7 Cheap Android Tablets That Fit In The Palm Of Your Hand

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One of the main reasons people buy a tablet even though they already have a smartphone is increased screen size. Tablets are generally better for watching movies, productivity work, and a more immersive gaming experience. This doesn't mean that bigger is always better, though. Sometimes, you want an Android device with a larger screen than your phone, but one that you can still hold comfortably in the palm of your hand.

That's where mini tablets come in, and there are quite a few on the market — many of them still come with headphone jacks, another advantage they have over many phones. The iPad Mini immediately comes to mind, but not everyone is comfortable paying $500 for something with a primary use of watching YouTube or completing light daily tasks. Fortunately, there are a ton of cheap and budget-friendly Android tablets that can fit in your hand, often being as small as just seven inches (measured diagonally across the screen) and as inexpensive as just $50.

These cheap iPad alternatives won't match the iPad in computing power, but they're perfectly fine for less intensive use cases. We've chosen a variety of mini tablets ranging in price from $50 to $200 for those looking for a light screen to surf the web, watch videos, and do other daily activities and office work.

Xiaomi is known for its high-spec and budget-friendly devices, and the Xiaomi Redmi Pad SE 8.7-inch portable mini tablet is their best Android tablet in our budget range that comes in this size. The tablet features a 1340 x 800 HD display resolution with a 90-hertz refresh rate — specs you don't usually find on similarly priced mini tablets. It uses HyperOS as its operating system, which is based on Android 14.

The device is packed with a powerful 6,650 milliampere-hour (mAh) battery that supports 18-watt fast charging and is tested to last around 15 hours on average by various independent reviewers. You get 4 gigabytes (GB) of RAM with a choice of either 64 GB or 128 GB storage or 6 GB RAM with 128 GB storage — expandable up to two terabytes (TB) using a microSD card.

Even with a slightly older MediaTek Helio G85 processor, this tablet can handle even slightly heavy games ... provided you're running them on the lowest graphics settings. The eight-megapixel rear camera and five-megapixel front-facing camera aren't anything remarkable, but they're better than those on most similarly priced Android tablets. If you're looking for a mini tablet that is good for gaming on lowered graphics or browsing, the Xiaomi Redmi Pad SE is worth a look. Available on Amazon for $180, the tablet has earned a 4.3-star rating from over 40 reviews.

The Galaxy Tab A11 is the successor to Samsung's Tab A9, and it's an easy-to-carry companion with specifications similar to the Redmi Pad SE 8.7. It features an 8.7-inch display with a 1340 x 800-pixel resolution. The device runs on Android 15 and follows Samsung's commitment of up to seven major upgrades.

This Android tablet comes with four GB of RAM and 64 GB of storage, along with a microSD card slot to expand the storage up to two TB, and is equipped with a 5,100 mAh battery – weaker than the 6,650 mAh one Xiaomi offers in its Redmi Pad SE. The hardware includes a MediaTek Helio G99 processor with a 90-hertz refresh rate, making it quite smooth in performance. It's also equipped with an eight-megapixel main camera and a five-megapixel selfie camera, and a headphone jack.

Priced at around $130, the Galaxy Tab A11 can be found on Amazon with a 4.4 rating after more than 100 reviews. This mini tablet can generally handle multitasking and light games smoothly. However, some users are bothered by the slow 15-watt charging limit, though the battery compensates with an average 12-16 hours of runtime, depending on screen brightness and the type of apps being run. As long as you plan ahead and charge it before heading out, this device is a great mini companion for travel, long streaming sessions, or web browsing. The Galaxy Tab A11 is not to be confused with the Galaxy Tab A11+, though, which has a much larger 11-inch display, with upgraded RAM and storage ... and a $240 price tag on Amazon.

As one of the world's largest PC manufacturers, Lenovo has always offered a variety of devices to fit every user's needs. A year after the launch of the Lenovo Tab M11, the company released a budget-friendly compact 8.7-inch tablet — the Lenovo Tab One.

This tablet features a 1340 x 800 display resolution similar to others on the list, as well as four GB of RAM, with a choice of either 64 GB or 128 GB of storage – expandable up to one TB via a microSD card. When it comes to cameras, the eight-megapixel rear camera is serviceable for basic shots in good lighting. However, the two-megapixel front-facing camera is not that great and weaker than most of the other tabs mentioned here. This device runs the Android 14 OS with a MediaTek Helio G85 processor, the same one found in the Xiaomi Redmi Pad SE. Like the iPlay 60 Mini Turbo, however, it also only has a 60-hertz refresh rate.

You can grab the Lenovo Tab One from Amazon for just $135 — nearly $200 cheaper than the more premium Lenovo Tab Plus — where it holds a 4.2-star rating across more than 500 reviews. The tablet has the same 5,100 mAh battery as the one in the Redmi Pad SE 8.7, but with faster 20-watt wired charging. Battery tests indicate that the tab can last over eight hours during continuous YouTube streaming at maximum brightness. Like most affordable mini tablets, this one isn't that great for heavy gaming, but works perfectly fine for most basic tasks.

At just eight inches, the Amazon Fire HD 8 Tablet is on the smaller side of tablets, but that makes it a good fit here. It has a resolution of 1280 x 800 — very slightly lower than the higher-end tablets on this list — and only a 60-hertz display. The tablet runs Amazon's Fire OS, which doesn't natively support the Google Play Store and its wide variety of apps — though there are still many great free apps for your Fire HD Tab. 

