Every student is different, but when you want to buy a tablet for one you usually want something capable and affordable, with a good enough battery that it won't die halfway through a day of classes.
I know because my team and I review all the big tablets from the major manufacturers every year, and we keep an eye peeled for models that are especially well-suited for students.
I generally recommend the Apple iPad as the best tablet for most students, for example, because it's capable and runs all the apps in Apple's App Store, is easy to carry and offers enough battery life to get you through a day of classes. And if you hunt for the 2022 model, you can save over $100 over a newer iPad without sacrificing much in the way of usability.
If you can afford something a little nicer, the iPad Air is a great choice for college students since it offers you most of the value of the fancier iPad Pro at a much cheaper price. If you prefer Android, I'd point you towards the OnePlus Pad instead.
Read on for our full list of the best student tablets you can find right now. And if you do want to save a few bucks, be sure to check our guides to the best tablet sales and iPad deals!
The quick list
In a hurry? Here's a brief overview of the tablets on this list, along with quick links that let you jump down the page directly to a review of whichever tablet catches your eye.
Apple's basic iPad might not be as exciting as the Air and Pro tablets, but it's an easy recommendation for best overall student tablet since it's cheap but doesn't make the main features of its beefier counterparts.
If you want a great, cheap Chrome tablet for school you'd be hard-pressed to beat the Lenovo Chromebook Duet, which packs the utility of a Chromebook into a slick little slate that comes with a detachable keyboard included at no charge.
If you want a cheap Windows slate for school you'd be hard-pressed to do better than the old Surface Go 2. It's getting on in years, but we like it better than newer models like the Surface Go 3 because it has better battery life, plus it's cheaper.
If you can afford to spend over $600 the iPad Air is a great upgrade over the base iPad because its more capable and more elegantly designed, plus it supports Apple's (expensive!) Magic Keyboard and other accessories.
If you can afford to drop $500 or more on a more premium Android slate, the OnePlus Pad is a great tablet for students thanks to its speed, lengthy battery life and the fact that its keyboard costs under $50 yet works great.
Alex Wawro is a lifelong journalist who's spent over a decade covering tech, games and entertainment. He oversees the computing department at Tom's Guide, which includes managing tablet coverage and reviewing many himself every year.
The best student tablets you can buy today
Why you can trust Tom's Guide Our writers and editors spend hours analyzing and reviewing products, services, and apps to help find what's best for you. Find out more about how we test, analyze, and rate.
The best student tablet overall
Students who want a tablet should probably get the iPad 2022 since it's the most affordable iPad. The large bezels, ancient Home button and Lightning port are gone, replaced with a larger 10.9-inch display that nearly goes edge to edge, a power button with Touch ID built in and USB-C charging.
But those are just some of the changes to the latest iPad. You also get a thinner and lighter design with flatter edges, a faster A14 Bionic chip and a fairly comfy optional Magic Keyboard Folio with trackpad. The bold color options are nice, too. Add it all up and you have one of the best tablets around.
Read our full iPad 2022 review.
The best Chrome tablet for students
The Lenovo Duet 3 (or Lenovo IdeaPad Duet 3, depending on where you buy it) is a great Chrome tablet for students that can be yours for as low as $359. This is effectively a bigger, more expensive follow-up to the Chromebook Duet Lenovo released in 2020, a surprisingly capable and inexpensive Chrome tablet that's still decent if you want something even cheaper.
We loved the original Duet for its great battery life, solid performance and decent packed-in keyboard cover, all of which could be had for roughly $250. Lenovo's new Duet 3 costs a bit more, but it also delivers a bigger, brighter display, more ports, and the added power of a beefier Qualcomm Snapdragon 7c Gen 2 chip, all of which are nice to have as a student. It's one of the best Chrome tablets you can buy, and the fact that Lenovo includes the keyboard cover at no extra cost helps it double as a surprisingly effective 2-in-1 Chromebook.
Read our full Lenovo Duet 3 Chromebook review.
The Surface Go 2 is the best student tablet for those looking for an affordable Windows-powered slate because it's relatively cheap thanks to its age, yet still delivers enough performance for basic schoolwork and offers good battery life (11 hours and 39 minutes in our battery test).
While this model runs Windows 10 instead of Windows 11, that's not a major handicap and in fact may be viewed as a positive thing by many Windows fans. The 10.5-inch display has thin bezels that don't distract, and the 5-megapixel 1080p camera in its top bezel is great for the era of remote learning.
