The best tablets of 2024

Whether you’re looking for a portable media experience or a powerful, lightweight laptop alternative for travel, a tablet can fit the bill. These increasingly do-it-all devices can handle work and play, and potentially replace a laptop. Based on years of testing, we’ve got five top picks, one of which should fit your touchscreen needs, whichever platform you prefer. Apple’s iPad can handle work and play, the iPad Air may be able to replace your laptop, Amazon’s Fire HD series is great for on-the-go streaming and Samsung’s Galaxy Tab series continues to push Android tablets further with their DeX productivity environment. There’s also the iPad Pro, which isn’t for everyone, but will wow those with the budget cap for it.

Best tablet: Apple iPad (10th Gen)

The 10th-generation iPad, now the official entry-level Apple tablet, threw out the big bezels and Lightning port of the past for a new design that borrows a bit from its pricier siblings. Those perks begin with the A14 Bionic chip, which delivers enough speed to push it to the top of our chart above the cheaper options out there. Thankfully, Apple gave this iPad a $100 price cut down to $349 when it erased the ninth-generation iPad.

The iPad may not have the laptop-like horsepower of the iPad Pro or iPad Air — which run on Apple’s beefier M-series chips — but the regular iPad still sports enough torque for your everyday tasks. Whether you’re dealing with a mountain of unread emails, surfing the web, editing documents, playing games, watching movies or taking video calls — it’s going to be good. Heck, you can even work on iMovie projects with it. And all the latest iPadOS features work just fine. We threw all this and more at the device during our testing period and it chugged right along. Unless you’re doing heavy creative projects such as editing music with tons of tracks, big-batch photo exports or outputting 4K movies, you’re unlikely to run into issues.

Not everyone will need to upgrade from the ninth-generation iPad, though, unless they’re dying to ditch Lightning. This iPad sports the USB-C port you’ve seen in the iPhone 15, Apple’s MacBooks and its pricier tablets?— as well as a ton of other gadgets. Those coming from a Fire tablet — like the 8 Plus, our budget pick — or an older iPad, however, will find that this iPad is far snappier.

The 10th-generation iPad also features a slightly larger display than its predecessors, a 10.9-inch Liquid Retina panel that won’t disappoint — especially if you’re upgrading from a cheaper tablet. Text is both sharp and bold, while images and videos offer a lot of details with great colors. It also features True Tone, which adjusts the screen’s color temperature to match lighting conditions. This has reduced eye strain in our testing, making it easy to use the 10th-generation iPad for an entire day.

That’s also valuable because the iPad will survive a day of use on a single charge. In our anecdotal testing, the iPad endured both a full eight-hour work day and a leisurely Sunday of gaming, streaming and general goofing off. That said, it didn’t fare well on our looping 4K video test, only making it past the five-hour mark before conking out.

The 10th-generation iPad features dual 12-megapixel cameras: one in the front-facing side for calls and selfies and the other on the rear, which also takes 4K video (which the ninth-generation model couldn’t). Apple’s Center Stage, which first premiered on the 2021 iPad Pro, is included in the front camera and performs just as well to identify who’s in the frame and keep them in the shot. This worked great for both video calls and capturing clips of our other projects during our testing.

When it comes to accessories, you might need to upgrade. It supports the first-generation Apple Pencil if you’ve still got one lying around from a previous iPad, as well as the new USB-C Apple Pencil. As for external keyboards, Logitech makes reputable options, and it also supports Apple’s Magic Keyboard Folio (not to be confused with the Magic Keyboards for iPad Air and iPad Pro). But since this iPad features a revised design over past iPads, you’ll need a new case if you’re upgrading from an older Apple tablet.

Overall, the 10th-generation iPad?is easily recommended to most folks, since it provides Apple’s exceptional blend of features, performance and value.

Best splurge tablet: Apple iPad Air M2

When it comes to picking a better iPad, some might immediately jump to the iPad Pro. To them, we say, “Hold up, wait a minute.” Do not overlook the new 2024 iPad Air with M2 chip, which exists to deliver some of the iPad Pro features we love at a price that doesn’t break the bank.

