Best Chromebook Tablets

Best Chromebook Tablets

Chrome OS is light, speedy, and it runs well on both low-end and high-end hardware, so you'd think that every manufacturer would have a Chrome OS tablet on the market right now, right? WRONG. Chrome OS is still something that is greatly-improved with a keyboard, and while touch-optimization has made leaps and bounds in recent years, we've only seen Chromebook tablets become a thing in the last year, so there's not much to choose between right now, but thankfully, there is a good option for a couple price points and screen sizes today.

Our pick HP Chromebook X2

HP's Chromebook X2 is the first detachable Chromebook and remains our favorite Chromebook on the market today. Think of this as a powerful laptop that doubles as a great tablet, with great pressure-sensitive pen support and a lovely 12.3-inch display.

$599 from Best Buy 

Big, beautiful brute Google Pixel Slate

Google's first in-house Chrome OS tablet is an ambitious product that hasn't really hit the mark quite yet. With a drop-dead delectable screen and powerful internals, we know the Slate is capable of great things, but the software just hasn't been dialed in quite right yet.

$799 at Amazon 

Education-oriented Acer Chromebook Tab

The Chromebook Tab's smaller 9.7-inch screen is the perfect size for smaller hands and classrooms, allowing more interaction with learning materials. Acer's Chromebook Tab is great for both hands-on learners and parents seeking durable tablets.

$318 at Amazon 

Value pick CTL Chromebook Tab Tx1

CTL's Chromebook Tab is a lot like Acer's, inside and out, and it's geared towards the education sector by the experts — CTL stands for Compute, Teach, Learn, y'know. This model is available for pre-order right now for slightly lower prices than the Acer.

$299 at CTL

Again, Chromebook tablets are a fairly young segment that doesn't have many devices to choose from yet, but at least one of the Chromebook tablets we can choose from is the best Chromebook on the market right now: the solid, sturdy 2-in-1 HP Chromebook X2.

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 Ara Wagoner

Ara Wagoner is a Writer at Android Central. She themes phones and pokes Google Play Music with a stick. When she's not writing help and how-to's, she's off dreaming about Disney and singing show tunes. If you see her without headphones, RUN. You can follow her on Twitter at @arawagco.

The Best Cheap Tablets Under $200

Julian Chokkattu/Digital Trends

You don’t have to break the bank to secure yourself a new tablet. There are plenty of budget options out there and if you’re willing to compromise, you can easily snag yourself one of the best cheap tablets available today for less than $200. Cheap tablets have improved fast in the last couple of years, and they’ve continued to drop in price as smartphones have grown larger and eaten into the tablet market.

If you’re feeling the pinch right now and that budget is limited, here are the best cheap tablets that $200 or less will buy you. Looking for more? Check our list of the best tablets money can buy — many of which frankly aren’t that much more costly.

Amazon Fire HD 8 ($80)  Julian Chokkattu/Digital Trends

Julian Chokkattu/Digital Trends

This is a remarkably capable tablet for the price. The 8-inch display has a respectable 1280 x 800-pixel resolution, there’s 16GB or 32GB of storage onboard with space for a MicroSD card, and the battery life is solid. It also comes with Alexa for quick voice searches and commands. If you just want a tablet for reading, games, and watching videos, then this will do the job. Our Fire HD 8 review points out of that you’ll get more out of it if you’re invested in Amazon’s ecosystem, but the fact you’re limited to Amazon’s Appstore is going to understandably put some people off. Amazon does offer the even cheaper Fire 7 tablet at $50, but if you can stretch to the HD 8 we highly recommend that you do, because it offers a lot of small improvements that really add up when put together. If you want something a little bigger, the Fire HD 10 is also a bargain at $150.

