Lenovo Tab P11 128GB WiFi Gray

This tablet captures a Sony Xperia Z3 compact tablet that lasted 6 years (!) but started to get really slow (and no more updates). Unfortunately, there are no more compact light tablets with a bit of a decent chipset and specs. And we found the high-end tablets from Samsung too expensive, also because we have a toddler who can do Squla on the tablet. So, based on a roundup on Tweakers, I chose this Lenovo P11.

At first, the tablet does feel 'clunky' and heavy, compared to our previous tablet, but that was of course to be expected. It also has quite wide bezels, compared to more expensive competitors. But that holds good for me. When I turned on some music on the tablet for the first time, I was very positively surprised by the good sound! Obviously no thumping beats, but bass instruments were definitely audible. Even in classical music with an orchestra, all instruments were clearly audible. Very balanced and detailed sound! And thanks to the 4 speakers, you always get a good stereo image, regardless of the orientation of the tablet. The screen is fine for an LCD. Not perfect, but colors are neither faded nor overly loud and the viewing angles are also quite OK.

In terms of speed, the tablet generally feels quite smooth. The more high-end Ipads or Samsung S-series tablets will undoubtedly feel a lot smoother and our previous Sony tablet, with a high-end Qualcomm chipset, felt smoother. But the speed of this tablet is certainly not disturbing.

An extremely annoying point (which I had already read about beforehand, but which I had also read that it would be solved): Streams (live and On Demand) from NLZiet or the NPO app stutter terribly! Even at the lowest quality. But if I then play something in Full HD in Netflix, it just runs super smooth. And now for the take away: When I go back to NLZiet and NPO after Netflix, these streams suddenly play smoothly. I have no idea yet whether this is due to a quirk in the Lenovo sauce about Android or to the two apps (the fact is that the apps just work well on several smartphones and the old tablet from Samsung and Sony, among others).

It is also striking that the tablet has not yet received Android 11. Security level of Google Play and Android is at that of May 2021, with the most recent update.

Conclusion: I have ticked the box that the tablet is recommended, even though I am disappointed about the faltering NPO and NLZiet (NLZiet is our main way of watching TV). Furthermore, the tablet works fine for our daughter's school games, some web browsing and (after workaround) watching streaming video.