Now available in both 11-inch and 13-inch designs, and sporting the super-speedy M2 chip that you may have seen in the?MacBook Air?and?MacBook Pro, the newest iPad Air is an excellent tablet overall that most will be extremely happy with.

While the standard iPad models will work just fine for most folks, the iPad Air’s M2 chip delivers fast performance that will cut down the time you spend waiting for projects to export.

The M2 iPad Air is also the perfect iPad for those who want the latest and greatest stylus tricks. It supports the Apple Pencil Pro, with its Squeeze and Hover tricks, as well as that nifty Barrel Roll that helps you put a stylish swoosh in. That’s not a bad thing for new buyers — the display and design are still excellent — but recent iPad Pro owners have little reason to rush to buy the newest upgrade.

And you can get all of that starting at $599, from the ultra-smooth and vibrant display to the sheer speed with which it’s able to juggle dozens of apps without a stutter. Plus, its new 13-inch model (which is $799 and up) is more ideal for those who take advantage of the multitasking Stage Manager mode.

Best Android tablet: Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 FE Plus

Trying to find the right Android tablet can be complicated, but the mid-range Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 FE Plus gives you a lot at a price that might surprise you. First off, this 12.4-inch slate’s size makes it perfect for all sorts of occasions, including Netflix marathons and using its S Pen stylus for notes and drawing.

Our favorite feature, which we discovered with our looping 4K video battery test, is that the Tab S9 FE Plus packs a ton of endurance. With a final time of 13 hours and 26 minutes, this big screen tablet outlasts the competition with a bigger screen than nearly all of our other picks. And in addition to that screen producing accurate color, its dual AKG-tuned speakers allowed our favorite songs to hit well.

On the front of the Tab S9 FE Plus is a single 12-megapixel ultrawide camera, and there’s an 8-megapixel rear-facing camera on the back. The cameras aren’t as sharp as what you’ll find on a Galaxy S24 smartphone, but they’re good enough to take the occasional photo when your phone isn’t nearby.

Powered by Samsung Exynos 1380 CPU, Arm Mali-G68 GPU and 8GB of memory, we found the Tab S8+ to be just fast enough for all the apps you expect and even light gaming, with no slowdown even with multiple apps open at the same time in various split-screen modes. And that includes Samsung’s DeX mode, which provides a windowed-app experience that looks to replace the traditional laptop.

Best budget tablet: Amazon Fire 7

Amazon refreshed its popular?Fire 7 tablet?in 2022, giving it a USB-C charging port, a faster processor and double the memory — a significant improvement over the 2019 Fire 7 tablet. Those upgrades, along with longer battery life, make this $60 (with ads) tablet a smart choice for those who want an affordable tablet for consuming media, especially for younger kids.

The Fire 7 tablet is an ideal content consumption device for younger kids, when you need an extra device in the house or when you’re taking a car trip or vacation. At 7 inches, it’s the right size for holding and watching videos, reading and playing simple games. While the screen resolution is not HD (1024 x 600), kids watching videos on a screen not much larger than a Pro or Max version of a smartphone are unlikely to notice or mind very much. They’ll probably just be glad to have their own tablet to watch and not have to share with a sibling.

The Fire 7 runs on Amazon’s Fire OS 8 software and uses its own Silk browser. You’re limited to the apps available in Amazon’s app store, which is not nearly as extensive, so you might be disappointed at not being able to download some of your favorite games or apps. However, most of the popular social and streaming apps are available.

We found the Fire 7 to be more durable than the iPad Mini and great for parents who want to monitor the apps and sites their kiddos are accessing. Plus, with a 10-hour battery life on a single charge, you can easily go from gaming to reading to listening to music without having to search for a charging port.

Best Windows tablet: Microsoft Surface Pro (2024)

For a while, the Surface Pro only got minimal updates that didn’t really do much to draw attention. Enter the Surface Pro 2024, which finds Microsoft’s detachable tablet reborn, thanks to?Snapdragon X chips that enable fantastic battery life. Sure, some people will hype it up as an AI-optimized Copilot+ PC, but that’s far from the big story here.

Our looping battery test took over 13 hours to drain the Surface Pro 2024 of its charge, which puts it alongside the Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 FE Plus in terms of endurance. The big difference between these tablets, though, is that Windows 11 is a far better operating system for multitasking than Samsung’s DeX mode, which is still trying to adapt Android into a windowed world.