The Fire HD 8 is powered by an entry-level MediaTek processor that's good enough for web surfing, watching videos, and even playing light games, but ultimately not built to handle multitasking and heavy processing. When it comes to battery life, testing shows the HD 8 can get around 10–13 hours of runtime on average.

The Fire HD 8, which ships with three GB RAM and 32 GB of ROM, can be found on Amazon for just $100. The device has a 4.5-star rating in over 9,500 reviews, and you can pay $30 more to upgrade to four GB RAM and 64 GB of internal storage — both of which can further be expanded with a microSD card. Since the tablet is inexpensive, it's not surprising that there are a few areas where it lacks. The cameras are incredibly disappointing here, even for a budget Android tablet, but you generally don't buy a tab for its camera. The 15-watt max wired charging is also quite slow. The tab additionally comes with ads on the lock screen, though you can pay to have them removed. Still, since most budget buyers looking for a mini tablet aren't focused on heavy gaming or high-quality photos, it remains a solid choice, especially for its price point.

The Tab A11 isn't your only option if you want a budget-friendly mini tablet from Samsung. Released two years earlier than the Galaxy Tab A11, the A9 is its direct predecessor. It has the same 8.7-inch display with 1340 x 800 resolution and is equipped with four gigabytes of RAM and 64 gigabytes of storage that is expandable up to one terabyte via microSD. Both devices use the same MediaTek Helio G99 processor, and both come with Samsung's promise of seven years of OS updates, which means either tab can update to One UI 8.5. The 5,100 mAh battery and 15-watt wired charging capability are the same across both models, as well as the tested battery life of 12 hours of runtime.

As far as differences go, the A9 doesn't have the same 90-hertz refresh rate as the A11. It also features a less stunning two-megapixel front camera, whereas the A11 offers a five-megapixel model. The other difference is the price. On paper, the A9 is actually more expensive than the A11 — you can grab the Galaxy Tab A9 from Amazon for $165, where it has a 4.5 rating from over 1,400 reviews. The tab probably isn't worth it new, as the A11 is the direct replacement and likely a better buy at this point. 

However, if you want a cheaper Samsung tablet and don't particularly care about the higher refresh rate and better front camera the A11 offers, you can often find the Samsung Galaxy A9 for cheaper on the secondary market, since it's an older model. For example, the A9 often shows up for around $100 on eBay, compared to A11 models checking in near the Amazon price of $130.

Years before the launch of the Lenovo Tab One, Lenovo introduced another, slightly smaller mini tablet — the Lenovo Tab M8. There are multiple generations of this tab, all improving slightly on their predecessors, but they all have a few things in common. They're all eight inches, for example, and have 1280 x 800-pixel resolutions. They also have lackluster cameras, like many of the cheaper tablets on this list.

A 32-gigabyte second-generation Tab M8 HD is available on Amazon for $120 and is rated 4.3 stars among more than 6,000 reviews. Meanwhile, a newer Lenovo Tab M8 HD 4th Gen tablet can cost you around $200, also on Amazon with 32 GB storage, this time with 4.1 stars in a little over 900 reviews. The 4th gen version is much more powerful and has a sleeker design, but ultimately doesn't review quite as well as either the Gen 2 or the larger Tab One.

However, if you want a slightly smaller Lenovo tablet than the Tab One and don't need a super fast experience, the 2021 2nd Gen M8 can function fine, despite its Helio A22 processor and Android 9 operating system. Alternatively, you can choose to get either generation of the M8 second-hand from eBay or Facebook Marketplace, where they're commonly sold for as low as $50, giving them an edge over the Tab One. The 5,000 mAh battery on either mini tablet also lasts a fairly long time for their price, and while the Gen 2 variant isn't up for gaming, its Gen 4 successor can run smaller games at the lowest graphics.

Another affordable mini tablet by Amazon is the Fire 7 Tablet, which is half the price of the Fire HD 8 and an inch smaller, with a display of just seven inches — making it the smallest tablet on this list. The resolution of 1024 x 600 pixels is not as good as the other tablets mentioned here, but that's a tradeoff for the low price point, as the Fire 7 is the cheapest device in this lineup.

This compact tablet is packed with 2 GB of RAM and a choice of 16 GB or 32 GB of storage, expandable up to a terabyte via microSD (like most of the tablets mentioned in this list). It runs Fire OS, and therefore, Google Play Store is not natively supported (though you could sideload it if you really wanted to). It is powered by a Mediatek MT8168V processor, which is slightly slower than the one found in the Fire HD 8 Tablet.

As for the battery, Amazon claims it will last up to 10 hours, and can be charged by a five-watt adapter, which makes it inferior to the already slow 15-watt maximum charging the Fire HD 8 offers. According to reviews, the battery can last around nine hours or more on average, so Amazon's specs aren't far off. A like-new Amazon Fire 7 Tablet can be found on Amazon for just $50 with over 2,000 reviews and a 4.3-star rating, and you can likely find even cheaper ones on sites like eBay. While the processor and software certainly can't compete with pricier devices, it easily handles simple everyday tasks, making it a great, low-cost secondary device for browsing, watching videos, or giving to your kids.

There are several good small tablets available for purchase, but we've chosen the ones that you can reliably benefit the most from. For size, we've chosen those between seven and nine inches, as any bigger starts to move out of mini territory and would be uncomfortable to hold for long periods of time. We've also chosen budget-friendly options that are cheaper than $200. 

To ensure the quality of these mini tabs, each tablet on this list is widely recommended in online forums, by other testers, and in user ratings. Specifically, each one has a consumer rating of 4.2 stars or above (on a five-star scale) on Amazon or an equivalent retailer.