Lenovo Tab P11 Pro Gen 2 Tablet Review

About the Lenovo Tab P11 Pro Gen 2

Here are the specs on the tablet we tested (model TB132FU):

• Processor: MediaTek Kompanio 1300
• Graphics: Mali-G77 MC9
• Memory: 6GB
• Storage: 128GB
• Display: 11.2-inch, 2500 x 1536, OLED
• Battery: 8,000mAh
• Camera: 8 MP Front; 13 MP Rear
• Ports: 1x USB-C 2.0, headphone port
• Wireless: 802.11ac, Bluetooth 5.1
• Weight: 1.02 pounds
• Dimensions: 6.56 x 10.38 x 0.26 inches
• Warranty: 1-year warranty

The Lenovo Tab P11 Pro Gen 2 comes in one color and two configurations: The One has 4GB of memory, and a slightly more expensive iteration (which we tested) bumps that up to 6GB. That's the only difference between the two "storm grey" colored tablets.

What we like

Beautiful OLED display

Once you've played with the Lenovo's Tab P11 Pro Gen 2’s OLED display, you won't want to go back to using a tablet without one. That's just how much we enjoyed the vivid colors, deep black levels, and Dolby Vision/HDR10+ support on this mid-range tablet.

Photos, movies, and games pop as a result of the incredible contrast, especially if you happen to have a non-OLED tablet to directly compare the Tab P11 Pro Gen 2 against. And I didn't find the tablet's colors to be overly saturated or otherwise problematic.

The tablet's screen runs at a 120Hz refresh rate, which makes it feel even smoother and more responsive for everyday use. You'll notice this most as you scroll through your various screens: 60Hz is fine and will save you some battery life (if you manually toggle the display setting), but 120Hz looks like digital butter.

We measured the tablet's maximum brightness at 460.28 nits (or cd/m2), a value that comes close to what you'd find on a typical iPad.

In real-world terms, it means that you can get a big, bright picture when you're trying to use the tablet in more challenging environments (like attempting to read its display in the midday sun). You'll probably want to enable the tablet's "Adaptive brightness" setting for everyday use, as it's almost too bright to view comfortably in a typical room when cranked to the max.

Our only issue with the Tab P11 Pro Gen 2's OLED display is that the tablet's size means you'll really have to stare at it straight-on, when using it in portrait orientation, to ensure that the top and bottom don't get a strange gray tint as a result of an off-center viewing angle.

This issue is only noticeable when something white—the background of a webpage, a game's title, or a part of an image—is at the extreme top or bottom of the tablet, and you'll probably get used to it. We weren't bothered by this issue nearly as much when using the tablet in landscape mode.

Pretty good for gaming

We had no issues playing through a number of games at their highest quality settings and frame rates on the Tab P11 Pro Gen 2. The tablet handled the graphically intensive Diablo Immortal just as well as Mindustry, Sky: Children of the Light, and Vampire Survivors. Our gameplay in more graphically intensive titles like Genshin Impact only faced an occasional stutter, and we probably wouldn't have even cared that much were we not specifically looking out for hiccups and glitches.

The Tab P11 Pro Gen 2's 120Hz OLED screen is a perfect fit for gaming, especially if your favorite titles can run at 120 frames per second. We fired up Mindustry and used its in-game options to limit our framerates to 30, 60, and 120 frames per second. The first was terrible to play and the second was absolutely passable, but our gameplay looked the best and felt the smoothest running at the full 120 frames per second. (If only our typical benchmark, Diablo Immortal, supported frame rates that high.)

On our synthetic benchmarks, the Tab P11 Pro Gen 2 performed well across 3DMark, GFXBench, and AnTuTu's GPU tests. Its scores were typically around 6-7 times faster than Lenovo's Tab M10 Plus 3rd Gen, a tablet that costs half as much for a large drop in performance. Not only is it quite underpowered by comparison, but the tablet won't even allow you to install more demanding games like Diablo Immortal. We had no such issues with the Tab P11 Pro Gen 2.

Faster tablets exist, like the Samsung Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra, which gave around double the performance on our 3DMark Wild Life test, but that tablet, in particular, will cost you at least twice as much as the Tab P11 Pro Gen 2. The ninth-generation Apple iPad, released in 2021, is undoubtedly the Lenovo tablet's most significant competition for price and performance; it costs less and was around 1.7 times faster for gaming on our 3DMark tests. Getting your hands on that horsepower requires jumping ship to iPadOS, which might not be desirable if you’re heavily invested in Android apps and hardware

Good overall performance and battery life

The Tab P11 Pro Gen 2's overall performance on our more CPU-intensive benchmarks followed suit. It did well on our GeekBench 6 tests, with a score of 966 for single-core performance and 3,147 for multi-core. We can't directly compare these numbers against the aforementioned Samsung Galaxy Tab S8, as the tablet potentially cheeses its results by running GeekBench in a special "benchmark mode." However, the ninth-generation iPad again showed its prowess by nearly doubling the Lenovo tablet's single-core performance and giving a bit more multi-core speed.