As much as we love how iPadOS and Android offer touchscreen tricks on their respective tablets, there’s nothing like Windows 11 when it comes to getting work done on the go. Plus, the best Windows tablet earns more points when its sturdy kickstand and new Flex Keyboard accessory combine to make a better laptop alternative than before.

If you’re considering buying it for streaming movies, check out the OLED display option, which made “Dune: Part Two” look great in our testing. Just don’t buy it expecting to play the best PC games at good settings, as the Snapdragon X chips aren’t exactly there yet. Likewise, we’re still waiting for proper app emulation for select high-end applications in the creator space. All the standard programs I rely on such as Chrome, Slack, Discord and Todoist worked perfectly well, though.

Best tablet screen: Apple iPad Pro M4

If you’ve made it this far in our list of our top tablets, you’re probably the kind of person who is curious how good things can get. To that end, let us introduce Apple’s newest iteration of its best iPad: the iPad Pro M4, which packs the best screen we’ve ever seen in any tablet.

The iPad Pro features a Tandem OLED design that stacks two OLED displays on top of each other to achieve the brightness we expect from the iPad Pro, while still maintaining excellent color and contrast. Everything from our favorite movies to top games look fantastic on this screen, which also sports a super-smooth 120Hz ProMotion refresh rate.

But in order for Apple to make this new screen tech work, it needed a new chip to run this tablet. That’s where the M4, the second generation of Apple’s latest 3-nanometer Apple Silicon chips, comes into play. This chip enables a strong and steady performance and delivers much higher scores on benchmarking tests.

On top of all that, the new iPad Pro is also thinner and lighter than before, and even weighs less than the iPad Air. Oh, and we love how the iPad Pro also includes Face ID for unlocking your device and logging into services — it’s so much easier than the Touch ID sensor on the iPad Air’s power button.

How we tested

Tablets can vary a lot in what they aim to accomplish and deliver, so we run each through the same rigors with benchmark testing while seeing how much value they deliver on their unique and special features.

Design

Display

Performance

Software

Other tablets we tested

Google Pixel Tablet

After a years-long hiatus, Google finally made another Android tablet, but it’s not like most of the models we tested. The Google Pixel Tablet is more of a Nest Hub than an iPad competitor, though it also works well for streaming Netflix and playing mobile games optimized for its larger screen. Unfortunately, its hampered by its stand, which doesn’t deliver strong sound and can get a little awkward to use.

Apple iPad (9th Gen)

Apple may not sell the 9th Gen iPad anymore, but it’s still a solid tablet with decent performance and a good screen that you can find for cheap at third-party retailers. However, its design is a bit dated with its big bezel, and its Lightning port is on the way out. You’re better off going for the iPad Air or 10th Gen iPad.

Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 FE Plus

Samsung’s found a way to deliver a big-screen tablet at a mid-range price. The Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 FE Plus is a 12.4-inch slate that includes an S Pen for writing and decent sound. Unfortunately, its panel is neither 4K nor OLED, so competitors have its number on picture quality.

Amazon Fire HD 10 (13th Gen)

What if you’re OK with a slightly smaller screen at a much lower price? The Fire HD 10 makes for a fantastic smart display and offers decent battery life and performance for the price.

The iPad Air sits in the middle of the iPad lineup with a modern design and really fast processing speeds. It goes a step beyond the 10th-generation iPad or the Mini, and really is a consumer-level Pro model. It sticks with a Touch ID in the power button but has minimal bezels and supports all the core accessories.

Apple iPad Mini 5

The iPad Mini 5 still serves a niche as an ultra-portable yet powerful iPad, but with a 7.9-inch screen, the iPhone 11 Pro Max is closing in from behind. It’s a packed device that runs iPadOS 13 really well and, even on a tighter display, supports considerable multitasking. We just think for most people, the iPhone might be serving most of the use cases and opting for the seventh-generation iPad will give you more versatility and, ultimately, more bang for your buck.

Microsoft Surface Go 3

But what if you need full-fledged Windows 11? Microsoft’s Surface Go 3 is probably your best bet, but it failed to impress due to underwhelming performance in our testing.

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