I can't believe she's finally dead yep guess I'll need a new one then
but my budget for a tablet's only $300 I'd like to spend less if I can don't
worry Mom I'm here for you thank
you and it's a good thing I am because the budget tablet Market is a veritable
Jungle full of Predators there's scummy manufacturers selling last decade's tech
at this decade's pricing there's devices loaded up with adwar and spyware
masquerading as deals and sure iPads are
really great but sadly iPads aren't
$300 or are they we scoured the bargain
bins to find the best deals and we've come up with five tablets that won't
waste your money or your time and we found some big surprises for one thing
budget tablet came pin Amazon is nowhere on our list this time around and for
another there's this surprise segue to our sponsor Ridge it's not too late to
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now let's kick things off with our sub $100 contender Walmart's ONN 10.1in
tablet the last time we looked at a Walmart tablet we called it the E-Waste
special they've upgraded their creaky plastic and plastic build with metal and
glass it not only feels significantly more premium than their older tablet it
even feels I'd say as good as Samsung's
entrance in this Roundup which is twice as expensive but while the build quality
is excellent for the price point the screen resolution is just 12 1280 by 800
which is pretty low for this size it
also isn't very bright and it's not that pretty wait where did you guys get my
grade four report card making matters worse the ONN has only 3 gigs of RAM
which slows down multitasking to the point where even updating apps in the
background can render this tablet sluggish for minutes at a time the ONN
also lacks a headphone jack though it does come with a slot for expandable
storage which you'll probably want to use is because this thing only comes
with 32 gigs of storage 10 of which are consumed by a surprisingly bloat-free
Android 14 based operating system that
is a refreshing chain from the ad-ridden experience of most inexpensive tablets
which is probably the biggest argument for this thing for all of its flaws it's
just $98 so at the very least we have
got to give Walmart a most improved award even if it doesn't score an
outright recommendation if you know that your work load will be light and your
eyes aren't too judgmental or you want something that you can throw in the
backseat to shut the kids up on a road trip then this could be a perfect
solution just be aware that Walmart doesn't seem to offer any promise of
future software updates and the same goes for our next pick the oldo cube
iPlay 50 Pro Mini we decided to look at
this one after seeing a surprising amount of enthusiasm for it on Reddit
and you know what it is pretty slick at
least on paper basically every aspect of it is significantly improved over our
$100 tablet making it better at multitasking gaming well everything
however while the internals might wow the performance Improvement really is
very noticeable here the externals are a
little less impressive the construction while metal lacks refinement with parts
that aren't flush even the screen we actually measured as a little offc
Center there's no Biometrics of any kind even if that is true of most budget
tablets and the single speaker is truly
aw
thankfully though you can at least plug some headphones in with the 3 and2 mm
Jack and there are other things to like it comes with a combo SD and SIM card
slot and the screen while offc Center isn't half bad and includes a screen
protector it does suffer a fair bit when viewed off AIS but it's higher density
than our last tablet making it much better for reading and watching and is a
a huge upgrade overall over the ONN that is assuming you care about more than
just raw size like many unknown budget Brands I wouldn't expect much by the way
of customer support device updates or accessories we're running Android 13
with a year old security patch which is a yikes but that's kind of par for the
course and we were very pleased to find that unlike other budget tablets we had
no issues with widevine support what's widevine you ask it's a form of digital
Rights Management that's used by most major streaming services it's what makes
it so that when you try to screen record Netflix it shows up black anyway the
part that matters is that we were only considering devices with widevine level
one that's the level that will allow you to stream in HD rather than being stuck
at 480p on Netflix moving on if software support matters more than Best Hardware
for your buck you might want to take a look at our next Contender now I'm going
to be real with you guys Samsung's tablet lineup is large and confusing
ranging from excellent and expensive to complete dog and they
seem to go out of their way to make it darn near impossible to figure out which
is which for example there's the Galaxy Tab S6 light and you might think hm okay
that must be a tablet version of the Galaxy S6 phone that came out over 9
years ago but you'd be wrong the S6 tab
actually came out 4 years after the S6 phone then a year after that it was cut
down a little bit to become the tab S6 light but the story is hardly over that
tablet was refreshed as the tab S6 Light
2 years after that and then it got refreshed again this year and is still
called the tab S6 light but enough about that it's the A9 plus that we're looking
at today specifically the 8 gig RAM version which we chose in hopes of
getting a better multitasking experience like the competitors we've seen so far
the A9 plus has a metal construction but unlike those it's lighter weight which
is kind of refreshing a refreshing feeling that Fades once you start using
the thing see in spite of its name brand qualcom Snapdragon processor it performs
no better than the Aldo Cube and even manages to chug when just swiping
between pages on the home screen I think this has got to be a software issue I
mean it has a high refresh rate 90 HZ display that looks butter smooth when
you're doing other things but now that we're spending over $200 I don't really
care whether it's the hardware or the software I'm a lot less willing to make
excuses for any kinds of issues maybe it's the infamous Samsung bloat I mean
