Lenovo Tab Plus Gen 2 Review

Design and accessories

• Hefty design
• Kickstand on rear is versatile
• Limited bespoke accessories available

If you’re after the slimmest 12-inch tablet then look away now: the Lenovo Tab Plus Gen 2 isn’t it. You might think that the Plus is for “plus size”, but that’s not strictly true, as you are at least getting something for the extra heft.

As I mentioned in the introduction, this tablet has a substantial speaker system on the back powered by JBL. It’s bulky, swelling this 6.8mm tablet to 22.7mm, adding almost 16mm to the thickness. That’s why this tablet is designed for a specific type of user, because you buy it because of the speaker, not in spite of it.

The speaker is ringed by a stand that rotates, providing support in a number of different positions, ideal for propping it up on an aircraft tray table, on a desk or any other flat surface. Ironically, the worst way to try to use this tablet is flat on its back – if that’s what you want, get the Oppo Pad 5 instead.

The buttons for the Lenovo Tab Plus Gen 2 are on the back rather than squished into the edges, and I like that; they’re more distinct than the sliver of a button that a tablet normally offers. The rest of the body is an aluminium unibody and it feels nice and sturdy. It also has an IP52 rating.

Weighing in at 775g, it’s definitely heavy, but at the same time, it’s a tablet that fancies itself for entertainment and if you’re going to use the speakers and the stand, it’s worth the extra weight.

Finally, there’s USB-C for charging in the bottom right-hand corner of the tablet. It’s an unusual position, but once you’ve stood the tablet up it makes perfect sense, because you can plug it in and the cable isn’t dangling out the side of it.

I tried the Lenovo Sleeve Suite (a case) that accommodates the bump nicely. It also contains a loop for the pen (which I didn’t try). Unlike some tablets, there are no contact points for a keyboard connection, with Lenovo suggesting you use a universal Bluetooth keyboard instead.

I didn’t test it with a keyboard, but in my experience, Bluetooth keyboards don’t offer an experience as good as tablets with a keyboard connected using pogo pins. If it’s work that you want a tablet for, perhaps an Idea Tab would be a better choice, although Lenovo’s Multi-Device Wireless Keyboard (sold separately) supports USB-C connections too.

Screen

• 12.1-inch IGZO IPS LCD screen
• 2560 x 1600 pixels, 120Hz
• 800 nits peak brightness
• 9-unit speaker system

There’s a 12.1-inch screen on the Lenovo Tab Plus Gen 2 with bezels about 7mm wide, which I don’t find too offensive. It’s an IPS LCD display with an IGZO backplane, which is designed to make it more efficient. With a 2560 x 1600 pixel resolution, it has a pixel density of 255ppi, which is average for this type of tablet.

That means there’s plenty of detail and I found the visuals to be nice and rich, with plenty of colour saturation. I used the Vibrant mode by default as I prefer the cooler and more contrasty results over the standard mode.

There’s support for refresh rates up to 120Hz, which is typical in Android tablets in this price bracket, while the 800 nits in high brightness mode is commendable. This provides some ability to cut through reflections, but although Lenovo says this tablet has an antireflective coating, reflections are its biggest problem.

Sit in a bright room or next to a window on a sunny day and in dark scenes, the screen becomes a mirror. With Amazon now offering the Alexa Tablet Pro with a matte display for just a little more than Lenovo’s tablet, those wanting better reflection handling don’t have far to look.

Outside of reflections, this is a standard 16:10 tablet, great for streaming movies and TV content, with that built-in stand offering various angles and landscape or portrait orientation.

Although this is the screen section, let’s just take a moment to talk about that JBL speaker system. It houses four tweeters, three woofers and two passive radiators in a 43cc speaker box. It’s capable of 48W of stereo sound, with Dolby Atmos tuning for more immersive audio and a range of sound modes.

Watching Netflix, gaming and listening to Spotify, I found that this tablet to have impressive sound performance that’s richer and more detailed than other tablets, capable of appreciable volume. There’s also a Bluetooth speaker mode, so you can connect your phone to the tablet and just play through that JBL speaker, which is a fun option.

It’s not really a replacement for a Bluetooth speaker, and something like the UE Wonderboom easily sounds better, but it’s so much better than using your phone’s speakers. It’s easy to see how this could be a great tablet for a bedroom, offering a range of features.

Performance

• MediaTek Dimensity 7400
• 8GB RAM and up to 256GB storage
• Mid-range positioning

With the MediaTek Dimensity 7400 under the hood, this is a mid-range tablet, a step down from the positioning of Samsung’s latest Tab S12 tablets and sitting about the same level as Snapdragon 7s Gen 4 hardware.

It’s backed up with 8GB RAM, which is fairly modest, and either 128 or 256GB of storage – although there is a microSD card slot supporting up to 2TB of expansion. That’s a great addition, meaning that you’re not forced to pay through the nose for more storage if you happen to have a microSD card sitting around the house that you can reuse.