Asus Zenpad S 8 ($180) 

You should definitely check out the favorably reviewed Zenpad S 8 if you’re shopping for a cheap Android tablet. Asus has been one of the leading manufacturers of Android tablets since the beginning, and this one offers great specs for the money. You get a quad-core, 64bit, Intel Atom Z3530 processor clocked at 1.3GHz, 2GB of RAM, and 32GB of storage with a MicroSD card slot to add more. It also has a 5-megapixel main camera and a 2-megapixel front-facing camera. Best of all, there’s an 8-inch screen with a resolution of 2048 x 1536 pixels. If you want to play games and watch movies, this tablet will serve you well. It’s a stylish tablet that feels more expensive than it really is.

Lenovo Yoga Tab 3 ($130) 

This tablet sticks out because of the innovative rotating kickstand along the side, which also enables you to turn the impressive 8-megapixel camera. The versatile kickstand will prop your tablet in landscape, but it also has a hook in case you want to hang it up. The 8-inch screen has a 1280 x 800-pixel resolution, and there’s a 1.3GHz Qualcomm processor inside with 2GB of RAM. You get 16GB of internal storage, but there is a MicroSD card slot for expansion. The big 6,200 mAh battery gives you plenty of power and it runs Android 5.1. It is a bit heavier than similarly sized tablets because of that kickstand, but it’s ideal for watching movies on and it offers decent sound too, via the dual front-facing speakers.

Samsung Galaxy Tab A 7 ($128) 

Here’s a portable tablet with nice build quality that offers a decent mix of specs for a low price. As the name suggests, Samsung’s budget tablet has a 7-inch display. The resolution is 1280 x 800 pixels, so this is fine for reading on. It has a decent quad-core processor inside with 1.5GB of RAM, which is about standard around this price point. You only get 8GB of storage, but there’s room for a MicroSD card. The battery life is very good. Unusually, the Tab A 7 also has a decent 5-megapixel camera, as well as a 2-megapixel front-facing camera, so this is the cheap tablet to go for if the camera is important to you.

Huawei Mediapad T3 8 ($140) 

This aluminum tablet sports an 8-inch display with a 1280 x 800-pixel resolution. It has a Snapdragon 425 processor inside with 2GB of RAM and 16GB of internal storage. There’s a 5-megapixel main camera with a 2-megapixel front-facing camera. The battery is a decent 4,800mAh and it runs Android 7.0 Nougat with Huawei’s EMUI 5.1 on top. It’s a decent family tablet with support for different users and parental controls. There’s also a 10-inch version of this tablet with identical specs for not much more.

Lenovo Tab 4 10.1 ($180) 

A tablet with a 10.1-inch display for well under $200 is not to be scoffed at. The resolution is only 1280 x 800 pixels, but the display is flanked by dual front-facing stereo speakers on the top edge. There’s a 1.4GHz quad-core processor, 2GB of RAM, and 16GB of storage inside with room for a MicroSD card. The main camera is rated at 5-megapixels and there’s a 2-megapixel front-facing camera. There’s also a hefty 7,000mAh battery for up to 10 hours of juice on the go. It runs Android 7.1 out of the box, with a handful of Lenovo apps. To put it simply, this tablet is an absolute bargain.

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Best Laptops, Desktops And Tablets For Creatives In 2019

I've culled these recommendations from products we've tested that stand out for their performance, design and features for drawing, painting, designing, rendering, photo and video editing as well as other creative tasks.

The latest development to improve your experience all around are the mobile hexacore Intel Core i7, i9 and Xeon processors, which deliver a nice performance boost over yesterday's quad-core maximum, and Nvidia GeForce RTX 20-series graphics processors, which are faster, and when supported, accelerate ray tracing for 3D. Both also support more memory, so you're not just gaining some speed. 

There are so many variations of the performance mix individuals need for power-hungry applications, so it's not only hard to limit suggestions to a handful of specific options, it's even harder to recommend specific configurations for each. (And note that I've got no budget picks here but will probably add them in a future update.) 

