Lenovo Tab M11 Review: Cheap but Too Ambitious

Price When Reviewed

US price TBC

Lenovo is one of the few manufacturers that consistently spits out new Android tablets. Even so, they struggle to match the features and success of Samsung and Apple. One of the latest is the Tab M11, a mid-budget tablet priced from £199. It was unveiled at CES in January, and is now available in Lenovo’s web shop and a small number of stores.

The ones available in stores are not exactly the same product as the one I got to test. Mine includes a charger in the package. The ones I can find in stores do not. For exactly the right package, you have to go to Lenovo and order it.

Design & Build

Another big difference between the tablets available in the big stores and mine that came directly from Lenovo is that mine is not an LTE version that you can put a SIM card in. I have the Wi-Fi version of the tablet and have to do without mobile data.

Lenovo, on the other hand, offers more options, with and without a charger, and with and without a snap-on folio case that can be folded up to become a table stand. I didn’t get that.

It’s a well-built, unibody-style chassis with matte metal surfaces everywhere

The tablet is the same in all four choices, an 11-inch unit with semi-thin screen edges, just enough to grip without reaching the touchscreen, and not so wide as to make the tablet unwieldy. It’s a well-built, unibody-style chassis with matte metal surfaces everywhere except on the screen portion, and with three distinct buttons in one corner, for volume and power.

It is just over 7mm thick and weighs 465g. With reasonably rounded edges, it’s comfortable to hold. However, after a couple of hours of hand-holding I started to feel that the folio case with support might not have been so bad after all.

As I said, this is not an expensive and exclusive tablet. This is especially noticeable in two things, performance and screen. Neither of them are bad, but clearly limited and scaled down compared to the best on the market.

Specs & Performance

The system circuit is a Mediatek Helio G88, a circuit that was released in 2021 and wasn’t very fast then either. It has two faster and six slower processor cores and the less than dazzling ARM graphics circuit Mali-G52.

That, along with just 4GB of RAM and 128GB of relatively slow storage make this a tablet primarily for simple tasks.

Web browsing on it is generally good. The tablet comes with Opera pre-installed as the default browser and it is both easy to use and well optimised. However, it is noticeable that the RAM is scarce, if you open too many tabs it can start to slow down. Surf with a sense of humour and you should be able to avoid problems.

Other apps can be a bigger challenge. WPS Office that comes pre-installed is fine to run as long as you stick to simple text documents and small spreadsheets. Too many picture elements and multiple pages and there can be some noticeable slowness in handling.

But hey, even if it’s not always fast, most things can be done. Except for playing games that require even the smallest amount of 3D graphics. This is beyond the capabilities of the weak graphics circuit.

Playing even the simplest games in under 20fps, and more demanding ones in under 5fps, is not exactly fun. If you’re just doing some simple pastimes with 2D graphics, it’ll do, but there are better options even if you’re on a tight budget.

It’s much better for reading text, with a 90Hz frame rate for smooth scrolling on web pages and in long documents

Screen & Speakers

The screen is an IPS panel with a 16:10 aspect ratio and 1920×1200 pixels. It has exactly the qualities I would expect from a basic IPS in a budget build. It looks sharp from the front, but lacks the perfect blackness in dark areas, and has obvious white point and colour balance issues if I look at it from the side.

The brightness level of up to 400 nits is acceptable, allowing you to use the tablet outdoors as long as there’s no bright sunshine, and you do your best to avoid reflecting bright surfaces in the image.

For streaming films, the screen is okay, but no more. It doesn’t support HDR, and has a colour gamut well below sRGB standards, so there’s never any real intensity in the picture.

It’s much better for reading text, with a 90Hz frame rate for smooth scrolling on web pages and in long documents. It has a good basic blue light filter that eliminates what’s not visible, and then an effective reading mode that produces a sepia-toned screen and no blue light at all.

Four small speakers, two on each short side, provide clean and detailed sound with good stereo spread as long as the tablet is horizontal. However, they are too close together to provide any stereo effect at all if I use it in portrait mode.

The top-end is neither very powerful nor very rich. Bass tones are heard, but only barely. If I push the volume up to maximum, it corresponds to maybe 50% volume on some other slates. Not so strange when the output power of the four speakers is only 1W each.

Lenovo Pen & Cameras

The tablet comes with a comfortable stylus, Lenovo’s own active battery-powered Lenovo Pen. To get it going, I need to unscrew the top, peel off a small protective film in front of the pre-installed AAA battery. Then it works, albeit not amazingly well.

There is no immediate response with pixels on the screen where I draw, but the update takes a few milliseconds. Occasionally, I get pauses in the pen input with either blank registration or a line where I drew a curve.

