Lenovo Idea Tab Series Lenovo Idea Tab Plus, 12.1" IPS 90Hz,8GB, Review

The Lenovo Tab Plus is a budget tablet with a premium-tier GPU. Its 99th percentile graphics performance is astounding for $219, and the 12.1-inch screen is great for media. But it's hamstrung by paltry 128GB storage and only 8GB of RAM. Buy it only if your needs are basic and your budget is tight. Everyone else should look at models with more storage.

The Lenovo Tab Plus is a weird one. On paper, it's a 12.1-inch student tablet with AI features, and at $219, it's priced like a budget device. But then you look at the specs and see a GPU performance ranking in the 99th percentile, which is frankly bizarre for this category and price. It's like finding a race car engine in a minivan. So who's this for? It's clearly aimed at students, with the marketing hammering home note-taking and online learning. But that 99th percentile GPU score suggests there's more under the hood than just textbook reading. The reality is, this tablet is trying to be a budget powerhouse for students who might dabble in light creative work or media consumption, but its other specs tell a different, more complicated story. The 8GB of RAM and 128GB storage are firmly in the budget camp, ranking in the 35th and 1st percentiles respectively. So you get this strange mix of potentially great graphics performance hamstrung by very limited memory and storage. It's an interesting experiment, but one that feels a bit confused about its own identity.

Let's talk about that 99th percentile GPU score. In our database, that puts its graphics performance ahead of nearly every other tablet, including ones that cost three or four times as much. For a student, this means smooth scrolling in educational apps, crisp video playback for lectures, and potentially even some light gaming during study breaks. The AMD 1600 6-core CPU lands in the 74th percentile, which is solid for the price and should handle multitasking between a browser, a note-taking app, and a PDF reader without much fuss. But here's the catch: that 8GB of RAM is a bottleneck. It ranks in the bottom 35th percentile. So while the GPU and CPU might be ready to sprint, the RAM is like having a narrow hallway—only so much data can move through at once. You'll likely hit limits if you try to run too many apps simultaneously or work with large files. The storage is the other big limitation. At 128GB and ranking in the 1st percentile, you're getting the bare minimum. You'll be managing your space carefully, relying on cloud storage, or using a microSD card if the tablet supports it.

At $219, the Lenovo Tab Plus is playing in a different league price-wise than its main competitors. An iPad Pro or Galaxy Tab S10+ will cost you well over $800. Even other Lenovo tablets like the Idea Tab Pro start higher. You're paying a fraction of the price. The value proposition is entirely about that 99th percentile GPU and the large screen for a super low cost. You're sacrificing storage, premium build materials, and ecosystem polish to get there. It's a trade-off that makes sense for a very specific buyer: someone who needs a big screen for media and basic tasks but has almost no budget. Just know that 'value' here means 'you get what you pay for' in areas like storage and RAM.

Stack this up against an Apple iPad Pro (13-inch M5), and it's almost a joke. The iPad Pro is a professional-grade device with a stunning screen, monstrous performance, and a vast app ecosystem. It also costs about $1000 more. The Tab Plus wins on price alone. A more direct competitor might be the Samsung Galaxy Tab S10+. It has a similar large screen, better overall build, and the full Android tablet experience with Dex. It also costs significantly more. The real competition is other budget large tablets, like Lenovo's own Idea Tab Pro. The Idea Tab Pro has a slightly larger 12.7-inch 3K screen and similar RAM, but likely at a higher price point. The Tab Plus undercuts it. The trade-off is clear: you choose the Tab Plus for its shockingly good GPU and low price, but you accept major compromises in storage, RAM, and likely build quality compared to the premium players.

Skip the Lenovo Tab Plus if you're a power user, a digital artist, or a student with a large local media library. The 128GB storage is a hard wall you will hit. Also skip it if you need to run several research tabs, a word processor, a note app, and a communication app all at once—the 8GB RAM will struggle. If productivity is your main goal (our score for it is a low 26.7/100), this isn't your device. Instead, look for refurbished business tablets or older Samsung Galaxy Tab models that might offer more RAM and storage for a similar price, even if the raw GPU score isn't as high. For artists, even a last-gen iPad with an Apple Pencil will provide a far better experience, despite the higher cost.

We'd recommend the Lenovo Tab Plus for one type of person: the budget-conscious student or casual user who prioritizes a large screen for watching videos, reading, and web browsing above all else. If your main activities are streaming lectures, reading PDFs, and light web work, and $219 is your hard limit, this gets the job done in a way other tablets at this price don't. However, we can't recommend it for students who need to store lots of textbooks and apps locally, or for anyone who needs to multitask heavily between apps. The 128GB storage and 8GB RAM are deal-breakers for serious work. For them, saving up for a model with more storage or looking at used previous-generation iPads or Samsung tablets would be a much better investment in the long run.