Tablet megatest
Every major model tested
1 Apple or Android?
For most of us, the decision whether to go for an iPad or an Android tablet is easy. If you already have an iPhone, it makes sense to choose an iPad so you can share apps and data across the two devices. Likewise, if you have an Android phone then picking an Android tablet will ensure everything works together, and you won’t have to learn a whole new way of doing things. True, you might have to get used to a few interface customisations, but if need be you can always download the free Google Now Launcher to restore the stock Android homescreen.
A third option is Amazon’s Fire OS. This is a customised version of Android, and in use it’s very similar. Fire tablets provide easy access to books, music and videos you’ve bought from Amazon, and they’re cheaper than your average Android tablet. However, Fire OS also uses Amazon’s own Appstore rather than Google Play, meaning the selection of software isn’t identical. You also don’t get Google’s own apps, such as Gmail and Maps, and in place of Chrome, Fire OS uses Amazon’s Silk browser.
If you’re still unsure about which platform to go for, just remember that the iPad and its relatives are highquality devices that come with price tags to match. If you’re looking for a low-cost tablet for basic email and media duties, you’ll probably find Android a better bet – although powerful and stylish Android tablets also exist if that’s what you want.
2 It’s all about the screen
As we’ve said many times before, you’ll be staring at the screen all day, so it’s vital to get a good one. The first consideration is size: this dictates the dimensions of the tablet, meaning that, if you want a lovely big screen, you will have to trade off a degree of portability. Depending on whether you want to watch movies or edit documents, you may prefer a 16:9 widescreen aspect ratio, or something a bit squarer. You can use any tablet in either portrait or landscape mode, although the physical controls and camera may be designed to favour one orientation.
The quality of the LCD panel matters, too. If the screen is lacking in brightness, games and videos will look drab, and on a sunny day you may struggle to see anything at all. In the feature table overleaf you’ll see our own measurements of each tablet’s maximum brightness: 300cd/m2 can be considered an acceptable minimum, but we prefer to see a figure of 400cd/m2 or above.
We also measure contrast – or the difference between the darkest blacks and the brightest whites. A contrast ratio of 500:1 indicates a rather washed-out appearance: we’re much happier with scores of 1,000:1 or above.
Resolution is important, too. If two screens are the same size, the one with more pixels will give you more space to work with, and text and graphics will look sharper and smoother. However, the human eye can only discern so much detail: after a point, cramming in more pixels doesn’t make a visible difference.
There’s no magic number that says exactly where that point is, but Apple has settled on 264ppi (pixels per inch) for its Retina displays, and it looks perfect to us. If a tablet has a pixel density much lower than this, things will look grainy or blocky.
3 Which processor?
Almost any tablet that you can buy today will have enough power to run simple email and web browser apps satisfactorily. For more demanding apps, such as music- or video-editing software, you might need more power. And if you want to run multiple apps at once – and switch smoothly back and forth between them – then things like additional cores and extra system RAM come into play.
Unfortunately, unless you’re an expert on mobile processors, it’s very unlikely that looking at the technical details of a tablet’s processor will tell you anything
meaningful about its performance. While almost all tablets use a processor based on the ARM architecture, the chips themselves come in many different models, with their own performance characteristics, different numbers of cores and graphics processors, not to mention different clock speeds.
For this reason, we’ve put every tablet in this month’s Labs through a set of standard benchmarks ( see
‘How we test’ below) to provide a straightforward set of comparative figures; you can see these on p91.
4 How much storage?
Whether you’re on Android or iOS, the operating system can eat up as much as 6GB of your built-in storage. If you’ve chosen a cheap 16GB tablet, that’s more than a third of your capacity gone before you download a single app.
For Android users, this doesn’t have to be a huge problem. Most (though not all) tablets come with a microSD slot, so once the internal storage is full, you can simply insert a memory card and keep on trucking. Indeed, it’s normally cheaper to do this than to buy a higher-capacity model in the first place.
Note, though, that an SD card will normally be slower than your tablet's internal memory. Performance might take a hit after you’ve expanded your storage in this way.
On the Apple side things are a bit trickier. There’s no way to expand the storage on any iPad model, so once you run out of space, that’s it – you’ll just have to delete some stuff, or buy a whole new iPad. Clearly, then, it’s vital to choose a model with enough headroom for your future needs. The standard 32GB is normally fine for casual use, but if you’re planning to work with large quantities of music or video, you might well need more.
5 Accessories, darling
One great thing about the iPad is that it’s the centre of a large, stable ecosystem. That means there’s a huge range of accessories to buy – not just covers and cases, but things like headphones and speakers that plug into the Lightning port, and adapters that let you connect external displays and USB devices. If you've shelled out for an iPad Pro, there’s also the Apple Pencil and the Smart Keyboard.
On Android, the situation is... not so good. Android devices come in all sorts of sizes and shapes, so while there are lots of accessories out there, you may have to scour the market for add-ons that work with your specific tablet. If you’re hoping to pick up a clip-on keyboard or a stylus down the line, check that such things actually exist for your chosen model.
Don’t be too discouraged, though. All tablets (be they Android or iOS) support Bluetooth, so even if there’s a dearth of accessories for your particular tablet, you can still use wireless speakers and headphones, and even a standalone batterypowered keyboard.
6 Making the connection
We’ve mentioned Apple’s Lightning connector; aside from the 3.5mm headphone socket, that’s the only external connector you’ll find on an iPad. And that’s fine, because it’s a versatile little thing that can carry power, data, audio and video as needed.
Most Android tablets use a micro-USB socket for charging, and you can also use this port to connect USB flash drives and other peripherals, via a USB-OTG (“USB on the go”) cable. This is almost never provided in the box, but you can find one online for less than a fiver.
Some tablets use the newer USB-C cable for charging. This might be a bit annoying if you’ve got a drawer full of micro-USB cables, but it’s a smarter connector. As with the Lightning cable, it’s reversible, so you never have to worry about getting the cable the right way up. Depending on the manufacturer, it may support fast-charging from a high-wattage power supply. It’s bidirectional too, so you can use your tablet to top up your phone if need be. A few of this month’s contenders also offer an HDMI video output. But, if your tablet lacks this, you may still be able to beam content to your TV using Android’s built-in Chromecast support.
7 Wi-Fi and 4G
Some tablets are offered in two variants: Wi-Fi only and Wi-Fi + 4G (also know as Wi-Fi + LTE). The 4G model is identical to the Wi-Fi version, except that it has a SIM slot so you can connect it to the mobile data network, like a smartphone. This lets your tablet stay online even when you’re out of Wi-Fi range.
For some people, this could be very useful: for example, if you travel around giving presentations, it’s good to know that you’ll always have the latest data on your tablet. The mobile chipset also often includes GPS, which Wi-Fi tablets typically lack.
However, it’s an option that ramps up the price – the 4G-enabled iPad costs £130 more than the standard model – and on top of that there’s the cost of data access itself. This isn’t as bad as it used to be: in the past you had to set up a separate contract for your tablet, but nowadays many providers allow you to share a single data plan across multiple devices. Even so, a big-screen tablet can quickly gobble through your data allowance. As Wi-Fi hotspots become increasingly easy to find, there’s less and less need for 4G – in a pinch you can always tether the tablet to your phone and get online that way.
“There’s no way to expand the storage on any iPad model, so you’ll just have to delete some stuff or buy a whole new iPad”