The Best Tablet Under 300 for Buyers on Budget

If you were to consider the premium end of tablet market, the best tablet under 300 is not the cream of the crop.

Most premium-grade tablets don’t cost less this price tag.

However, if you were to talk of mid-level pricing, the devices listed here don’t cut any corners like their budget brothers.

Their everyday software/hardware performance, as well as their design, is only comparable to high-end models offer.

In the list are also older flagship makes that, despite operating on a slightly dated hardware and OS, are still great choices for people like artists considering that their prices have dropped a lot since their first release.

The list also includes some well known Apple brands.

While they offer average specs relative to their Android counterparts, they offer a lot more in access to Apple Store and premium designs at affordable prices.

If you want something that falls between high-end powerhouses and the dirt-cheap tablets, we have included quite a number of many mid-range models that you can choose from.

With that said, here’s our roundup of some of the best tablets that you can buy for less than $300.

Best Tablets under $300 Reviews

1. Samsung Galaxy Tab A SM-T350 8-Inch

Combining impressive performance, great battery life, sharp screen, and decent build quality, Samsung appears to have hit the jackpot with Galaxy Tab A T580.

Aluminum cases are the preserve of the higher-priced devices.

So it’s not a big surprise that Tab A’s design is populated by plastic cases.

Nonetheless, the tablet still benefits a lot from Samsung’s usual impressive ergonomics and good finishes.

Boasting a resolution of 1920 x 1200, its display is outstandingly crisp and it’s really a pleasant experience to play multimedia content.

In addition, the two speakers located at the bottom of this tablet give you more than satisfactory level of music, games and video. The feel-good factor extends to the software, which incorporates a relatively newer Android version, v6.0 Marshmallow.

To great relief, Samsung hasn’t flooded the gadget with too many apps, but instead has adopted a fairly lightweight TouchWiz version that affects the performance positively and keeps things tidy.

Vibrant, High-Resolution Display
Thanks to its bright backlighting and high-resolution screen, the Tab A avails your digital content in vivid and lifelike detail.

You are guaranteed of crisp and vibrant images whether you just want to catch up on latest news or watch movies.

Expandable Memory
It comes with a micro SD card slot which basically allows you to expand the memory by up to 200 GB additional. It includes 3 microSD slots which mean more storage space for movies, songs and your photos.

Long-Lasting Battery
With a long-battery life of nearly 13 hours on a single charge, the Samsung Galaxy Tab A enables you to enjoy your apps and activities for long without needing a recharge for the period.

A Powerful Processor
Its octa-core processor guarantees efficient and responsive performance, and lets you effortlessly toggle between numerous programs without any lag.

Why should you buy it?

While the Samsung Galaxy Tab isn’t exactly the most outstanding tablet pc in terms of beauty and speed, it offers a smooth performance as well as user-friendly experience, all at a great price.

Its battery life of 13 hours means you can go about your duties for the whole day without worrying about charging your tablet. It is a great device at a great price.

2. Apple iPad Air

iPad Air is a premium tablet from Apple. It’s packed inside a beautiful metallic unibody. And it offers a perfectly balanced performance.

While this may not be easily proved by the specs on paper, the actual performance of games and apps on this tablet far surpasses that of many Android tablets under 300 that we have reviewed in the same price category.

This tablet runs on Apple’s A7 chip, which is impressive for handling gaming, powerful apps and video and photo editing.

All this is supported by a 1 GB RAM, which manages to keep games and apps running on the background so that you can effortlessly switch between them simultaneously.

Design
The iPad Air has a completely new look, borrowing heavily from the iPod Touch.

The result is a high-end tablet that is very slim.

The iPad Mini introduced a fresh new design, taking cues from the iPod Touch to create a high-end tablet in an impossibly slender form factor.

You could think of the iPad Air as a 20 percent scaled-up version of the Mini, because the two tablets sport nearly identical styling details.

Display
While the display on this tablet does not represent anything overly new, it’s still amazing.

The iPad Air incorporates some clever technology to ensure it does not drain power fast.

This not only helps mitigate the overall battery pains but also makes sure that users don’t see another instance of ultra-warm tablets that characterize the tablets of yesteryears.

But in actuality, things look extremely nice indeed, with the retina Standard already an important part of Apple’s full-size tablets for years now.

Messaging
While it’s not easy to find contacts of the people you want, the fact is that messaging on iPad Air offers a much better experience than you can imagine.

It features an iMessage and an impressive built-in email app, not to mention the plethora of other chat apps that you can download from the App Store.

Why should you buy it?

If you want to buy a large tablet for less than $300 from the current market, the iPad Air is the machine for you.

The tablet features a stunning design, excellent suite of apps and powerful innards.

As you will find, it offers the closest thing to tablet perfection.

3. Apple iPad Mini 2 Wi-Fi Tablet

The iPad Mini 2 doesn’t disappoint with regard to performance, design and display quality.

This is the second 8 inch tablet from Apple, and it packs an array of features including Apple’s trademark Retina display and improved specs.

Contrary to the original iPad Mini, which was basically a scaled-down version of iPad 2, the latest Mini is just as good as the full-size iPad Air.

Build and Design
The iPad Mini, in Apple tradition, is a beautiful device.