In real-world terms, we didn't experience any stuttering or missteps when launching apps or switching between various apps, games, and videos. The tablet felt responsive and snappy to use for all of our everyday tasks. We think it's priced well for the performance it delivers.

Lenovo claims you can get up to 14 hours of sustained video playback on the tablet's 8,000mAh battery. On our PCMark Work benchmark, the tablet's battery life was solid, reaching just over 7 hours and 30 minutes across a mix of everyday tasks and apps (not just video). We've reviewed tablets that can last longer, including Lenovo's less-expensive Lenovo's Tab M10 Plus 3rd Gen, but you're likely to trade away some general or graphical performance for the extra time. With almost a full workday's worth of uptime for normal use, the Tab P11 Pro Gen 2 isn't likely to leave you hanging.

What we don’t like

No Android 13 (yet)

Curiously, the tablet isn't scheduled to receive Android 12L, a version of the operating system that's been optimized for larger screens. That feels like it'd be perfect for the Tab P11 Pro Gen 2's 11.2-inch display, but we supposed Lenovo is just going to go full steam into Android 13 instead.

It's also unclear when, exactly, the Tab P11 Pro Gen 2 will get Android 13. The update wasn't available at the time of our review (summer 2023), and Lenovo indicated on its upgrade matrix that the tablet should receive Android 13 sometime within the second quarter of the year. That leaves roughly one month to go as of when we wrote this review, which would itself be just a few months shy of a year since Android 13 was officially released.

To Lenovo's credit, it promises the tablet will be able to go all the way up to Android 14 before it loses support for security updates in July 2025. Still, you may find yourself waiting quite a long time to play with features that other Android smartphone and tablet owners will get before you. That's just life in the Android ecosystem for you, but it's still annoying.

Great speakers, awkward placement

The "Dolby Atmos" speaker setup on Lenovo's Tab P11 Pro Gen 2 sounds great, more so because Lenovo slaps two speakers on the top of the tablet and two on the bottom (when you're holding it in portrait mode). You can really crank them without suffering distortion, and while they'll still never give you as much bass as you'd like, they're surprisingly good for a tablet.

However, the tablet’s single audio quirk becomes apparent when the device is used in landscape orientation. The speakers give the best, most-enveloping sound when you use the tablet in landscape mode due to their "quad" design. But you're bound to cover up at least two of tablet’s speakers with your hands if you're not careful about how you hold it. This muffles the richness of the sound, and you'll (unfortunately) have to get used to holding the tablet a little bit differently than you normally might.

Crummy Camera

Like most tablets, Lenovo's cameras will do in a pinch, but we wouldn't recommend lugging it around for beautiful nature photography anytime soon. (Please don't bring it to your Taylor Swift concert.)

The tablet's 8-megapixel, front-facing camera is a hot mess for selfies and video calls. For whatever reason, it kept giving my skin an unnatural, sunburnt-pink hue. Additionally, the image was also a bit blurry, although the frame rate was totally fine for chatting with friends.

The Tab P11 Pro Gen 2's upgraded 13-megapixel rear-facing camera did an OK job capturing detail in nearby items. Objects out of focus tended to appear a bit more low-quality and blurry than what you'd get from a decent smartphone camera, and the quality of the image, as a whole, felt lacking. You also have to be careful about hand movement when capturing a shot, as the tablet was a bit more susceptible to motion blur than we expected.

Should you buy Lenovo's Tab P11 Pro Gen 2?

Yes, if you want a great mid-range Android Tablet

After spending time with Lenovo's Tab P11 Pro Gen 2, and other tablets that cost less, we think that you'd be doing yourself a disservice by going for a cheaper budget Android tablet. You can get a decent Android tablet for $100–150 less that can handle all the basics of streaming, surfing the web, and answering your email, for example. But you’ll likely be frustrated by these tablets' slower performance, smaller displays, poorer support for OS and security updates, and, an inability to play graphically demanding Android games. And you'll be missing out on the Tab P11 Pro Gen 2's best feature: a big, lovely OLED display that makes most other budget Android tablets look lifeless by comparison.

Meet the tester

David Murphy

Contributor

@TheDavidMurphy

David Murphy reviews a lot of things for a lot of places.

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