Best Tablets Right Now in the UK and Europe (2026)

Start with what you will actually do with it. Drawing and note-taking push you towards stylus quality and screen texture; video and reading push you towards panel contrast and speaker count; real work pushes you towards memory, port speed and how good the software is at running two things at once. Then consider the accessories, because a keyboard and stylus can add most of the cost of the tablet again, and Samsung includes its pen where Apple does not. Finally, look at support length and the EU energy label, which has applied to slate tablets since 20 June 2025 and shows repairability and battery endurance on the box.

The iPad Pro (M5) was announced on 15 October 2025 and released a week later, and it remains the most capable tablet sold anywhere. The tandem OLED Ultra Retina XDR panel runs ProMotion from 10Hz to 120Hz with a two-million-to-one contrast ratio and dims to a single nit, the M5 chip brings a 10-core GPU with hardware ray tracing and 153GB/s of memory bandwidth, and it is the thinnest product Apple has ever made. Four speakers, Thunderbolt data speeds, a nano-texture glass option on 1TB and 2TB models, and fast charging to about half in 30 minutes. It is also eye-watering.

The iPad Air (M4) landed on 11 March 2026 and quietly became the sensible answer. Apple put 12GB of unified memory in every configuration, including the 128GB base model, and fitted the M4 chip it was using in the Pro a year earlier, along with its own N1 radio for Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 and the C1X modem in cellular versions. It supports the Apple Pencil Pro and the Magic Keyboard, comes in 11-inch and 13-inch sizes, and runs iPadOS 26 with its optional windowing system. You give up the OLED panel, Thunderbolt, Face ID and two of the four speakers.

Samsung unveiled the line on 4 September 2025 and released it on 19 September, dropping the 12.4-inch Plus and keeping two sizes. The Samsung Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra is 5.1mm thick with a 1848x2960 Dynamic AMOLED 2X panel at 120Hz, now up to 1,600 nits, plus an anti-reflective coating; the Samsung Galaxy Tab S11 is 5.5mm with a 1600x2560 panel at the same brightness. Both run a MediaTek Dimensity 9400+ on a 3nm process, take microSD cards, ship with a redesigned hexagonal S Pen in the box, and carry seven years of Android updates. That last point is why they age well.

Xiaomi took its tablets global alongside the Xiaomi 17 and 17 Ultra, and they are now stocked properly in the UK. The Xiaomi Pad 8 is an 11.2-inch 3:2 tablet running at 144Hz with a Snapdragon 8s Gen 4, four speakers with Dolby Atmos, a 9,200mAh battery with 45W charging, and an aluminium body 5.8mm thick at around 485g. The Xiaomi Pad 8 Pro steps up to a Snapdragon 8 Elite with 8GB or 12GB of RAM and up to 512GB of storage plus a larger battery. Neither has Apple's app catalogue, but for films and browsing the maths is compelling.

Skip the iPad Air (M4) if you already own an iPad Air (M3), because the display, cameras, chassis, speakers and accessories are identical and only the chip, memory and radios changed. Skip the iPad Pro (M5) unless you genuinely need Thunderbolt transfer speeds or a reference-grade panel, since the iPad Air does most of the same work. Skip any Android tablet if your household is otherwise entirely Apple, because handoff between devices is still where Apple wins hardest. And if you want a bargain, wait for the Samsung Galaxy Tab S11 to be discounted, since it is now a year old and reliably drops.