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The Lenovo Tab Plus is compact, measuring 11.5 inches and weighing about 1.4 pounds. It’s similar in size to an iPad Air, but unlike Apple’s device, this tablet doesn’t have a smooth back as the bottom half juts out. The lower section measures 13.58 mm thick, while the upper half is only 7.7 mm. There’s a good reason Lenovo designed its tablet with this unique look as the bottom half houses two of the model’s outstanding features.
First, there is the integrated kickstand that sits flush with the tablet’s rear. Popping it out provides a stable base and lets the device tilt up to 175 degrees. Praising a kickstand may seem silly, but remember that most tablets — without the addition of a protective case –don’t have a way to prop themselves up. It’s a great quality-of-life feature that enhances the viewing experience, and it’s one I wish other manufacturers capitalized on.
Also, when combined with smartphone support, the Tab Plus can double as a powerful Bluetooth speaker.
The screen quality is great, too. It’s a 2K display running at a refresh rate of 90Hz, delivering bright colors and smooth animations. It performed well across most applications. However, I didn’t like how dim it looked. The screen’s brightness peaks at 400 nits, which is fine for indoor viewing but not outdoors. The display struggled to shine in a bright environment.
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Under the hood is the MediaTek Helio G99 SoC (system on a chip), along with 8GB of RAM — hardware that’s typical in budget devices. The G99 isn’t a very powerful chipset, and it’s a couple of years old, but it gets the job done. I never once ran into performance drops while casually browsing with Google Chrome or playing mobile games.
Multiple accessories are available, but even with all those gadgets equipped, don’t expect Lenovo’s machine to be a powerhouse. I ran the PCMark Work 3.0 benchmark tests to see how well the tablet would perform across multiple workflows. At the time I performed the tests, the Lenovo Tab Plus did pretty well, earning 32nd place out of 200 on the developer’s best tablets list for November 2024. However, it fell far behind contemporaries like the Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 FE and the OnePlus Pad 2.
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These numbers tell me that the Tab Plus may not be amazing at tackling tough workloads like video editing, but it won’t be terrible either. Hardware performance may be middling, but the battery sure isn’t. On average, the tablet lasts 15 hours on a single charge. I left it running one afternoon and was pleasantly surprised to see it still playing the test livestream the following morning.
The storage space is unsurprisingly small, at 256GB. It would’ve been nice to have access to a bigger drive, but with a tablet this cheap, you have to expect some cuts. Luckily, you can expand storage by inserting a 1TB mini SD card into the slot at the top.
ZDNET’s buying advice
Lenovo’s Tab Plus goes for $330 at Best Buy, but is on sale right now at Lenovo’s website for just $250