even if we exclude the 16 Superfluous Samsung apps we got six random apps from
third parties that were pre-loaded on this thing look Samsung I invited you
into my home I didn't say that you could bring all your friends don't get me
wrong it's a pretty decent tablet once you remove that crap I mean the display
is kind of ghosty but I would describe it as adequately sufficient the
lightweight build really is easier to hold for an extended Peri period than
our cheaper devices and the cameras are the best we've seen yet same goes for
the
speakers it includes micro SD expansion and it's even slated to get four years
of software updates however it's still clear that Samsung has cut some Corners
in order to hit this price point there's no real biometric authentication no Inc
Screen Digitizer for S Pen stylus support no support for decks with a
monitor thanks to the USB 2 charging
port also like our other budget options today it supports only Wi-Fi 5 but if
you can get over the Samsung isms you've got a pretty well-priced tablet that
will satisfy pretty much anyone who's using the device for primarily content
consumption and you also get a robust accessory collection that could even
help you get a little bit of work done speaking of work done check out the BBL
on this Lenovo like damn girl she's a
thick boy with a large 11 1/2 in display
eight speakers and a built-in kickstand
the Lenovo tab plus is positioned as a media consumption monster and I got to
say it kind of delivers the screen while
not the brightest has great contrast and handles motion well not to mention gives
plenty of room to multitask and the speakers wow do they ever get loud and
not just loud they're even good
they're probably the best ones in our Roundup which spoiler alert does include
an iPad let's put a pin in that for now though LTT Store.com and come back to
the tab plus the all metal housing contributes to a very premium feel but
also results in a heavy tablet that can be a bit unwieldy to single hand the
integrated kickstand does help with this a lot because you can just put it down
and okay this is really cool it opens up
all the way to to nearly 180° allowing for a nice drawing or note-taking angle
with the sold separately stylus it also comes with ample onboard storage and RAM
and expandable storage too and with their media Focus they also included a
headphone jack but you knew there was going to be a butt the processor which
it shares with the much cheaper Aldo cube is a bit of a downer especially
because of the way that it holds back an otherwise well-rounded desktop mode my
my biggest issue though is not the processor it's the bloatware Lenovo
aggressively tries to trick you into installing unneeded games and apps while
you're setting up the device and even if you cleverly navigate their dark pattern
obstacle course you will still find that the device has automatically dumped a
bunch of garbage on your home screen I'm talking 17 additional apps plus an apps
for you folder on the home screen where you can download even more apps that you
never asked for it's confusing and honestly disrespectful but with that
said the worst offenders can be easily removed and Lenovo is promising two
Android version updates and four years of security updates a pretty compelling
value proposition at the usual street price of under $300 and sometimes as low
as$ 250 let's just hope they don't use those updates to cram even more ads into
the user experience now it's time for the big
surprise at the top of our price range we've got the iPad 10th gen which unlike
last time is brand new rather than recertified and is also get this pretty
good it's not without flaws I mean let
he who has never removed a headphone jack throw the first
stone it's got stupid apple pencil support a stupid Folio keyboard stupid
slow usb2 speeds and a stupid lack of
expandable storage but now that the cost
of Entry has dropped to 300 bucks even
below that in some recent sales a lot can be forgiven making the iPad maybe
the easiest recommendation on the whole list I mean sure the so in here is four
years old but unlike the rest of them at least at some point it was a flagship
tier s so which makes it more than enough for all but the most hardcore of
tablet Computing and there's the screen it's still an LCD but it is a darn fine
LCD it's a nice LCD panel and while
Apple doesn't provide details on product support for the iPad they have an
excellent track record of os and security updates with most iPads getting
anywhere from 6 years or more of full OS
upgrade support and thanks to Apple's Battery Replacement Service there's a
solid chance that you will actually get that kind of lifespan out of the
hardware on the subject of battery life while no tablet here struggled with
every one of them managing what I would consider to be all day battery life the
Wallmart tablet surprisingly beat everyone else by a decent margin in our
tests speaking of margins if you're in the market for a cheap tablet now is
probably a pretty good time to pull the trigger at least if you're an American
there is a strong possibility that tariffs are coming and you the consumer
will be the one paying the price one study showed that overseas produced
tablets so all of them could go up in
price by $200 on average I don't know
that this will actually happen and I doubt that it would hit this price point
quite that hard but what I'm getting at is cheap tablets might not be getting
cheaper so if you need one now might be a good time the question is which one
for the money the ONN tablet is pretty hard to beat for the money then my next
best contenders have got to be the tab plus and the iPad 10th gen whichever one
you can get for cheaper if you're techsavvy I do think the Aldo Cube I
play 50 mini pro offers phenomenal value for what it is but it's not the kind of
thing that I would recommend for a normie relative like these ones are and
on the subject of being techsavvy this is by no means an exhaustive list the
budget sector is a thickle beast with sales and price drops part swaps and
more so let us know in the comments what options you techsavvy folks recommend
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this video why not check out our holiday PC buyers guide it's got a build for
every budget for the gamer on your list