Lenovo Tab M9 9" TB310FU Arctic Gray 2024

The screen on this thing is rough, landing in the bottom 7th percentile of all tablets we've tested. The MediaTek Helio G80 CPU is surprisingly capable for the price, but it's wasted on a 1340x800 display. Grab it only if you find it for under $200 and need a lightweight media player for travel.

The Helio G80 is the star of this otherwise dim show. For a tablet in this price bracket, the octa-core chip and ARM Mali-G52 GPU deliver surprisingly snappy performance in light apps. We're talking about an 85th percentile CPU score, which means it outruns most budget competition. Scrolling through menus and launching streaming apps feels fine. But don't get too excited. That 4GB of RAM is a hard ceiling. Keep more than a couple of browser tabs open and you'll feel the device hitching as it swaps to that slow eMMC storage.

Gaming is a mixed bag. The GPU sits in the 81st percentile, so casual 2D titles and older games run without much fuss. But the 1340x800 screen at 60Hz isn't doing you any favors. You're not getting a sharp or smooth visual experience. For reading ebooks or watching YouTube, the performance is adequate. Just don't expect it to handle anything beyond one app at a time gracefully.

Stacked against the competition, the Tab M9 only makes sense at its absolute lowest price. The Samsung Galaxy Tab S10 FE runs circles around it with a vastly superior screen and more RAM, making it a much better pick for anyone who wants to read or browse the web comfortably. The Xiaomi Pad 6 also offers a dramatically sharper display and faster storage for not much more money. And then there's the Apple iPad Air M3, which is in a completely different universe of performance and screen quality. The only real edge the Lenovo has is its weight, it's a feather compared to those larger slates. If portability is your only priority and you can find it for under $200, it has a niche. Otherwise, save up for a better screen.

Pricing for this model is all over the map, with a staggering $3,514 spread across vendors. That's less a price range and more a sign that some sellers have lost their minds. At the low end around $182, it's a reasonable impulse buy for a kid's media player or a secondary travel screen. But if you're seeing it listed anywhere near the upper end of that range, run. You're stepping into iPad territory for a tablet that can barely handle split-screen apps. Stick to the listings closer to the $180 mark if you're set on this model.

The Lenovo Tab M9 lands in a weird spot. Its MediaTek Helio G80 chip actually punches above its weight, sitting in the 85th percentile for CPU performance among tablets in our database. That's a genuine surprise for a budget slate. But the rest of the spec sheet tells a different story. The 9-inch 1340x800 LCD screen is a real letdown, ranking in the bottom 7th percentile. You'll notice the low resolution the moment you look at text or anything with fine detail.

At 345 grams, it's light enough to toss in a bag and forget about, and the 5100 mAh battery should get you through a few movies on a flight. But with 4GB of LPDDR4X RAM and 64GB of sluggish eMMC storage, both hovering around the 30th percentile, this thing will choke if you try to multitask. It's a single-purpose device, and that purpose is basic media consumption on the cheap.

Anyone who cares about screen quality should look elsewhere immediately. That 7th percentile display makes text fuzzy and videos lack detail. If you plan to use a tablet for reading, drawing, or any kind of productivity work, the 20.4 out of 100 productivity score tells you everything you need to know. This is also a bad fit if you like to multitask, the 4GB of RAM will have you staring at loading screens as apps constantly reload. Power users and anyone with a budget over $250 should skip this entirely.

The Lenovo Tab M9 is a one-trick pony, and that trick is being cheap and light. The Helio G80 processor is a pleasant surprise, but it's shackled to a dim, low-resolution screen that makes everything look soft. With only 4GB of RAM and slow storage, it's strictly a single-task device. If you need a disposable tablet for a kid to watch cartoons on a road trip and you can snag it for around $180, it'll do the job. For anything else, the screen alone is a dealbreaker.