The pen is said to support both tilt and 4096 levels of pressure sensitivity, but in the apps that Lenovo mentions and that are pre-installed, I have to settle for one level. When I download a better app, like the excellent Sketchbook, both pressure sensitivity and pen tilt work well.

The choppiness that occurs in pen handling may have to do with the tablet’s overall moderate performance. I have experienced better in other more expensive Lenovo tablets with more power in the processor.

Even text input is annoying. Lenovo says that it should be possible to type manually in all search boxes and similar fields, but without a larger dedicated typing field, it doesn’t work and I have to delete more misinterpreted characters than the system gets right.

On both the front and back, the Tab M11 is equipped with 8Mp cameras, and they deliver about as good, or rather as half-assed, as you’d expect from a budget tablet. If you want something useful for running video meetings, sure, but you won’t be a master film maker or photographer.

In Computer Mode, you get a Windows-like interface with floating and scalable windows, designed for keyboard and mouse control

Software & Features

The operating system is Android 13, with a customised interface that’s not visually very different from stock Android, and you get two years of promised Android versions, as well as four years of security updates. Lenovo spices up the system with a small set of bonus apps and extra features.

In Computer Mode, you get a Windows-like interface with floating and scalable windows, designed for keyboard and mouse control.

If you don’t want to do that, you can multitask in split-screen mode instead, with an interface and handling that’s a little smoother than Google’s own. This allows you to bring up a maximum of three apps on the screen. Two on the split screen and a floating vertical window in front.

The Freestyle feature allows you to pair the tablet with a computer, and then easily share files between them, or use the tablet as an external display for the computer. You need an application on the computer and a shared login, and it all happens automatically.

I’m not entirely thrilled, which is mainly to do with the connection. Here I only get Wi-Fi 5, and also Wi-Fi 5 without very good reception. So I have to be in the right room for the image update to be acceptable.

A third feature called App Streaming allows you to launch certain apps that run on the tablet but appear in a window on the computer. “It works very poorly. I should be able to see and launch shareable apps in the Freestyle programme on my computer, but they don’t show up there. I can launch them from the tablet, and stream them to the computer, but with even more lag than desktop sharing.

Other features of the system are the kid-friendly Kids Space with safe and user-friendly profiles for kids, and the media centre screen which is one swipe to the left of the home screen. There you can connect your streaming services like HBO and Disney Plus and get a common interface for them but not all major services are supported.

Battery Life & Charging

The battery is 7,040mAh, and with that you should be able to get up to 10 hours of video playback according to Lenovo. I can’t quite manage that, but seven and a half hours is certainly not bad for a video stream at high brightness. For other mixed work, it lasts a little longer.

Unfortunately, battery charging is disappointingly slow. Even though I get a 20W USB PDA charger, the tablet only accepts 15W of power. After half an hour, I’m at 26% and it takes over three hours to fully charge the battery. Make sure you’re never far from a wall socket.

Price & Availability

You can get the Lenovo Tab M11 from just £199.99 (US availability is TBC at the time of writing) and this price will get you the tablet itself and the Lenovo Pen.

Other bundles are available from the Lenovo store with different combinations of the folio case and charger included. The lot is yours for £269.97 RRP.

You can also buy it from Amazon with the tablet and pen or bundled folio case for just £209. It’s also available from Argos, Currys, Very and John Lewis.

Check out our chart of the best budget tablets for more options.

Should you buy the Lenovo Tab M11?

For only £199 for the cheapest option, the Lenovo Tab M11 is a positive experience in many ways.

It’s genuinely well-built and feels more luxurious to hold than the price tag indicates, and it has a great set of solutions for both family and productivity.

However, weak performance and some mediocre hardware hold the Tab M11 back, and it fails to fulfil all of its own lofty ambitions.

This review originally appeared on M3.

Specs

• Processor: Mediatek Helio G88
• CPU: 2x Cortex-A75 2GHz, 6x Cortex-A555 1.8GHz
• Graphics: ARM Mali-G52 MC2
• Memory: 4GB
• Storage: 128GB, microSD slot
• Display: 11-inch IPS, 1920 x 1200 pixels, 90 Hz
• Cameras: 8Mp rear, 8Mp front
• Connections: USB-C 2.0, 3.5mm headset
• Communications: WiFi 5, Bluetooth 5.1
• Operating system: Android 13, 2 years updates
• Other: Lenovo Tab Pen, splash resistant (IP52)
• Battery: 7,040mAh, 7 hours 40 min video streaming (wifi, high brightness, 60 Hz), 8 hours 30 min mixed use (wifi, Pcmark Work 3.0 200 cd/m2, 90 Hz)
• Battery charging: 15W USB charging (USB PD). 14% in 15 min, 26% in 30 min.
• Size: 25.53 x 166 x 7.2mm
• Weight: 465g