MEDIA STREAMING
One of the best reasons to treat yourself to a brand new tablet is to sit back and enjoy some serious media consumption on it. Bigger than your phone, more portable than your television, a tablet can go anywhere with you and give you instant access to everything on Netflix, the iTunes Store, Amazon Prime Video, YouTube, the main TV channels, Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal, Deezer and more – enough content to last you several lifetimes, all available at the touch of a button.
When it comes to choosing a tablet for media streaming, screen size is of course an important consideration: you want a large, bright, sharp screen for those movies and livestreams. Though bear in mind that a bigger display means more bulk (and more draw on the battery) – if you think you’re likely to drop your tablet on your face when watching videos late at night in bed, maybe don’t get something too huge.
Look out for mentions of HDR (or possibly sub-types like HDR10+ or Dolby Vision) when you’re picking out a tablet – this High Dynamic Range feature means details won’t get lost in particularly dark or particularly light areas of a picture, so you’ll still see all the stars twinkling in a sky, for example. It’s usually offered on the higher end tablets out there but not so much on the budget models, and it can make a noticeable difference to video quality in apps like Netflix.
Don’t forget audio either – if your tablet is going to be your watch-anything, go-anywhere entertainment station, then you want sound that’s a level above what you’re able to pipe out from your phone. Look for tablets with two or even four speakers for those times when you don’t want to use headphones, especially if you’re playing music at full blast.
The majority of tablets come with Wi-Fi as the only connectivity, but some of the more expensive models will have the option of 4G or 5G as well – pop in a data SIM and you don’t need to worry about being without a connection ever again (unless you really are in the middle of nowhere, beyond the reach of the last cell tower). 5G isn’t available on many tablets, but 4G will usually be fine for streaming music and movies.
Just about all of the major music and movie streaming services are on both Android and iPadOS, so you don’t have to worry too much about picking a media streaming tablet based on its operating system. The only exception is the Apple TV app (and the iTunes Store), which isn’t available on Android and isn’t likely to be anytime soon. Apple Music is on both Android and iPadOS, however.
1 SAMSUNG GALAXY TAB S6 LITE
Streaming audio and video doesn’t take up a huge amount of processing power or memory, so you can get away with components that aren’t quite best-in- class – and save yourself some money at the same time. The Galaxy Tab S6 Lite is a perfect example of this, combining an excellent 10.4-inch screen with a very affordable price.
From £399, samsung.com
3 iPAD AIR
Apple’s mid-range tablet fits the bill for a media consumption device: it has a large and sharp 10.5-inch display, plenty of on-board storage, stereo speakers and speedy internals. It also has access to the Apple App Store, home to every media streaming app out there – including Apple’s own TV app, giving you access to Apple TV+ and much more.
From £479, apple.com
2 MICROSOFT SURFACE GO 2
The Surface Go 2 builds on what made the original Surface Go such a success, giving you a compact and lightweight tablet that can easily turn into a makeshift laptop at a push. It runs the full version of Windows 10, which means you can install the desktop versions of apps such as Spotify and Apple iTunes rather than the mobile versions.
From £399, microsoft.com
4 AMAZON FIRE 10 HD
Amazon’s tablets run a customised version of Android called Fire OS – so you won’t be able to get content from Apple and Google/ YouTube (though the latter is apparently coming soon), but most other apps are present and correct. It’s perfect for Amazon apps of course, including Prime Video and Amazon Music, and the 10.1-inch screen shows them off well.
From £159.99, amazon.co.uk