5 Best Android Tablets in 2026: OnePlus, Lenovo, and Pixel Compared
5 Best Android Tablets in 2026: OnePlus, Lenovo, and Pixel Compared
https://www.wired.com/story/the-best-android-tablets/
Publish Date: 2026-05-21 07:33:00
Source Domain: www.wired.com
IPad? Never heard of it.
I have been using Android tablets pretty much since the first one came out, and I’ve never felt the need for anything made by any fruit companies. Android tablets make great “nice to have” entertainment centers, or they can be complete lightweight laptop replacements for travel.
Whatever your use case, I’ve tested just about all the Android tablets out there, and these are the best, depending on what you need them for. If you want to see how these stack up next to those iPad things, check out our guide to all the tablets on the market.
Be sure to check out our other buying guides, including the Best Amazon Fire Tablets, Best iPad, and Best iPad Accessories.
Table of Contents
The Best Android Tablet
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Photograph: Julian Chokkattu
Photograph: Julian Chokkattu
Photograph: Julian Chokkattu
The best overall Android tablet I’ve tried in the OnePlus Pad 3. The Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite chip offers great performance, with plenty of power for gaming, photo editing, and watching 4K video. The 13.2-inch LCD screen offers an excellent 3.4K resolution with a 144-Hz refresh rate (again great for gaming), and 12-bit color. Would I like to see an OLED screen? Sure, but no tablet at this price has one, not even the iPad Air. The Pad 3’s screen is one of the nicer LCD panels I’ve tested, and easy to read even in bright sunlight. One of the nice things about the LCD rather than OLED screen is that the Pad 3 has excellent battery life. I’ve watched back-to-back movies on plane flights and barely dipped below the halfway mark, and thanks to the 80-watt fast-charging point, you can recharge to 50 percent in under half an hour, with a full recharge taking about 1.5 hours. I also love that it loses hardly any power in standby mode. OnePlus rates it to 70 days of standby mode, but that’s with the WiFi off. In the real world, I can leave it lying around for a week, and it’ll still have 70 percent charge.
Part of the reason I think the Pad 3…