It is compact, slim and also lightweight. Its measurement is 7.87 x 5.3 x 0.29 inches, and it weighs just 0.73 pounds.

Although it is a good tablet laptop for the price on this list, its weight increases a little bit to .75 pounds for those on cellular model, and this enables users to take advantage of 3G and 4G capabilities.

Display
It’s not easy to ignore the imposing 2048 x 1536 display that the iPad Mini features, which packs a massive 326 pixels per inch (ppi) into the 7.9 inches.

This is an improvement from the 163 ppi available in the first generation iPad mini.

Competing products like Amazon Kindle Fire HDX and Google Nexus 7, have comparatively smaller screens, which is at 7 inches.

Camera
For Skype and FaceTime sessions the tablet’s front-facing 1.2 mega pixel camera will more than suffice. Its 5MP rear-facing camera, on the other hand, offers decent photographs.

The truth however is that most people already enjoy more mega pixels in their phones but the 5MP camera will work just fine.

Software
If you have multiple Apple devices, be prepared to take advantage of synchronicity between all your devices.

With the ability to download apps that are compatible with iPad and iPhone and iCloud, keeping your devices within an Apple environment enables you to start where you left on any device.

Battery Life
Apples phones and tablets are known for their unique ability to maintain impressively long charge. The tablet can get you throughout the day on a single charge. This same tradition is inherited by the iPad Mini 2.

Why should you buy it?

The iPad Mini 2 is a superb and large, yet lightweight tablet. If you already have other Apple devices, the apps on your gadgets will load right away on the iPad Mini 2 and operate as they do on your device.

Also, it is lightweight and has great display. It is definitely worth every penny.

4. Amazon Fire HD with 7-Inch Display

Expecting the Amazon Fire to win any awards is too much to ask. And at its economical price, it surely doesn’t have to.

This perfectly serviceable tablet is good not only for casual use but also consuming other Amazon content.

The price tag is reserved typically for the generic Android and Windows 8 tablets with keyboard, particularly those built for kids’ education.

Usually the tablets are terrible and are not worth a lot of bucks, much less the asking price.

Amazon wants to change this with its Fire tablet.

Build & Design

In terms of design, this tablet is very plain, although there is absolutely nothing wrong with this. This tablet laptop is available only in black color though there are several color cases that you can buy.

At first, it feels solid but its inexpensive plastic body easily gives when subjected to moderate pressure.

The tablet also feels somewhat clunky. With a thickness of 0.4 inches, it is quite thick for an 8” device, and also a little heavy at 0.7 pounds.

The Fire performed twice as good as iPad Air 2 when subjected to tumble tests and this is a good thing as given that the plastic case is not the most solid material.

Display

Although there is nothing magical about the Fire’s 7-inch display, it still manages to get the job done.

With a pixel per inch (PPI rating) of 170, it more than matches the pixel densities of most tablets.

It’s the best you can get for the price anyway. The reasonably bright screen and its nicely saturated colors helps the IPS display.

Buttons & Ports
This tablet keeps a simple button layout, something that makes it somewhat odd.

All the things save for microSD is to be found on the top part of the tablet.

These are the volume controls, headphone jack, power button, and microUSB port.

Why should you buy it?

Of all the tablets that go for far less than $300 mentioned here, none is half as cheap as the Amazon Fire.

If you are really hard on cash and want to have a tablet, there is no better option to start with than the Amazon Fire.

For the price, you get a tablet that, while not as impressive as other high-end products, gets the job done just.

5. Samsung Galaxy Tab A 9.7

Although somewhat bogged down by the low-resolution screen, Samsung Galaxy Tab’s sleek design and impressive battery life make it a good option for individuals looking to buy a full-sized budget-friendly Android tablet.

The Galaxy Tab A series from Samsung includes mid-size and full-size offerings for people interested in buying a mid-range android tablet.

This 9.7” is a larger model, and boasts a 1.2 GHz quad-core processor and 16GB of internal memory.

Performance
The 9.7 is powered by Android 5.02 Lollipop on 1.2 GHz quad-core Qualcomm 8016 processor, complete with 1.5 GB RAM.

These features give the tablet world class performance, which enables it to easily tackle day-to-day tasks.

Its low-res display is an advantage here, since the tablet contains fewer pixels to manage.

Battery
The tablet comes with a 6000mAh battery, which, according to Samsung, can give you up to 14 hours of non-stop video watching, or an equivalent of 15 hours surfing the web.

These are very impressive numbers for battery life, and can give users lots of time to do their stuffs.

Camera
Capturing pictures using rear-facing cameras can be useful sometimes, although the process can be a little burdensome on models such as this one.

Samsung appears to understand this very well, which is why the Galaxy Tab A 9.7’s 5 MP camera is a token effort.

It suffices when you want to take occasional shots when you don’t have a better camera, but pictures tend to be generally fuzzy unless taken in ideal conditions.

The tablet also features a front-facing camera of 2MP, which comes in handy especially for those who love video-chatting.

Why should you buy it?

The Samsung Galaxy Tab A 9.7 represents a decent value for money.

Not many full-size tablets exist for under $300, and Samsung were forced to make some compromises so as to avail it at that low price.

The good thing is that the result was a tablet that’s quite useful. For its price, I would say that this is really a steal.