Lenovo Tab M11 Review
A professional looking tablet on a budgetDisclaimer: Lenovo sent us a unit of the Tab M11 free of charge to review, but all thoughts and opinions expressed in this review are our own and were not discussed with the company prior to publishing.
If consistency is of any relevance in the tech world, Lenovo would be the face of it. Across the board of gadget products, the Chinese company has dominated the markets with affordable, well performing items that make users feel good about their purchases. Whether it’s a laptop, a PC, or even a phone, Lenovo has excelled in many categories over the years. Still, there are improvements and gains that can be progressed in the overall user experience. Does this all apply to the Lenovo Tab M11?
Retail Price: $199.99
Look and Feel
As an affordable tablet option, Lenovo has thoroughly explored this segment of the tablet market extensively. With other competitors encroaching this mid-size tablet field with attractive offerings, I was very interested to verify whether Lenovo was actually still competitive with their affordable tablet offerings.
The Tab M11 maintains a relatively clean slate appearance. It comes in a single shade of what the company calls Luna Grey with only a darkened strip riding vertically down the camera hump for any other color variation. Like essentially all of Lenovo’s other products, the M11 has an extremely professional appearance to its design. It’s simple, but clean looking. It’s almost just boring to an extent. In an internet age where every little design choice that deviates from the norm is scrutinized, the M11 plays it safe and that traditionally makes it more attractive to a wider range of buyers.
For a relatively inexpensive device, there is a satisfying touch to the tablet that doesn’t feel cheap. The M11 has an aluminum frame that wraps around a backside that is also constructed from a sheet of aluminum. It still has all the buttons and ports you need along the frame as the M11 gives users volume rockers on one end, a power button on the top of the frame, a micro-SD card slot, a USB-C plug that’s unfortunately only a 2.0, four loudspeakers split on two sides of the frame, and even a 3.5mm jack.
Manageable Performance
Let’s start with what in my opinion is the best feature about the M11, the display. No it doesn’t have an insanely high display resolution or refresh rate, but after some time with it I found it to be quite satisfying to look at nonetheless. The M11 is nothing to scuff at though as it reps an 11-inch, 1920 x 1200p LCD panel that has good viewing angles and is sharp where it counts. Images and videos are clear, while the color palette is vivid on the right size screen. There’s a bit of a bezel around the screen, but I think 11 inches is the perfect size for a tablet to be comfortable to hold while still managing a good canvas for viewing. I’ve watched lots of YouTube and other streaming platforms on here and found it perfectly acceptable for the task.
The speakers were another blissfully pleasant experience here. At its peak, the audio is clean and doesn’t get distorted. It actually has the clarity and definition across the spectrum of frequencies behind the sound coming out of the four points that I don’t usually hear out of tablets, especially non-premium priced ones.
During the first few days, the M11 was extremely sluggish. Simple swipes through Android 14’s Lenovo skinned interface would lag or stutter to the point where it was a nuisance to use the tablet. I got an OTA update about a week in and that seems to have relieved the device from its troubles. That’s kind of what we’re dealing with here on most Lenovo hardware. There’s a range of bloatware pre-installed that is easy enough to remove, but the overall user experience is directly tied to software on these budget priced tablets. With a MediaTek Helio G88 processor, 4 GB or ram, and 128 GB of storage, the M11 isn’t a powerhouse by any means. What it does do is to utilize MediaTek’s aging octa-core CPU to at least leverage decent gaming performance.
I ran a slew of Android apps and games to the Alex gauntlet and I found the M11 to get passing marks. Once I got the OTA update, I really didn’t have much to complain about in terms of gameplay experiences. All of the Android games in my rotation ran smoothly with good frame rates without any issues. I didn’t get the quickest loading times from a modern device I’ve tested and there were plenty of hiccups when I pushed it with multitasking, but it was far from the worst tablet experience too. I think for this moment in time, the M11 still has enough power under it to handle the daily vigors of normal usage for most people out there. It just won’t be blazing fast and may require some patience when it shows signs of its true nature when multitasking.
Speaking of power, the Tab M11 has plenty of that in the battery power department. There’s a 7040 mAh battery behind the Lenovo tablet and I was impressed with it through and through. Unlike a mobile phone, a tablet is likely used on and off across a wider period of time. Standby preservation has to be good for a household tablet or else it loses an important distinguishing factor for people to want to pick it up instead of their smartphone.
The idling ability of this tablet is absolutely terrific. I was running some tests for this review and dropped the battery life to about 40% before going out of town for a trip. The M11 sat on my dresser for a week and it essentially didn’t lose much of any charge by the time I returned back to it. I mentioned earlier about my distaste for skinned Android models taking liberties with the software, but in this case, the aggressive background app management is a major benefit to the user experience.
While I didn’t have high expectations going into this review simply due to a preconceived notion based on the price tag, the Lenovo Tab M11 is a fine tablet that fits the segment of the market it's aiming for. From a material standpoint, buyers will be satisfied with the touch and feel to where they would feel like they received more than they paid for.
Plenty to Enjoy
The M11 plays it safe in looks, but it runs and powers reliably and competitively with the right expectations.
Final Thoughts
On the performance side of this, if you go into the purchase with an understanding that there are limitations to what the M11 can give you purely due to the MediaTek chipset. If you’re merely operating Android one app at a time, then the M11 should feel fresh enough to be an enjoyable time. Where it gets messy is when the OS is diluted with apps operating at the same time. Regardless, the Tab M11 offers enough entertainment value to still be a competitive tablet in today’s market.
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