You can buy a tablet for $100, and you can buy a tablet for $2000; what are the differences between these tablets besides the price?
Budget and premium tablets consist of a body, display, port, and few buttons. Everything else is software and hardware.
The biggest difference between an expensive and a cheap tablet is the Display. Premium tablets have a high-resolution, beautiful, vibrant color screen. While cheaper tablets have pixeled displays for the basic usage.
What’s a Premium Tablet?
A premium tablet is a high-end, top-tier touchscreen device that offers advanced features, superior build quality, and powerful performance.
Premium tablets are manufactured by well-known brands. Like Apple, Samsung, Lenovo, and Microsoft. They come with higher price tag in comparison to budget tablets and mid-range tablets.
High-end tablets are characterized by premium materials, the newest technology, superior display quality, powerful processors, RAM and storage capacity, screen brightness, stylus support, advanced camera systems, and high-end audio.
What’s a Budget Tablet?
A budget tablet refers to a more affordable touchscreen device that is designed for basic needs without premium features and specifications that can be found in premium tablets.
These tablets are characterized by their low price points. Making them accessible to a broad audience. Budget tablets have limitations such as processing power, display quality, no stylus support, no multitasking, no touch IDs or face IDs, etc. Budget tablets have basic speakers and cameras. They are suitable for web surfing, emails, media consumption, light games, apps, calls, etc.
Budget tablets are manufactured by brands like Amazon, Lenovo, Huawei, Xiaomi, Samsung, Telecast, Alldocube, Cooper, Nokia and others.
Differences
Premium and budget tablets have different displays, features, and other hardware components, but the most significant difference is the display.
Display
Premium tablets boast high-resolution displays that deliver sharp and detailed visuals with vibrant colors and deep blacks. With enhanced brightness, superior contrast ratios, and support for features like high refresh rates, high PPI and HDR, premium tablet displays provide a top-tier visual experience.
In contrast, budget tablets tend to offer lower display resolutions, using standard display technology for more basic color reproduction. While they provide moderate brightness and contrast suitable for everyday tasks, features like high refresh rates, HDR support, and a wide color gamut are absent in budget tablet displays.
Stylus Support
Premium tablets excel in providing advanced stylus support, offering a more responsive and precise writing or drawing experience. Budget tablets, on the other hand, don’t support active stylus. They do support a capacitive stylus, but these styluses just work as a fingertip and will work with any touchscreen surface.
Processing Power
Premium tablets are equipped with faster and more advanced processors; they deliver smoother overall performance, enabling quick app launches, multitasking, and smoother graphics rendering. This enhanced processing power is particularly beneficial for resource-intensive tasks such as gaming, video editing, photo editing, illustration creation, and running demanding applications.
In contrast, budget tablets tend to have less powerful processors. They struggle with demanding applications(even on lowest settings) and exhibit slower performance during multitasking. Graphics performance on budget tablets may also be less robust, affecting the smoothness of visual elements in apps and games. Encountering errors and experiencing tablet freezing is not uncommon when attempting to run demanding apps on budget tablets.
Storage & RAM
Premium tablets have larger storage capacities and more generous amounts of RAM compared to budget tablets. The increased storage capacity provides users with ample space to store a significant number of apps, media files, photos, videos and documents without the need for frequent data management or reliance on an external storage solution.
In addition to greater storage, premium tablets typically feature higher amounts of RAM, which enhances overall performance. With more RAM, premium tablets can handle resource-intensive tasks more efficiently, allowing for smoother multitasking and quicker app switching.
Camera & Audio
Premium tablets are equipped with higher-quality cameras and enhanced audio capabilities. With higher megapixel counts, improved image sensors, and additional camera features like flash, auto-focus, etc. This allows users to capture higher-resolution photos and videos with better color accuracy and detail.
Regarding audio, premium tablets often offer high-end sound quality with advanced speaker systems. They have multiple speakers, stereo setups, or technologies like Dolby Atmos for an immersive audio experience. Premium tablets are designed to deliver high-fidelity sound.
Sound is one of the most important aspects when it comes to watching movies, videos and playing games.
Connectivity
Premium tablets offer more advanced connectivity options, including both Wi-Fi and LTE(5G) capabilities, while budget tablets only offer Wi-Fi connectivity.
5 Things You Can Do on a Premium Tablet That You Can’t Do on a Budget Tablet
- Draw and create art.
- Play high-end games.
- Take handwritten notes.
- Have video calls in better quality.
- Enjoy high-definition video and audio while watching movies.
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I'm a writer and editor in iPads & Android Tablets, Windows Tablet section. I'm passionate about technology, especially about tablets. I'm on a mission to assist people in discovering their ideal tablets. In addition, I'm dedicated to producing helpful how-to guides and sharing top-notch tips and tricks. In my early carrier I founded and became and editor at worldoftablet and have been a guest author at many other tech blogs. In wolfoftablet I'm focusing on iPads, Tablets, Apple Pencil, Apps, Reviews, Buyers Guides and Tablet Accessories. In free time I like to play games on my PS5 or iOS.