The best tablets combine the portability of a smartphone with the versatility of a laptop. These portable devices have come a long way since their early beginnings, and many of them are now powerful enough to serve as great laptop alternatives.
When choosing the ideal tablet, whether you want the best iPad, the best Android tablet, or a cheap tablet with excellent performance, it’s important to know what you’ll be using it for. Some tablets are made for professionals and creatives, offering powerful performance and useful features like a stylus or keyboard folio compatibility. Others work best as portable entertainment devices, being great for gaming or watching movies.
iPad Pro 12.9 (2021)
The iPad Pro 12.9 (2021) is a spectacular tablet, with its headline feature arguably being the M1 chipset that powers it. This chipset was lifted straight from Apple’s top-end Macs, so you’re truly getting desktop power in a tablet here.
We were blown away when we tested the tablet – the chip was great for tasks like photo and video editing, as well as gaming. But that’s not all this tablet has going for it. For the first time in an iPad, it also has a Mini LED screen, with a remarkably high 1,600-nit peak brightness, a 120Hz refresh rate, and a 2048 x 2732 resolution. It’s crisp, bright, vibrant, and all-round impressive.
The iPad Pro 12.9 (2021) also has a long-lasting battery, a decent camera, a premium aluminum design, and support for the Magic Keyboard and Apple Pencil 2 – these are sold separately, but turn it into a real productivity machine, and we used them non-stop in our testing period.
So if you want to get some proper work or creation done on a tablet, or you’re just a big tablet gamer, the iPad Pro 12.9 (2021) will be the perfect device. But if your needs are lighter then you might find this too expensive and too big.