keyboard takes up around 50% of the display, which means a substantial decrease in viewing space.

2-in-1 tablets have two slates held together on one edge, one of the slates being the tablet itself, the other a keyboard. The keyboard is either detachable or attached permanently by a hinge, which can then be folded to the back of the tablet when not in use, like in the case of Lenovo's Yoga tablets. 2-in-1 tablets look very similar to laptop computers, but they are usually smaller. Convertibles have one significant advantage over stand-alone tablets: the physical keyboard. Some keyboards may also have an additional battery or an extra storage drive, which comes in handy if the internal storage is insufficient.

Display

The display is probably one of the most important aspects of a tablet. There are two main types of screens in today's tablets: LCDs and OLED/AMOLED displays.

LCDs (liquid crystal displays) adjust the amount of light that passes through each liquid crystal layer. LCDs are thin and light and have a low refresh-rate flicker. The downside is that the viewing quality is not that good compared to OLED displays, especially in direct sunlight and in high-temperature environments.

OLEDs (organic light-emitting diode displays) and AMOLEDs (active-matrix light-emitting diode displays) emit light directly. Therefore, the contrast ratios are very high. The display's response time is also much faster than in the case of LCDs. However, because OLED and AMOLED displays use organic materials, the viewing quality tends to decrease over time.

The size of the display is a matter of personal preference. A larger screen means a larger viewing area, but it also increases the overall size of the device, making it less portable. A smaller display is a plus if you are looking for portability. The average screen size for tablets is 9.2 inches, but 10-inch tablets and even tablets with larger screens are becoming more popular.

Other important factors to take into account are resolution and pixel density. The screen resolution determines the clarity and sharpness of images. Pixel density refers to the number of pixels per inch displayed on the screen, and it depends on the screen resolution and screen size. The higher the resolution, the higher the pixel density is if the screen size remains constant.

Battery

Battery life is vital if you want to be able to use your device for more than just a few hours. Extended usage time is crucial for people working on the go. Finding a socket while traveling is nothing short of a miracle. Even if you're at home most of the time, with outlets everywhere, it's not comfortable to be stuck in one place. Battery power is measured in milliampere-hour (mAh) and determines how long your device can last on one charge. However, this also depends on how energy-efficient the tablet is. Typically, tablets can last from around 4 to 10 hours if used continuously under moderate load.

Processor

There are numerous options when it comes to processors. The most renowned mobile processor manufacturers are Qualcomm, MediaTek, and Intel. The total clock speed can loosely determine a processor's performance. More cores combined with higher clock speeds would mean better performance. However, it would still depend on the particular circuit design of the processor, process size, and other factors.

To find out more about mobile processors, you can consult our article on mobile chipsets. The best way to test the performance of a tablet is to run the most demanding applications on it, such as 3D games or video editing software. Simple web browsing cannot push the processor to its limits, so be sure to test the tablet using the most processor-intensive applications that you intend to use regularly.

OS

There are three operating systems for tablets: Android, iOS, and Windows. Android is by far the most popular OS worldwide, just like in the case of smartphones.

Android is a mobile OS developed by Google. It is open-source and, in principle, anyone with the proper knowledge and skills to modify the system can do so. Samsung, for example, is well known in installing heavily-modified Android systems on their devices. Android tablets are best known for their customizability and flexibility.

Apple develops iOS for its iPhones and iPads. Unlike Android, the source code cannot be modified, so the system is unitary. Some common pros for iOS are enhanced security features and ease of use.

Windows is the least common OS on tablets, though there are still many Windows tablets on the market. Take note that there are two kinds of Windows OS, Windows for ARM devices, and Windows for x86 machines. Windows for x86 allows the installation of third-party desktop applications, those typically installed on laptops and desktops.

With Windows for ARM, on the other hand, users are limited when it comes to installing applications, as they have to choose only apps from the Windows Store. There is a limited number of applications in the store, although Microsoft is partnering with app developers to catch up with Android and iOS. Most tablet processors employ ARM's architecture. Consequently, most tablets use Windows for ARM.