The Best Tablets, According to the Reviews

Update, 12 November 2026. Our iPad Air pick has moved from the M3 to the M4. This page said the M4 had only one outlet score; it has had three since 9 March 2026, before it went on sale: Tom’s Guide, Trusted Reviews and TechRadar each gave it four and a half out of five. That meets our three-score threshold, and the page had promised the swap the moment it did. The M4 averages 9.0 against the M3’s 8.7; Apple’s current US list price, read today, is in the table. The six scores for the other two tablets were re-read at source and none has changed. Samsung’s US store still lists the 256GB Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra at $1,299.99; the $1,499.99 that also appears there is its 512GB tier, and 1TB is $1,899.99. OnePlus’s US notice still says it has concluded product rollouts in North America. This page now also sets the three tablets side by side, outlet by outlet.

Update, 22 October 2026. We said Apple sells the M4 iPad Air at the M3’s starting price. That was true at launch: Apple’s 2 March 2026 release gave $599 for the 11-inch M4, the M3’s launch price. Apple’s US store now lists it at $749, after the price rise TechCrunch reported on 25 June 2026, so the M4 now costs more than the M3 did at launch. The scores on this page are unchanged. Apple’s current iPads, model by model, sets out what each one adds.

Update, 8 October 2026. Our portable speaker shortlist was re-read and gained a flagship-tier pick that averages the same 9.7 as its budget pick, so it joins the budget-against-flagship count cited below. The budget pick matched or beat the flagship in six of eight shortlists; with portable speakers added it is seven of nine. The tablet scores on this page are unchanged.

Update, 4 October 2026. Prices were re-read on the makers’ own US stores. Samsung now lists the Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra at $1,299.99, not $1,199. And OnePlus no longer sells the Pad Go 2 in the US: its US store does not list it, and a notice on its site says it has “decided to conclude product rollouts in Europe and North America”. Its scores are unchanged, so it stays on the page, but its price has been removed and it is no longer our pick for a tight budget.

Update, 21 September 2026. The robot vacuum and TV shortlists were re-read on 21 September, and the Roborock Saros 20’s average moved from 9.0 to 8.5, so the robot vacuum gap cited below is 0.8 points, not 1.3. Correcting it showed the rest of that count was out of date as well: wireless earbuds and ereaders have since joined the comparison and the smartwatch flagship has been drawn level, so the budget pick matches or beats the flagship in six of eight shortlists, not four of six. The tablet scores on this page are unchanged.

Across nine published reviews, the iPad Air (M4) scores highest, averaging 9.0 out of ten, ahead of the OnePlus Pad Go 2 at 8.3 and the Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra at 8.0. Compared side by side, reviewers treat the iPad as the sensible default, the OnePlus as the battery-life and value pick that OnePlus no longer sells in the US, and the $1,299.99 Samsung as the big-screen tablet whose price split them.

The cheapest tablet here still outscores the dearest, 8.3 against 8.0, from three published scores each: the OnePlus launched at $399.99. That makes it worth buying if a retailer still has one new, but it is no longer a recommendation you can act on at the maker.

Every number below is another outlet’s published review score, not ours. Nine of them, across three tablets, read at source on 12 November 2026.

Tablet comparison: the three side by side

	Average	Screen	Price (maker, US)	Best at	The catch
Apple iPad Air (M4)	9.0	11 or 13 in	$749 (11-inch)	Being the default for most people	Modest update; no ProMotion display
OnePlus Pad Go 2	8.3	12.1 in	—	Battery, and the price	No longer sold by OnePlus in the US
Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra	8.0	14.6 in AMOLED	$1,299.99	That 14.6-inch screen	Mid-range chip, premium price

Consensus averages three published scores per tablet, normalised to ten. Prices are list prices read on the makers’ own US stores on 12 November 2026: Apple’s for the 11-inch iPad Air, Samsung’s for the 256GB Galaxy Tab. OnePlus no longer sells in the US. The “best at” column is ours, read off what those reviewers found.

Tablet reviews compared, outlet by outlet

	TechRadar	Tom’s Guide	Trusted Reviews	Digital Trends	Average /10
iPad Air (M4)	4.5/5	4.5/5	4.5/5	—	9.0
OnePlus Pad Go 2	4.5/5	4.5/5	—	7/10	8.3
Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra	3.5/5	4/5	4.5/5	—	8.0

A dash means that outlet’s score is not one of the three counted for that tablet. Stars out of five are doubled to put them on ten. The Samsung has the widest spread, a full two points between TechRadar and Trusted Reviews, and the disagreement is about the chip at that price rather than the screen.

The pattern, and where it breaks

Something shows up across these lists often enough to be worth naming — though not as often as we first claimed, and the correction is the interesting part.

Of the nine bitcritiq shortlists carrying both a budget pick and a flagship pick, the budget one matches or beats the flagship in seven: laptops, mini PCs and tablets outright, and soundbars, wireless earbuds, smartwatches and portable speakers level. In the other two, robot vacuums and ereaders, the flagship wins, by 0.8 points and 0.3. Our budget-against-flagship comparison has the full count.

That is not reviewers being contrarian. It is what happens when a category matures: the expensive product still wins on the specification sheet, and the cheap one has become good enough that reviewers stop marking it down for what it lacks. Where the flagship still wins, it wins by less than the single point that half a star is worth on one review.

The caveat matters as much as the finding. An average is one number, and it flattens exactly the things people pay extra for — the Samsung’s screen really is better than the OnePlus’s, and no averaged score will tell you whether that was worth $900 to you. What the pattern does tell you is that the floor has risen far more than the ceiling has, and that buying the dearest thing in a category is no longer a shortcut to buying the best-reviewed one.