I found the performance of the Lenovo Tab Plus Gen 2 to be nice and smooth. It had no problem opening apps and switching between tasks. I consider this to be an entertainment tablet first and foremost, and as I said above, fire up Netflix and from the “ta-dum” onwards, things look and sound great.

I found browser pages to load quickly, with the space to get a full desktop view for a better experience, while documents and emails were easy enough to manage, although using the onscreen keyboard isn’t quite as slick as it would be if there was a proper docked keyboard.

To keep you connected there’s Wi-Fi 6, and I found the connection to be solid during the time I was testing the tablet, leaving me with few complaints. It’s not the fastest tablet you can buy, but it gives good performance for the price.

Lenovo offers basic face detection for unlocking, but there’s no fingerprint scanner. Using your face makes it easy to unlock when you look at the tablet, with the option to have it wake up and detect when it’s lifted, which becomes a natural action. After 4 hours, however, you’ll be prompted to plug in your password again, perhaps a reflection of the basic security that face unlocking offers.

Software

• Lenovo ZUI 18 on Android 16
• Lots of preinstalled apps
• Two OS updates, four years of security updates

Tablets haven’t been in the best place with Android software over the years. The launch of the Pixel Tablet was an indication that Google was taking larger formats more seriously, so I wonder what we’re supposed to think now that it’s been quietly discontinued. Some apps appear as “optimised for tablets” and some are “made for tablets”, many are just the same as the phone app but stretched.

The Lenovo Tab Plus Gen 2 was running Android 16 when I tested it, with the ZUI 18 interface. This means there’s a dock for apps on the home screen and when an app is open, there’s the option to run it split screen, or as a floating window. Many apps support this, but some do not, like Netflix. Netflix is full screen or nothing in the multitasking menu, ironically dropping into a floating window when you swipe away from it.

I found setup easy enough, although there’s an extensive section dedicated to recommending apps to install. I tried my hardest to avoid adding any bloat, but there were still more than 20 apps preinstalled at the end of the process that I didn’t want. It’s not unkind to say it’s a bloated experience, but you can settle down and uninstall a lot of those apps.

There’s also no sign of AI on this device, aside from the expected Gemini. Lenovo has been talking a lot about Qira, its latest AI personal assistant, and offers AI features across Motorola phones, but this tablet seems to have escaped that additional bloat.

I loaded up all my music and media apps, some of my favourite games and entertainment apps, and I found that everything ran well enough. Performing its core tasks to entertaining you, the Tab Plus Gen 2 is in a good position. But that leads me to a considerable negative: Lenovo only commits to two OS updates on the Tab Plus Gen 2, so that will take you to Android 18. Security updates cover you until 2030, according to Lenovo’s support documentation.

Cameras

• 13MP rear camera
• 8MP front camera
• Best left for video calls

As is typical for tablets, the camera offering is rather basic, with a single 13-megapixel camera on the rear and an 8-megapixel camera on the front. That’s not even a criticism: in the years I’ve been using tablets I’ve actively avoided taking photos with them because the experience is so unwieldy with poor results.

The rear camera is fine for ad hoc capture of things like documents in a pinch, or if you happen to have your tablet to hand when you need to snap something. But it’s not designed to compete with the performance of your phone, and neither will it.

The autofocus rear camera is fine in daylight conditions, although the HDR effect can produce some strange results with plenty of fringing around fine lines, while there’s mottling and softening in even the slightest hint of a shadow. In low light, noise and softening are obvious around the edges of the frame.

The front camera sits in the bezel of the long edge, ideally placed for video calling, which is what it’s best left for. It’s a fixed focus camera, designed for those sitting in front of the tablet, and if you’re further away, then you’ll just be blurred. There are no fancy features here, and like the main camera, even the slightest dip in ambient light leads to noise.

So, the cameras aren’t good, but that’s not a problem: it’s a tablet, and it will be fine for a Google Meet video call, but don’t use it for anything else.

Battery life

• 10,200mAh battery
• 45W fast charging
• Excellent endurance

The 10,200mAh battery is generous, aligning with the expected capacity for premium tablets. The result is that the Lenovo Tab Plus Gen 2 offers great endurance. Regularly using the tablet, I found it to give me multiple days of use, although things like screen brightness and the volume of those speakers will make a difference.

Watching Netflix for an hour saw the tablet get through 9% charge, although bear in mind that the speaker has the potential to use plenty of battery at higher volumes. A 30-minute session on Call of Duty Mobile (on lower settings) only ate through 7% of the charge. As a Bluetooth speaker, it will last for more than two days on a single charge.

That’s backed by 45W wired charging. I tested it using a 100W Anker Prime charger, which delivered that 45W charge, topping up the tablet by 22% in 15 minutes and 43% in 30 minutes. That sees the tablet at 50% in 38 minutes and at 100% in 93 minutes.

That’s great performance for a tablet that’s mostly aimed at entertainment, with the advantage of significant endurance when it comes to streaming movies.

Should you buy it?