LENOVO A10-70

For an inexpensive 10.1-inch tablet, the Lenovo A10 hits the mark on several aspects that many other budget tablets almost always miss. It has an IPS panel, sufficiently powerful SoC, large and bright glass-covered display, front and rear cameras, and a thin and attractive chassis.

At 1280 by 800 pixels, the A10-70’s screen is admittedly a bit of a throwback to the resolutions you’d see on a high end tablet two or three years ago. That said, and even though you’d usually only find that resolution on a low-end 7-inch tablet today, that doesn’t make it a bad screen.

The A10 is powered by a quad-core 1.3GHz MediaTek MTK8121 SoC with 1GB RAM. It's a relatively modest setup that performs on par with low-to-midrange tablets like the Galaxy Tab 4. That means mostly smooth performance for light tasks like Web browsing and casual gaming, but more intensive titles like Asphalt 8 cause the A10 to choke and sputter.

As we mentioned earlier, the A10 has Dolby-branded front-facing speakers on either side of the screen. The speakers get reasonably loud and sound pretty good for a budget device, although there is some distortion at max volume. And lows sound a little muddy.

The Lenovo A10's offerings are simple, but its smooth performance and solid speakers make it a compelling budget option.