The best iPad alternatives give you all the convenience of a great tablet without locking you into Apple's ecosystem. After testing and reviewing a wide range of options, we've put together a focused shortlist covering six key categories.
Our top overall pick is the Microsoft Surface Pro 11, a hybrid Windows tablet that runs full creative software and doubles as a laptop replacement. If you're on a budget, the Xiaomi Pad 8 offers outstanding specs for the money in 2026.
The best iPad alternatives in full
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The best iPad alternative overall
30-second review: If you need a tablet that can double as a laptop and run full desktop versions of Photoshop, Illustrator or whatever software your workflow depends on, you need a Windows tablet. The Surface Pro 11 is still the best of them. Powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Plus or Elite, it's fast enough for demanding creative work while staying light enough to carry all day. The optional OLED display is worth the upgrade if colour accuracy matters to you, and the 120Hz refresh rate makes stylus input feel smooth and natural. The Surface Pro 12 has just begun rolling out to business customers, but the consumer version isn't available yet, so the 11 remains the smart buy right now.
Pricing: Starting at $799.99 / £799, the Surface Pro 11 is competitively positioned at the premium end of the tablet market. The base configuration includes 16GB RAM and 256GB storage. Add the keyboard and Slim Pen and you'll spend a bit more, but that's the nature of any detachable tablet setup. Top-spec configurations can exceed $2,000 / £2,000.
Design and build: Available in four colours (black, sapphire, platinum and dune), the Surface Pro 11 looks and feels appropriately professional. At under 1kg, it's easy to carry for a full workday. The Surface Pro Flex Keyboard can now be used detached from the device: a big improvement in versatility.
Display: Microsoft offers both LCD and OLED options. The OLED is worth seeking out if your budget allows: contrast is significantly richer and colours more vibrant. The 120Hz refresh rate benefits both stylus use and general navigation. It doesn't quite match the iPad Pro's display technology overall, but it's a very good screen by any measure.
Performance: The Snapdragon X Plus or Elite processors deliver consistently fast performance, even when running demanding design software. A dedicated Neural Processing Unit (NPU) handles on-device AI tasks, and battery life typically stretches to 12 to 14 hours under light use.
The best Android iPad alternative
30-second review: Released in September 2025, the Samsung Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra is the flagship Android tablet to beat, and the closest any Android device gets to matching the iPad Pro for premium feel and feature depth. The 14.6-inch Dynamic AMOLED 2X display is magnificent: bright, sharp and richly colourful. The S Pen is included in the box, Galaxy AI adds a useful suite of creative tools including Sketch to Image and Creative Studio, and the Dimensity 9400+ chip offers roughly 30% better CPU and GPU performance than last year's model. Samsung's Galaxy Tab S12 Ultra is expected in late 2026, but for now, this is Android tablet hardware at its best.
Pricing: The Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra starts at $1,199.99 in the US, putting it squarely in flagship territory alongside the iPad Pro. Third-party retailers often list it for less, so it's worth shopping around.
Design and build: At just 5.1mm thick, the S11 Ultra is impressively slim for its size. Armor Aluminium construction feels solid and premium, and IP68 water and dust resistance is a useful advantage over most of the competition. The S Pen stores magnetically at the rear and offers 2.8ms latency for a near-natural writing experience.
Display: The 14.6-inch Dynamic AMOLED 2X panel has a 16:10 aspect ratio, 120Hz refresh rate and strong anti-reflective properties. At 2960 x 1848, it's crisp and detailed, and HDR10+ support brings out genuine depth in colour-graded content and photography.
Performance: The Dimensity 9400+ delivers fast, smooth performance across creative apps, gaming and multitasking. Galaxy AI features, including Circle to Search, Live Translate and Sketch to Image, are useful additions for creative professionals. Samsung DeX mode provides a desktop-like experience when connected to a keyboard and external monitor, extending what's possible on a tablet considerably.
The best budget iPad alternative
30-second review: The Xiaomi Pad 8 is the budget tablet to beat in 2026. It comes with a Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 processor, a 3.2K 144Hz display and a 9,200mAh battery. It's fast, solidly built and noticeably lighter than most competitors at its price. The Focus Pen stylus can be bought separately and docks magnetically to the top edge, charging wirelessly when stowed. If you want a capable, portable device for sketching, photo review or light editing without spending flagship money, this is an outstanding pick. Note, though, that Xiaomi hasn't announced an official US release for the Pad 8.
Pricing: The Xiaomi Pad 8 starts at £399 in the UK, making it significantly cheaper than comparable Samsung or Apple tablets. The 256GB model costs a little more and offers faster UFS 4.1 storage, which is worth the small premium if you're installing a lot of apps.
