What's The Best Tablet Size For Watching Movies?

A tablet is often one of the best screens you have in your house — especially if you have a budget-friendly TV or an older model. We also covered that there are tons of big-screen tablets out there, meaning you don't need to sacrifice screen size to get a nice handheld display for yourself. Easily one of the best uses for a tablet is to watch content, whether it's YouTube videos or a full-on movie. If that use case is your primary focus, then it's important to get the right size screen.

In general, tablets tend to come in a few key sizes that range from 11 inches all the way up to Samsung's giant 14.6-inch Tab Ultra line. There are smaller-screen tablets available, particularly the capable iPad mini, but with a screen not much larger than your phone, these devices are really about movie-watching second and reading and note-taking first. With the standard range in mind, how do you decide on your tablet movie machine? Let's get into a few factors to help you make this decision.

The advertised screen size for a tablet doesn't exactly paint the whole picture about the best display for movies. In general, movies follow a fairly wide aspect ratio these days, often employing a widescreen 16:9 or 1.85:1 format. This means that a tablet screen that's ideal for watching movies is one that's fairly wide. Samsung's Galaxy Tab S series, for example, uses 16:10 aspect ratios, which fits quite closely to the most standard movie format. Compare that with the 4:3 ratio that Apple's iPad and iPad Air lines use. This more square aspect ratio allows for better windowing and a more versatile experience for stacking windows or apps in other use-cases, but widescreen movies will look smaller because the extra vertical space will have black bars on either side.

With that in mind, the size and the shape of your display are important to consider when selecting. While the 11-inch base-level Galaxy Tab S would feel solid for watching movies, the 11-inch iPad equivalent may feel cramped. In general, bigger is probably better, but for iPads, it really is probably best to go with the larger iPad Pro to maximize the widescreen surface area.

One final consideration for screen size is how that affects device weight. If you have a large display, such as the Galaxy Tab S Ultra model, it will look huge and magnificent, but may feel heavy in your hands for long movie-watching sessions. So be sure to consider what would feel comfortable if you want to hold your tablet during a film.