5 great tablets for under $200

Tablets don't have to cost a fortune. If you don't mind a smaller, 7- to 8-inch tablet, there are plenty of great deals to be had. All five models listed here run a version of the Android operating system. Some are notable for their battery life; others are fast performers and well-suited to playing challenging games. All are well worth the price.

To learn more about how these low-cost tablets performed in our tests, take a look at our latest batch of tablet Ratings.

—Donna Tapellini

Acer Iconia One 8 B1-810-11TV, $130

Acer’s entry-level model comes close to matching the Iconia Tab (shown below) in performance and battery life. It costs a bit less, and it comes in a variety of bright colors. It's packaged with the Iconia suite of tablet apps for note-taking, multitasking, and capturing screen shots. The Iconia One includes 16GB of storage, and you can add more with a memory card.

Acer Iconia Tab 8 A1-850-13FQ (16GB), $140

The latest low-cost tablet to be added to our Ratings, this Iconia Tab is one of many Acer Iconia offerings. With a quad-core Atom processor, it’s an 8-inch tablet that doesn’t sacrifice performance for price. Its screen resolution of 189 pixels per inch is not among the highest, but the display still looks great, with accurate, natural-looking colors. The Tab includes 16GB of storage, and you can add more with a memory card.

Amazon Kindle Fire HDX 7 (16GB), $180

Although this is an older model in Amazon's tablet line, don't knock it off your shopping list. Its performance matches that of the best tablets in our Ratings. And if you're looking for lots of easy-to-access content, a subscription to Amazon Prime ($99 a year) will get you plenty of movies and TV shows to rent, purchase, or stream. There's no slot for a memory card, so you're limited to 16GB unless you purchase the 32GB ($200) or 64GB ($250) model.

Want to learn more about tablets before you buy? Check our tablet buying guide and Ratings.

LG G Pad 7.0 (8GB), $150

If you want a tablet with long battery life, look no further. This one will keep running for about 16 hours. It’s also one of the lightest models we’ve tested. Combine those two features, and you’ve got a device that’s highly portable. You’ll probably want to add some storage to the paltry 8GB that are included; you can do that easily thanks to the memory-card slot.

Lenovo S8-50 (16GB), $170

You don't have to give up on a great display when looking at low-cost tablets. This Lenovo has a high 283-pixel-per-inch screen resolution. If you like to snap a photo or two with your tablet, the S8-50 is a good choice. Its camera did better than many others we tested. It runs on a quad-core Atom processor, and includes a memory-card slot.