So here are a few rules of thumb that should help you make your decisions:

Check your software requirements. Some applications require workstation-class components, such as Nvidia Quadro chips rather than GeForce, to access some advanced features. For example, Adobe Photoshop doesn't support 10-bit color without one (you may think you've switched it on but it's not operational). Unfortunately, that also increases the price.

Base the specs on the application you spend the most time in. If your budget demands that you make performance tradeoffs, you need to know what to throw more money at. Since every application is different, you can't generalize to the level of "video-editing uses CPU cores more than GPU acceleration," though a big, fast SSD is probably a good idea.

For desktops, think about going boutique. If you're not a victim of corporate purchasing standards, getting a custom-built system may be the way to go, though expect to pay a premium. Companies like Falcon Northwest, Origin PC, Digital Storm and Maingear, for instance, are known for their gaming desktops but they build workstations as well. They also offer processors and graphics cards you generally can't find from more mass-market manufacturers, such as an 18-core Core i9, 32-core AMD Threadripper or Nvidia Titan RTX. Plus, they'll overclock those parts for you. Some also personalize the cases with custom artwork which should appeal to your artistic sensibility, help you decide what components you'll need for the software you run and provide more personalized tech support.

If you do color-critical work, look for a laptop with hardware calibration. A display that supports color profiles stored in hardware, like HP's Dreamcolor models, will allow for more consistent color when you use multiple calibrated monitors. They also tend to be better, as calibration requires a tighter color error level than usual. 

Disclaimer: CNET may get a share of revenue from the sale of products featured on this page.

Best Mac for mobile photo and video editing Apple MacBook Pro 15Sarah Tew/CNET

The MacBook Pro's display is one of the best, if not the best, of consumer laptops with respect to color accuracy and gamut. It's also pretty well-rounded when it comes to performance. Plus it's got plenty of USB-C and Thunderbolt ports.

A lot of photo-editing software now supports the Touch Bar for contextual operations such as flagging and labeling, which may help speed you through your workflow. 

Drawbacks: While the Retina display had a pretty high resolution for its time, it's fallen behind 4K. I normally don't recommend 4K on a 15-inch display, but my one exception is for photo editing, where you really want to see the details. 

The Touch Bar isn't universally loved and can be more of a roadblock than a fast lane compared to keyboard shortcuts. Nor does it have built-in SD card reader, so you'll have to tote one with you.

See at Apple Read review Best laptop for art and presentation Dell XPS 15 2-in-1/Dell Precision 5530Sarah Tew/CNET

A convertible version of the also-excellent XPS 15, the two-in-one offers the same great display but adds tablet flexibility you might want for drawing and sketching as well as the convenience of flipping the screen for presenting to clients. 

The Precision 5530 is the workstation equivalent, with the same excellent display options and design, but incorporating better security and more powerful options, including a Core i9 or Xeon CPU and up to 32GB RAM. The Radeon Vega M GL graphics aren't very powerful, but it still delivers gameworthy discrete Nvidia graphics and a 4K, broad-gamut and color-accurate touchscreen display. 

Drawbacks: The 5530 doesn't support ECC memory, and both models suffer from the poorly located, up-your-nose-view webcam. 

See at Dell Read review Best tablet for artists and photographers Apple iPad Pro 2018Sarah Tew/CNET

As long as you're OK with apps rather than applications and don't need the flexibility of a full operating system, the iPad Pro has the power for a lot of the sketching, photo and video-editing capabilities you need. It can also feed into desktop apps for the rest. 

It has a great display for color work, and a fine-feeling pencil for sketching. Apple improved the design over earlier models as well, letting you wireless charge the Apple Pencil just by attaching it through a magnetic strip on the tablet. It also swapped the Lightning connector for a more flexible USB-C version.

Drawbacks: The Pencil 2 and keyboard add to the cost of what's already a fairly expensive proposition, particularly given the lack of connections and the inability to run desktop applications. While the USB-C port adds the ability to attach little hubs to it, they jut out awkwardly, plus iOS lacks a real file system. The only way to copy files off it is on an app-by-app basis. We haven't yet seen any implementations for tethered shooting, either.

