Lenovo Tab M10 HD Gen 2 Review: Affordable home tablet
The 2nd Generation Lenovo Tab M10 HD is an Android tablet that costs just 130 Dollars which means it can be an interesting choice for many looking for an inexpensive family tablet. In fact, the kids’ mode is advertised in particular and you can get a Smart Tab M10 HD 2nd Gen with a Smart Dock and the Google Assistant. In this Lenovo Tab M10 HD Gen 2 review you learn how good the newest iteration really is.
Contents
Design & Built Quality
The Lenovo Tab M10 HD 2nd Gen looks pretty. We’re getting a metal body with two plastic sides which are housing the speakers and a couple of ports. It weighs 420g and is 8mm thin.
You charge it using a USB C 2.0 port which you can also use to connect lots of accessories but external monitors are not supported. On the other side, there’s a headphone jack and on the top sits a microSD card slot. There’s a connector for the Smart Dock since the hardware is the same as the Smart Tab, but it seems like you can’t buy the dock separately.
Display: HD Without Netflix HD
As the name suggests, the Lenovo Tab M10 HD 2nd Gen has a 10.1-inch screen with an HD resolution of 1280 x 800 pixels. For this size, I think that’s a bit too low. Icons and texts look a bit blurry compared to screens with a Full HD resolution. Sure, in the past we were all fine with such a low pixel density. But it’s not ideal.
Besides that, it’s a good display. Colors seem accurate and viewing angles are wide. With 400 nits it’s quite bright for a cheap Android tablet but it’s not as bright as the iPad 8. That’s to be expected, of course.
According to Lenovo, the screen is especially gentle to your eyes. It’s certified by TÜV Rheinland and it’s reducing blue light.
Software
The Lenovo Smart Tab M10 HD ships with Android 10, which includes Google Assistant. Even though Android 11 has been out for a while, Android 10 is still the version that ships on most Android devices. Another feature that might attract some folks with this tablet is a dedicated kid’s mode.
I won’t bore you with every detail of Android 10, but some features that you do get are a full system dark theme, gesture navigation, smart reply, and more. Google Assistant can keep you updated on weather, what music is playing, show you pictures from your Google Photos, and more.
With there being a kids mode suite on the M10 HD thanks to Google Kids Space, children ages 3 to 8 will be able to learn, play games, or watch videos on YouTube Kids. Keep in mind you will have to create a whole new profile and set up a child Google account in order to actually use Kids Space.
Hardware & Performance
Inside the Tab M10 HD 2nd Gen runs a MediaTek Helio P22T octa-core processor with eight cores that clock at up to 2.3GHz. You can get versions with 2GB or 4GB of RAM, as well as 32GB or 64GB internal storage. I have the one with 4GB and 64GB because it’s not much pricier and that’s lots of storage for this price range.
Benchmark tests from Geekbench 5, 4, and 3D Mark show that the performance of that Helio P22T is below the Samsung Galaxy Tab A7 which is a bit pricier. And it’s weaker than the Amazon Fire HD 10. Test results are very similar to the Lenovo Tab M10 FHD Plus – no wonder because the internal hardware is the same.
When surfing the web in Chrome and watching YouTube, I didn’t notice any major performance lags. It’s certainly fast enough for that. I noticed that multitasking works surprisingly well which might be due to the 4GB of RAM that my version has. With the 2GB one, it might not work as well.
Sound quality
The Lenovo Smart Tab M10 HD 2nd Gen comes with dual side-facing speakers with Dolby Atmos sound. When it came to listening to music, it sounded decent but nothing too special. Not much bass but the highs and mids were there. Sound can get loud but ends up sounding tinny after a certain point. Videos on YouTube and Netflix sounded fine when it came to voices and other sounds in the scene. If you’re listening to music or watching videos, you will be able to hear everything going on as long as there isn’t a lot of ambient noise in the room.