Design and build: Xiaomi has trimmed the Pad 8's weight to 485g and profile to 5.75mm, resulting in a device that feels genuinely compact and easy to carry. The aluminium unibody chassis comes in pine green, blue and grey. Despite the price, build quality feels reassuringly solid and there's nothing flimsy about it.
Display: The 11.2-inch IPS panel offers 3200 x 2136 resolution (345 ppi), a 144Hz refresh rate and 800 nits peak brightness. It supports Dolby Vision and HDR10, and colour reproduction is vivid and accurate for everyday creative work. It won't match an OLED panel from Samsung for depth and contrast, but at this price it's hard to fault.
Performance: The Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 chip is faster than anything else in this price range. Xiaomi's HyperOS has improved substantially in recent iterations and the tablet handles multitasking well. The Focus Pen stylus offers 240Hz touch detection and, when paired with a keyboard case, the Pad 8 can hold its own as a basic 2-in-1 laptop.
The best iPad alternative for drawing
30-second review: The Samsung Galaxy Tab S10 FE+ is a big-screen tablet with an S Pen included, and that combination makes it a compelling option for artists and illustrators on a reasonable budget. The 13.1-inch display is spacious and well-suited to detailed work; the S Pen uses Wacom EMR technology, which means consistent, low-latency line quality in apps like Clip Studio Paint, Infinite Painter and Sketchbook. The laminated display reduces the gap between glass and surface, making the pen feel closer to drawing on paper. It won't replace a professional pen display for studio work, but for artists working on the go, it strikes a very strong balance of size, quality and price.
Pricing: The Galaxy Tab S10 FE+ starts at $649.99 in the US. Samsung frequently runs promotional bundles, so it's worth checking retailers for current deals when you're ready to buy.
Design and build: The all-metal construction feels premium and the IP68 rating adds peace of mind for working in less-than-ideal conditions. The S Pen attaches magnetically to the rear panel, so it's always where you need it. Bezels are reasonably slim for the size and overall the tablet feels well-proportioned.
Display: The laminated 13.1-inch display has a 16:10 aspect ratio and peaks at 800 nits, making it useable outside, even in bright sunlight. The lamination makes a real difference: it brings the glass and panel closer together, which makes the S Pen feel more immediate and paper-like when drawing. Colour reproduction covers a solid sRGB gamut, making it reliable for illustration and photo editing.
Performance: The Exynos 1580 chip handles drawing apps, photo editing and day-to-day multitasking without issue. Wacom EMR technology in the S Pen means no battery to charge and consistent pressure response across drawing sessions. Samsung DeX adds the option to switch to a desktop-like layout when paired with a keyboard, which expands its usefulness considerably.
The best iPad alternative for gaming
30-second review: The ASUS ROG Flow Z13 is the best gaming tablet you can buy right now, and it's a more capable creative tool than you might expect. Powered by AMD's Ryzen AI Max 390, with integrated Radeon 8050S graphics, it delivers performance comparable to some dedicated mid-range gaming laptops, all in a detachable 13.4-inch package. Running full Windows 11 means you can use desktop-class creative software as well as gaming. Battery life drops significantly under gaming load, though, so you'll keep the charger handy.
Pricing: The ROG Flow Z13 starts at $2,099 / £2,199.99 for the Ryzen AI Max 390 configuration. The Ryzen AI Max+ 395 model goes up to $2,299 and beyond. The keyboard is sold separately, adding to the total cost. None of this is cheap, but nothing else in the tablet space comes close for raw Windows gaming performance.
Design and build: The "backwards" design places all the computing hardware behind the display, with a detachable keyboard. The ROG aesthetic is deliberately bold: RGB lighting, a transparent panel showing internal components and a vapour chamber cooling system with audible fans under load. At 1.2kg it's heavier than a typical tablet, but that's a reasonable trade-off for its high level of performance.
Display: The 13.4-inch IPS touchscreen offers 2560 x 1600 resolution and a 180Hz refresh rate, higher than almost any other tablet on the market. Colour coverage is strong: 98% DCI-P3, 100% sRGB and 90% Adobe RGB. Peak brightness sits around 544 nits, making it usable in most lighting conditions.
Performance: The Ryzen AI Max 390 delivers CPU performance that frequently exceeds the MacBook Air M4 in multi-core workloads. The Radeon 8050S integrated graphics handle modern games at 1080p and beyond, with FSR upscaling extending that further. Battery life varies widely, though: around seven hours for light tasks, under two hours for demanding gaming sessions.
The best 2-in-1 iPad alternative
30-second review: The ASUS ProArt PZ13 is the 2-in-1 to recommend for creative professionals who want portability without compromise. It's slim, light and notably generous at the price. The PANTONE-validated 13.3-inch OLED display is exceptional for colour work, and battery life in testing exceeded 20 hours, which is remarkable for a Windows device. Running on Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Plus, it handles Photoshop, Lightroom and Illustrator well. It's not the machine for 3D rendering or heavy video work, but for most everyday creative tasks it's an excellent all-rounder.