Why the M4 replaced the M3

This page used to list the M3 iPad Air. Apple launched the M4 in March 2026, and the M4 is now the pick because it has three outlet scores of its own, which is the threshold every pick here has to meet. We had said it had only TechRadar’s. In fact Tom’s Guide, Trusted Reviews and TechRadar each gave the M4 iPad Air four and a half out of five, all on 9 March 2026.

What changed, on Apple’s account: an 8-core CPU and 9-core GPU, up to 30% faster than the M3, 12GB of memory instead of 8GB, and Wi-Fi 7, launched at the same starting price the M3 held, though Apple has since raised it (update above). The M3 averaged 8.7, from Tom’s Guide and Trusted Reviews at four and a half out of five and Digital Trends at eight out of ten. The reviewers agree the step is small: Trusted Reviews calls it another minor spec-based upgrade and sees little reason to move from an M2 or M3.

Samsung has announced the S11 Ultra’s successor

Samsung announced the Galaxy Tab S12 Ultra on 30 September, at $1,399.99 in the US from 7 October. On Samsung’s own spec sheets it keeps the S11 Ultra’s 14.6-inch screen, battery and cameras and changes the chip; what the Tab S12 Ultra changes, on paper, sets the two side by side. The S11 Ultra stays on this page under the same rule that moved the iPad pick to the M4: the S12 Ultra takes its place once three outlets have published scores for it. We have read two so far: Tom’s Guide and Trusted Reviews each gave it four out of five on 30 September. Samsung’s full Galaxy Tab lineup, model by model, sets out what each step below the Ultras adds, and Lenovo’s ten Android tablets are sorted the same way.

Amazon has replaced its Fire tablets too. The Alexa Tablets, on paper, start at $229.99 with Google Play and ship on 14 October; none is listed here until three outlets have scored one.

Where the money actually goes on a tablet

• Accessories are not a rounding error. A keyboard and a stylus can add several hundred dollars, and on the iPad Air both are sold separately. Price the tablet you will actually use, not the one in the box.
• Storage is the upgrade you cannot undo. No tablet here takes a memory card for app storage, so the tier you buy is the tier you keep.
• The screen is the thing you touch for years. It is the one place where the Samsung’s price makes sense, and the one spec that no software update improves.
• A cellular model is two costs, not one. It is dearer up front and needs its own data plan, and on current tablets that plan arrives as an eSIM rather than a card you can move about — worth reading the difference between an eSIM and a physical SIM before you pay for one.
• Ecosystem beats specification. If your phone is an iPhone, the iPad does things no Android tablet will. If it is not, the reverse is less true but still real.

On a tablet the accessories and the storage tier are where the real money goes, and neither is visible in a review score.

If you are buying a first tablet for someone else, the OnePlus would have been the low-risk gift: it cost least, lasts longest between charges, and asks nothing about which phone they already own. With OnePlus out of the US, check that a retailer is selling it new before you plan on it. Our laptop shortlist covers the next question up, and what to spend on in a laptop sale applies the same reasoning to a bigger purchase.

Questions people ask

What do tablet reviews say about the best tablets?

Across nine published reviews of three tablets, the Apple iPad Air (M4) averages 9.0 out of ten, the OnePlus Pad Go 2 8.3 and the Samsung Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra 8.0. Two outlets call the iPad the best tablet for most people, reviewers praise the OnePlus for battery life, and they split over whether the Samsung’s screen justifies its price.

How do these tablets compare?

On review scores, the iPad Air (M4) is 4.5/5 at all three outlets; the OnePlus Pad Go 2 is 4.5/5, 4.5/5 and 7/10; the Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra is 4.5/5, 4/5 and 3.5/5, the widest spread of the three. The Samsung has the biggest screen at 14.6 inches, the OnePlus the longest battery result in TechRadar’s video test, and the iPad the highest average.

What are the best tablet ratings right now?

The highest average on this page is the iPad Air (M4) at 9.0: Tom’s Guide, Trusted Reviews and TechRadar each gave it four and a half out of five. The M3 model it replaced averaged 8.7. Every figure is another outlet’s published score, normalised to ten. We have not tested any of these tablets and publish no score of our own.

Which tablet has the best performance?

Of the three, reviewers raise performance as a weakness only on the Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra: TechRadar called it hampered by mid-range specs at a premium price, because its MediaTek chip trails Qualcomm’s newest. TechRadar says the iPad Air’s M4 chip delivers excellent performance, and Apple says it is up to 30 percent faster than the M3.

Which tablets have good reviews for the money?

On scores, the OnePlus Pad Go 2: it averages 8.3, higher than the far dearer Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra’s 8.0, and it lasted over sixteen and a half hours in TechRadar’s video test. But OnePlus no longer sells it in the US, so a new one depends on retailer stock. The table above has the prices and the dates they were read.

Is the iPad Air still the best tablet to buy?

On review scores, yes: the M4 iPad Air, which Apple launched in March 2026 with a faster chip, 12GB of memory and Wi-Fi 7, holds the highest average on this page at 9.0. Tom’s Guide and Trusted Reviews both call it the best tablet for most people. Trusted Reviews adds that an M2 or M3 owner has little reason to upgrade.

What is the best quality tablet screen?

The Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra’s 14.6-inch AMOLED panel, on the reviewers’ own account — deep blacks, 120Hz, and large enough that multitasking works. It is the one part of its price that the reviews defend, and the reason Trusted Reviews rated it four and a half out of five while TechRadar rated it three and a half.