4 Powerful Android Tablets To Buy Instead Of The New OLED iPad Mini

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Apple's iPads dominate the tablet scene for many reasons, and the new OLED iPad Mini could be one of them. But beyond a brighter, punchier display and a few under-the-screen upgrades, you might find it difficult to justify spending $699 for an ultra-portable, high-quality slab.

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

That said, new Android releases are gradually coming into the spotlight that fit this bill, each with their own package of pros and cons against the new iPad Mini. Some, like the iQOO Pad Pro and Ultra, are and will always be exclusive to China. But we'll go through some viable alternatives that you can obtain in the U.S., including some that aren't exactly as fancy, but are still solid options in the tiny tablet space.

Enthusiasts argue that RedMagic makes the best Android phones for gaming with bleeding-edge specs, multi-factor cooling systems that rival those in PCs, and embedded hardware controls that integrate into graphics-intensive titles like Wuthering Waves or Genshin Impact. The Chinese brand also has Android tablets in its Astra series that push the limits on what a small slab can do.

The Astra 2 features a 9.06-inch OLED display with 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 juice up the 8,300mAh dual-cell battery or power the device directly to conserve battery health.

It also boasts a 12-part cooling system which includes a 20,000 RPM fan, copper foils and graphene layers around key components, and vapor-and liquid-cooling circuits that activate RGB lighting fixtures when in use. The base configuration features 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 PC industry's leading manufacturer, known for producing laptops that owners say last for many years, but it does decent volume with a diversified spread of Android tablets as well. One such example that might fit your needs for a powerful, compact tablet is the Legion Tab Gen 5 — yes, it's another gaming tablet.

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

Another trade-off is in the power department, with Lenovo going for a larger battery than RedMagic at 9,000mAh, but with slightly slower 68-watt charging. 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 OLED iPad Mini.

Amazon has made waves with a new series of Alexa Tablets. These aren't the cheap Fire tablets you knew that went on sale at $250 for a six-pack, but still provide a good bargain against Apple's current offerings. They aren't as powerful as the first two tablets we've talked about, but their refined experiences clearly show the influence that the company's legendary product lead, Panos Panay (formerly of Microsoft), has 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 grab attention. Specifically, it's got an 8.7-inch 800p display, a MediaTek Kompanio 540 chipset, and up to 8GB of LPDDR5 RAM. It's quite the basic board, but unlike with the prior Fire series, Alexa Tablet owners have out-of-the-box access to Google services including the Google Play Store.

Again, Amazon is leading on value here, and if you can deal with lockscreen ads, you can pick up an Alexa Tablet 8 for as low as $230. Max out the options (including the removal of ads) and that takes you up to $320, or well below half the starting price of an iPad Mini. Heck, if you want Amazon's nanomatte display (albeit still with an LCD panel) on the Alexa Tablet 12 Pro, that'll only cost you $680 — still less than a new OLED iPad Mini, much less one with nano-texture glass.

If you're really going after that paper-like look and feel on 8 inches of glass, the good news is that you can get it for way less than the $899 Apple wants to charge you. The bad news is that you'll almost certainly have to get cellular service with it.

TCL is known for its NXTPAPER series of phones and tablets that feature what it calls nano-etched glass for that matte sensation and glare-dulling effect. They also have a dedicated monochrome switch that turns their color LCDs into a Kindle experience, but right across 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 buy it from are AT&T, Straight Talk, Total Wireless, and Verizon, and yes, you do need a service plan to activate on the device. This can be an add-on to your existing cellphone plan starting as low as $10 a month or a standalone plan costing $50 at minimum. You can get a TCL NXTPAPER 11 Gen 2 for about the same price without those strings attached, but of course, you gain a lot of size in the process.

As mentioned above, we've selected tablets that were proximate 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 range between 8.7 and 9.06 inches — and were commercially available in the U.S. as of this writing. We were also keen to point out products with micro-etched glass treatments when offered, a highly vaunted feature for readers.

We should note that Chinese manufacturers have been more eager on the whole about incorporating OLED displays into this size category: Huawei has its MatePad Mini; the Oppo Pad Mini is also similar specced; even Lenovo sells an "Ultimate" version of the Legion Pad Gen 5 to domestic customers. All of them come with micro-etched glass, and in Huawei's case, it's a standard feature not requiring an upgrade purchase or special edition product. RedMagic happens to be a spin-off of Chinese firm ZTE that sells its wares globally.

OLED display technology might be a tablet spec worth paying more for over 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.