Given this tablet's age we recommend buying the most upgraded version you can get your hands on, as spending to upgrade the CPU and memory now will make it more likely to last you through a few years of school.
Read our full Microsoft Surface Go 2 review.
The best premium Apple tablet
As nice as the basic iPad is for a student, if you can afford the splurge the iPad Air is a step above and beyond.
Available in either 13-inch or 15-inch varieties, the latest iPad Air is remarkably thin and light yet speedy and long-lasting thanks to the Apple M2 chip inside. In fact it offers nearly all of the same features of the top-of-the-line iPad Pro despite costing hundreds of dollars less, making this the perfect sweet spot iPad for a student.
If you really want to try and use this tablet as your primary school machine, consider paying extra for the Apple Magic Keyboard so you can type a little more comfortably than you can on the touchscreen.
See our full iPad Air (2024) review.
The best premium Android tablet
The OnePlus Pad ($479) is a great Android tablet for not too much money. With a huge 13MP rear camera, curved edges and a unique 7:5 aspect ratio, OnePlus’ first slate stands out from the competition.
This tablet has plenty going for it besides its distinctive design. Homework and videos look great on its vivid 11.6-inch 144Hz display, and thanks to its MediaTek Dimensity 9000 CPU and Android 13 OS most apps and games run plenty fast. The lightweight OnePlus Pad also has exceptional battery life, lasting over 13 hours in our testing.
Plus, unlike the iPad you can outfit this slate with school-relevant accessories like the OnePlus Magnetic Keyboard ($39) and OnePlus Stylo ($99) without dropping a lot of dough. If you’re looking for an excellent Android tablet for under $500, you can’t go wrong with the OnePlus Pad.
Read our full OnePlus Pad review.
Battery life compared
Battery life is one of the key things to consider when buying a tablet, especially for a student, because you don't want to be left with a dead device in the middle of class or an all-night study session in the library.
That's why it's important to know how long these slates actually last, which is why we put every tablet we test and review through a series of battery tests, then average the results and compare them against the competition. I've assembled the tested battery life of every tablet on this page here in one handy chart, so you can make a more informed purchase!
| Header Cell - Column 0 | Time (min:secs) |
|---|---|
| Apple iPad 2022 | 10:57 |
| iPad Air 2024 | 11:30 |
| Microsoft Surface Pro 11 | 12:10 |
| OnePlus Pad | 13:31 |
| Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 | 9:06 |
| Apple iPad mini 6 (2021) | 10:56 |
How to choose the best tablet for you
How to choose the best tablet for you
Start by thinking about the operating system you live in, which means opening your pocket and thinking about how much you rely on your smartphone. iPhone owners may jump straight to the 7th Gen iPad or iPad Pro, and they'd be right to do so — iMessage integration and the shared app ecosystems across iOS and iPadOS are an ideal combination. But if the iPad Pro is too expensive and the 7th Gen iPad isn't powerful enough, the iPad Air's faster CPU makes it the iPad to definitely consider, though I can't blame budget-conscious shoppers for going with the regular iPad.
Android folks have a wider set of options, but since Android apps aren't thriving on tablets as much as anyone would hope, this is a good time to consider all of your options. Yes the Galaxy Tab S6 has a fantastic screen and Android apps, but isn't Windows 10 a more capable platform? If you're nodding your head "yes," then the Surface Go 2 is the best tablet for you. That all being said, if you've got a big enough family, and you're all living in the Amazon Prime ecosystem, go for the Fire 7 if you're trying to fit to a budget, and the Fire HD 10 if you are tired of devices that don't have USB-C.
How we tested these tablets
How we test tablets
First, we run as many benchmarks as that tablet will allow, to see how fast they are in ways that can be compared directly against competitors. We say "will allow" as some tablets, like Amazon's Fire slates, have trouble with side-loaded Android apps. We then use colorimeters and light meters to measure how colorful and bright these tablets’ screens can get. After that, we put them through our in-house battery test, which times how long it takes — while surfing the web with brightness at 150 nits — to drain a tablet of a charge.
After that, we do the same things you do — browse the web, watch YouTube, play games, compose emails — and then a lot more. We try and write some (or all) of our tablet reviews on the tablets we're testing, if there's a keyboard for it that is. Nobody wants to write a magnum opus on a glass screen, trust me.
For more information, check out our how we test page for Tom's Guide.
