4 powerful Android tablets to buy instead of the new iPad Mini OLED

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Apple iPads are dominating the tablet scene for many reasons, and the new iPad Mini OLED could be one of them. But beyond a brighter, punchier screen and some under-display improvements, you might have a hard time justifying spending $699 for a high-quality, ultra-portable panel.

The truth, however, is that OLED still remains a rarity in the broader 8-inch tablet class. Manufacturers generally view this size category as their budget offering, with very few of these products being particularly powerful or as luxurious as their larger counterparts.

That said, new versions of Android that fit this bill are gradually coming into the spotlight, each with their own set of pros and cons compared to the new iPad Mini. Some, like the iQOO Pad Pro and Ultra, are and always will be exclusive to China. But we’ll go over a few viable alternatives you can get in the US, including some that aren’t as fancy but are still solid options in the small tablet space.

Enthusiasts say RedMagic makes the best Android phones for gaming with cutting-edge specs, multi-factor cooling systems that rival those of PCs, and integrated hardware controls that fit into graphics-intensive titles like Wuthering Waves or Genshin Impact. The Chinese brand also offers Android tablets in its Astra series that push the limits of what a small panel can do.

The Astra 2 features a 9.06-inch OLED display with a 185Hz refresh rate, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset, dedicated chipsets for touchscreen response and in-game resource management, and two USB-C ports in case you want to charge your tablet while using a wired headset. You can plug in a 75-watt power source to recharge the 8,300 mAh dual-cell battery or power the device directly to preserve battery health.

It also features a 12-part cooling system including a 20,000 RPM fan, copper foils and graphene layers around key components, as well as vapor and liquid cooling circuits that activate the RGB fixtures when in use. The base configuration includes 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage and costs $749, while $849 bumps those memory specs up to 16GB and 512GB, respectively.

Lenovo is the computer industry’s leading manufacturer, known for producing laptops that owners say last for many years, but it also does decent volume with a diverse line of Android tablets. The Legion Tab Gen 5 is one example that might meet your needs for a powerful, compact tablet. Yes, it’s another gaming tablet.

As with RedMagic’s Astra 2, it features the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, 12GB of RAM, 256GB of storage, two USB-C ports, and a cooling system (with less detail and promotion than RedMagic). The LCD screen has a lower dynamic range than the Astra 2’s OLED. The Legion is also slightly smaller at 8.8 inches, but has 17% more pixels with a resolution of 3040×1904.

Another compromise is in the power department, with Lenovo opting for a larger battery than RedMagic at 9,000mAh, but with a slightly slower 68-watt charge. The Legion Tab Gen 5 has an MSRP of $900, but is on sale as of this writing for $700, the same price as the new iPad Mini OLED.

Amazon has made waves with a new series of Alexa tablets. These aren’t the cheap Fire tablets you know were on sale for $250 for a six-pack, but they’re still a bargain compared to Apple’s current offerings. They’re not as powerful as the first two tablets we talked about, but their polished experiences clearly show the influence that the company’s legendary product manager, Panos Panay (formerly of Microsoft), had.

The Alexa tablet comes in an 11-inch size as well as a 12-inch Pro variant, but the 8-inch size can still attract attention. Specifically, it has an 8.7-inch 800p display, MediaTek Kompanio 540 chipset, and up to 8GB of LPDDR5 RAM. It’s a pretty basic card, but unlike the previous Fire series, Alexa tablet owners have immediate access to Google services, including the Google Play Store.

Again, Amazon leads the way in terms of value here, and if you can deal with lock screen ads, you can get an Alexa 8 tablet for as little as $230. Maximize the options (including removing ads) and it nets you up to $320, well below half the starting price of an iPad Mini. Hell, if you want Amazon’s nanomatte display (although still with an LCD panel) on the Alexa 12 Pro tablet, it’ll only cost you $680 — still less than a new OLED iPad Mini, let alone one with nano-textured glass.

If you’re really looking for that look and feel of paper on 8 inches of glass, the good news is you can get it for a lot less than the $899 Apple wants to charge you. The bad news is that you will almost certainly need to have cell service.

TCL is known for its NXTPAPER series of phones and tablets that feature what it calls nano-etched glass for that matte feel and glare-mitigating effect. They also have a dedicated monochrome switcher that turns their color LCD screens into a Kindle experience, but on every facet of Android.

The Tab 8 NXTPAPER 5G is the smallest tablet TCL currently offers and costs $200 or less. But the only places you’ll be able to purchase it are AT&T, Straight Talk, Total Wireless, and Verizon, and yes, you need a service plan to activate it on the device. It can be an add-on to your existing cell phone plan starting at just $10 per month or a standalone plan costing a minimum of $50. You can get a TCL NXTPAPER 11 Gen 2 for about the same price without these conditions, but of course you gain a lot of size in the process.

As mentioned above, we selected tablets that were close in size to the iPad Mini – we used the term “8-inch class”, but the iPad Mini’s screen spans 8.5 inches while our Android preferences vary between 8.7 and 9.06 inches – and were commercially available in the United States at the time of this writing. We also made a point of highlighting products with micro-etched glass treatments when they were offered, a feature highly touted by readers.

It should be noted that Chinese manufacturers are generally more willing to integrate OLED screens in this size category: Huawei has its MatePad Mini; the Oppo Pad Mini is also of a similar specification; even Lenovo sells an “Ultimate” version of the Legion Pad Gen 5 to domestic customers. All come with micro-etched glass and, in Huawei’s case, this is a standard feature not requiring an upgrade or special edition product purchase. RedMagic is a spin-off of the Chinese company ZTE which sells its products worldwide.

OLED display technology may be a tablet spec worth paying more for than LCD, but the fact remains that you’ll have a much easier time finding it on a tablet with a 10-inch or larger screen.