See at Amazon Read review Best tablet for Windows artists Microsoft Surface Pro 6Sarah Tew/CNET

The Surface Pro 6 offers 4,096 levels of pressure sensitivity and full Windows 10, plus it supports the Microsoft Dial, which can substitute some functions when you don't have access to the keyboard for your shortcuts. There's also an option to use the sRGB color space instead of the default make-colors-pop setting.

If you plan to use it for painting rather than sketching, don't skimp on the processor when you buy. Go full Intel Core i7 to get the better CPU and more storage if you can afford it. Complex brushes, color mixing and textures can slow you down if you don't have enough processor power.

Drawbacks: At 12.3 inches, it's portable but small, especially if you want to use the Dial. It can also get expensive, and you'll have to pay extra for the pen, Dial and keyboard.

It's a bit low on ports, too -- if you need to present your work, you may need a dongle for HDMI, though there's a mini DisplayPort to connect to a monitor, and it lacks USB-C. 

See at Amazon Read review Best lightweight laptop for 3D design and coding MSI GS75 Stealth 8SG

A big 17-inch screen with an 8GB Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 in a slim Max-Q design, this is a powerful system that weighs less than five pounds -- and since Nvidia hasn't released any mobile Quadro RTX chips yet, the gaming-oriented GeForce GPUs are your only option for portable cutting-edge graphics. Unless you settle for less power on the road and plug into an external GPU at the office.

Drawbacks: There's no Core i9 configuration option, which means you're gaining better real-time operational fluidity by sacrificing rendering speed. Because it's the consumer GPU, you may not be able to take advantage of some advanced features that are limited to workstation GPUs in 3D software and no 10-bit color in graphics applications.

(We have tested but not yet reviewed this laptop.)

See at Best Buy Best desktop for art and design Microsoft Surface Studio 2Sarah Tew/CNET

With the Surface Studio, you're paying for flexibility: the big, 28-inch broad-gamut touchscreen display that you can lay flat and draw on with a pressure-sensitive stylus. The Microsoft Dial's an extra perk if you like a fourth input device when you work (in addition to mouse, keyboard and stylus). The system was updated this year with discrete graphics, to a GeForce GTX 1070.

Drawbacks: Pressure-sensitive stylus technology has evolved in the past couple years, and it still only offers last-generation Nvidia GPUs and relatively slow mobile CPUs. It's very expensive for that, especially given that this is an investment. Plus, Microsoft has intimated that it plans to release the display as a standalone in 2019, which means you could attach it to a more powerful system.

See at Amazon Read review Best mobile workstation for illustration HP ZBook x2Sarah Tew/CNET

This is the only detachable mobile workstation that can be configured with a 4K UHD DreamColor, 4,096-level Wacom EMR pressure-sensitive display. A workstation Nvidia Quadro GPU means it can run certified applications. Plus, it doesn't skimp on connections.

The only serious competitor the ZBook really has is the Wacom MobileStudio Pro, but if you can suffer with a paltry 4,096 levels of sensitivity (compared with the Wacom's 8,192 levels) and slightly slower performance, this is much better all around. It's got a great design, including a comfortable detachable keyboard that automatically reconnects via Bluetooth when you remove it. 

The matte display covers 100 percent of the Adobe RGB gamut and does so with excellent accuracy and built-in profiles. Plus, the chemically etched display adds a little more friction, making the stylus feel more precise and natural compared to the typical glossy surface.

Drawbacks: You're limited to the one, single-button stylus so it's no good for many 3D designers. If you can't compensate by reprogramming the QuicKeys on the sides of the tablet, it might not work for you. Plus, it's relatively heavy, and while the battery life is good for its components, it won't get you through the day.

As for color, the 8-bit+FRC (10-bit simulation) display only covers about 70 percent of the P3 gamut. Also people have complained about light leakage at the edges of the display.

See at HP Read review

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