5 Best Android Tablets in 2026: OnePlus, Lenovo, and Pixel Compared

iPad? I have never heard of it about that.

I’ve been using Android tablets since the first one came out, and I’ve never felt the need for anything made by any fruit company. Android tablets make a “nice to have” entertainment center, or they can be a lightweight alternative for travelers.

Either way, I’ve tested all the Android tablets out there, and these are the best, depending on what you want them for. If you want to see how this works next to the iPad stuff, check it out Our guide to all the tablets on the market.

Be sure to check out our other shopping guides, including Best Tablets for Amazon Fire, The best iPadand Best for iPad.

The Best Android Tablet

The best Android tablet I’ve ever tested is the OnePlus Pad 3. The Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite chip provides great performance, with plenty of power for gaming, editing photos, and watching 4K video. The 13.2-inch LCD screen offers an excellent 3.4K resolution with a 144-Hz refresh rate (also 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 best LCD panels I’ve tested, and easy to read even in bright sunlight. One of the best things about the LCD and not the OLED display is that the Pad 3 has much better battery life. I watched movies back and forth on the plane and didn’t slow down, and thanks to the 80-watt fast washer, you can charge up to 50 percent within half an hour, and recharging takes about 1.5 hours. I also like that it loses all power when you stand up. OnePlus puts it up to 70 days of standby mode, but then WiFi is turned off. In the real world, I can leave it anywhere for a week, and it’s 70 percent charged.

One of the reasons I think the Pad 3 is the best tablet for most people is that not only is it great for eating (which is how I watch most of the baseball games I watch), it’s also great for getting work done. OnePlus’s OxygenOS is the best UI for multitasking Android tablets. I even like Apple’s iPadOS because of the Open Canvas system. Using Open Canvas, you can put three apps side by side, which is admittedly small, but still useful, or you can do what I do and use apps side by side and expand the third one down and scroll down to get to it. For me, that means a text editor, which I use on screen, and then I can switch to my browser and a second program, which sits side-by-side. It’s a great way to work; the only downside is the OnePlus Pad keyboard, which I don’t like.

The keyboard is sold separately for $200 (available now in the US), and while it’s a good keyboard, with good travel keys and a nice trackpad, it works on flat surfaces. In other words, it is better if you sit at a table of some kind, but not used on your legs. It limits the usability of the Pad 3, and I hope that OnePlus will fix the design in a future model. Unfortunately, that’s doubtful because OnePlus is currently in a merger with Realme and its future is murky to say the least. We’ve seen it before Pad 4 started in India (it’s more than a chip and battery change), but so far, nothing in the world.

The Luxury Android Tablet

Samsung is Galaxy Tab S11 and Image of the S11 Ultra and iPad Pro about the world of Android. They have high-quality specifications, and at a thickness of 0.20 inches (5.1 mm), the Ultra matches its appearance perfectly. It’s a little heavier than the iPad Pro, but not enough that I notice the difference. Unlike the previous generation Tab S10 seriesthere is no longer a medium “Plus” model. You have the 11-inch Tab S11 and the biggie, the 14.6-inch Tab S11 Ultra. They all run Android 16 out of the box, it has a 120-Hz AMOLED display, and it has a maximum brightness of 1,600 pixels. Samsung uses a MediaTek processor, the Dimensity 9400+, which is very similar to the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite in the OnePlus Pad. Both models get 12 GB of RAM (if you go for the 1-terabyte Ultra model, the RAM increases to 16 GB). Storage is expandable via microSD.