TechStage | Inexpensive tablets up to 100 euros: junk or inexpensive entertainment?

Tablets complement smartphones and displace laptops as devices for surfing, streaming and other entertainment on the couch or in bed. Every fourth German already uses a tablet. Compared to a laptop, the devices are simply handier and lighter – ideal for reading articles on websites, watching YouTube videos or your favorite series on Netflix, Disney+ & Co.

Apple leads the way in global market share with the iPad. According to extra 37.5 percent of all tablets come from the brand with the apple. The iPad is an excellent all-rounder, but it’s not a cheap product. The current model iPad 10 costs at least 513 euros, a cheaper alternative is still excellent iPad 9which is available from 338 euros.

You can get decent branded devices for just under 200 euros – we show the best models from our tests in the top 10: The best tablets 2023 up to 250 euros. But what do you get for less money? In this guide, we limit ourselves to tablets up to a maximum of 100 euros. To make up our own minds, we have this 10 inch Beneve tablet Bought from Amazon for just under 84 euros. It is currently reduced by 24 percent and normally costs 110 euros.

The Beneve tablet is the exception with a display of 10.1 inches – only very few devices in this format are available for less than 100 euros. The majority of particularly cheap tablets use a screen of no more than 7 to 8 inches. Some older models also have 9.7 inches. A widescreen format between 15:9 and 16:10 is typical for Android tablets.

The maximum resolution of the LCDs is usually 1280 × 800 pixels – i.e. HD+. At this resolution, some of the pixels can still be seen with the naked eye, so it is not possible to play back content in Full HD. This is a welcome exception Odys Space One 10 with full HD for 100 euros at Amazon.

No-name products usually do not have the necessary certificates for digital rights management. For example, in order to be able to view content in full HD on streaming platforms such as Netflix, devices require Widevine Level 1. However, the certification process costs time and money. Cheap tablets only offer Widevine Level 3. This means that content in the stream is only available in SD resolution with a maximum of 852 × 480 pixels. We explain more on the subject in the guide Netflix & Co.: The best tablets and Chromebooks for streaming.

Inexpensive tablets are suitable for watching films and series – but then you have to live with a poorer resolution. The low brightness and poor image quality are more serious. Our Beneve test device only achieves a maximum brightness of just under 200 cd/m². The display is difficult to read in daylight and outdoors. Inexpensive devices achieve a maximum of 300 cd/m². In addition, inexpensive tablets are rarely able to adjust the brightness automatically.

Colors often seem powerless and worn out, contrasts are only weakly pronounced. After all, even cheap tablets offer an IPS panel, which allows a reasonably decent readability from different perspectives – also called viewing angle stability.

The next weak point in inexpensive devices is the processor and memory equipment. Quad-core processors based on ARM from Unisoc, Mediatek or less well-known names such as Rockchip are mostly used. Octa-core chips are rather rare – for example in the Odys tablet.

Beneve’s tablet uses a simple quad-core processor. In everyday use, this becomes noticeable through a delayed response time when opening apps or making inputs. The Beneve tablet achieves around 4200 points in the PCmark benchmark. A mobile device has never achieved so little in the last three years since we started using the test. The graphics performance is more than poor, as shown by the 300 points from 3Dmark’s “Wild Life” test – this test is only possible because the device still has 3 GB of RAM.

You can actually play with a tablet like this – whether it’s fun is another question. With the equipment it is more suitable for casual games like solitaire or Candy Crush. Even Angry Birds jerky in the transitions and animations between the individual game rounds – fortunately not in the game itself.

The storage capacity of the Beneve tablet is almost lavish for the price range: it still offers 3/32 GB. In the price range under 100 euros there are still enough devices with 2 GB of RAM – older models only have 1 GB of RAM. At least 4 GB is actually recommended, 3 GB is the lowest pain limit. Once again, Odys is a positive exception with 4/64 GB of memory.

The equipment is limited to the essentials in cheap tablets. Our test device can at least use Wi-Fi 5. Older models only surf with Wi-Fi 4 and are therefore very slow in the home network. LTE can only be found in the Odys Space One 10 or the older Huawei Matepad T10 for less than 100 euros.

Almost all tablets have cameras, but you shouldn’t expect much from them. Most of the time they are only on board to be there. The rear main cameras rarely have more than 5 megapixels. The Beneve tablet offers at least 8 megapixels here. The front cameras reach a maximum of 2 megapixels – and thus even surpass the webcams of most laptops. However, video recordings are only possible with SD quality at 480p.

The equipment also does not include any pens or fingerprint sensors. The sound is rattling and bad. A USB-C slot and a jack port are fortunately common in tablets from 8 inches. Micro-USB is what most buyers expect from 7-inch tablets.

The price range of cheap tablets is without exception Android tablets and the Fire tablets from Amazon. The latter are based on Android, offer their own app store and no Google services. However, there are tricks to using Google services on a Fire tablet. We explain more about this in the guide Amazon tablets with Google apps: cheap to the top tablet?

One should not expect up-to-date software from inexpensive tablets. After all, the Beneve device runs with Android 11 – but the last security patch dates from November 2021. Android 10 is still much more common in inexpensive devices. Support and regular updates are not to be expected for inexpensive devices other than Samsung. The situation with the support for Amazon’s Fire OS looks a little better – Amazon regularly delivers updates here.

Now you might think: weak processors, long battery life? Unfortunately, this is not always the case. Our Beneve tablet only lasted around 6 hours in the PCmark battery test – modern tablets up to 200 euros from Lenovo or Samsung usually last around 10 hours in the test. This is often due to the lack of optimization of hardware and software.

Large tablets for little money are a rarity. Our Test device from Beneve has a fair price with a size of 10.1 inches, but reveals weaknesses in terms of performance, the display and the battery life. As far as amenities go, it’s more like that Odys Space One 10 to recommend. The Huawei Matepad 10 has good technology, but it is old and offers little memory.

The range of 8-inch tablets is larger. Amazon’s Fire tablets offer the best value for money here. The 2020 models are available from 68 euros, the current generation – which we are currently testing – starts at 89 euros. However, there is no Play Store available by default. But you can install it with a few tricks. However, the processors of the Amazon tablets are very slow. Apart from Amazon, only the Huawei Matepad T8 with Android 10 is available here. That No-name tablet from TJD After all, it offers Full HD for 100 euros.

When it comes to small 7-inch tablets, Amazon again dominates with the Fire 7 HD from 65 euros, which is also available in a 2022 version. In addition, the Lenovo Tab M7 for 90 euros is particularly suitable. That cheapest tabletwhich we were able to find, costs 50 euros – but still runs Android 4.4.

The cheapest tablets are already available for 50 euros – but we advise against these small models, both hardware and software are extremely outdated, no support is to be expected. Up to just under 100 euros, the situation looks better. In principle, you can do everything with these devices – surf the web, play games, watch films. However, you have to live with slow devices, lots of lag, and poor resolution and image quality. In the price range of 150 to 200 euros, the quality increases significantly again.