Pricing: The ASUS ProArt PZ13 retails at £1,199 / $1,099, a strong price for what you get. Crucially, that includes the keyboard, stylus, stand and protective sleeve: accessories that would cost substantially more if bought separately for an iPad Pro or Surface Pro.
Design and build: The PZ13 has a polished, understated design with a distinctive camo-green protective sleeve. At 850g, it's one of the lighter Windows detachables. The magnetic keyboard and integrated stand transform it into a solid working setup in seconds, and everything stows neatly in the sleeve when you're on the move.
Display: The 13.3-inch OLED touchscreen covers 100% of the DCI-P3 colour gamut, is PANTONE-validated and supports HDR. At 2880 x 1800, it's sharp and detailed, and colours are genuinely accurate, making it reliable for photography and design work that demands precise colour reproduction.
Performance: The Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus processor, with its 45 TOPS NPU, handles photo editing, graphic design and video content creation comfortably. The battery life, which exceeded 20 hours in testing, is the standout feature: no other Windows tablet in this class comes close. Note though that ASUS has announced the ProArt PZ14 as its successor, with a Snapdragon X2 Elite chip and a 14-inch display, so watch that space if you're in no rush.
How to choose the best iPad alternatives
When choosing the best iPad alternatives, the first thing to do is to establish what you're going to use it for, as this will determine which features you need. If you're just going to be using the tablet for a light browsing and maybe some streaming, your needs will be different than if you are planning on using the tablet as your main work tool and need to run resource-intensive apps. Once that's established, here are some criteria to consider.
Screen size: The size of a tablets screen is expressed in inches, referring to the diagonal distance between two corners. So, a 14-inch tablet means a tablet with 14 inches between the top left and the bottom right of the screen. A larger screen gives you more space to work with – useful for creative work and great for watching movies. However, it also means the tablet is physically larger and heavier, which impacts portability.
Screen resolution: The higher the screen resolution, the more detail it is able to display and the better your content will look.
Screen brightness/colour: A higher level of brightness, expressed in nits, will make your screen easier to see in a variety of conditions. Generally 300 nits is acceptable, 400 nits is good and anything above 500 is excellent. You may also see reference to a screen's coverage of various colour gamuts, such as sRGB, DCI P3 and Adobe RGB, etc. The higher the percentage of these spaces, the richer and more accurate colours a screen can display.
Stylus compatibility: If you're planning on drawing or doing other creative work on a tablet, having a compatible active stylus like the Apple Pencil is a must.
How we test the best iPad alternatives
At Creative Bloq, we regularly review tablets from a range of different manufacturers. We will spend a significant amount of time with any tablet we review, and test it against a series of benchmarks designed to assess how well it performs.
We run different productivity apps, creative programs, browsers and games on the tablet (where possible) to see how well it is able to cope with such tasks. We look at screen quality, measuring brightness and refresh rate. We try out any compatible accessories available to us such as styluses and stands, and we also look at the physical design of the tablet to assess whether it is convenient to use, easy to carry and robustly constructed.
FAQs
Is a Windows tablet better than an iPad?
It depends entirely on what you need it for. A Windows tablet like the Microsoft Surface Pro 11 can run full desktop software: Photoshop, Lightroom, Illustrator, InDesign and so on. That's a significant advantage for creative professionals tied to specific desktop applications. Windows also gives you more flexibility with file management, peripherals and external display support.
iPads, on the other hand, are better optimised for touch and stylus use: smoother, more cohesive and with a stronger selection of tablet-native creative apps. Apple Pencil integration remains second to none. If your work centres on a specific desktop application that has no iPad equivalent, a Windows tablet wins. For drawing, note-taking, photo editing and content consumption, it's a much closer call, and the iPad's ease of use often tips the balance.
Are Android tablets a good alternative to iPads?
Absolutely. For most creative and everyday tasks, a flagship Android tablet is a very capable alternative. While the Android interface still isn't quite as smooth or well-integrated as iPadOS on tablets, the Android ecosystem offers a level of choice and customisability that Apple can't match. Premium Samsung tablets come particularly close to the iPad experience, with features like Samsung DeX turning them into desktop-capable machines and the S Pen bundled in the box at no extra cost.
What is a good iPad alternative for toddlers?
Kids love tablets, but you may not want to hand them something as expensive or breakable as an iPad. There are plenty of child-friendly options with parental controls and content restrictions built in. Amazon's Fire Kids range is a great place to start, offering several tablets designed specifically for young children at very affordable prices.
