Lenovo Smart Tab P10 review: an Alexa powered tablet for teens

The Lenovo Smart Tab P10 with Amazon Alexa is one of the best tablets for kids in 2022. Specifically, it is a great slate for teenagers, rather than younger children. That's an important distinction to make up front. Some kids tablets really are made for kids, like 7 years olds, while others are aimed at teenagers.

It’s not the sort of uber-powerful tablet you might find among our overall best tablets but it’s a really classy affair that, that’ll impress your teen – and you could even use yourself. In fact, the included Amazon Alexa, with show mode, also sets it up to be a decent household tablet and smart display. I can see this in a nice big kitchen somewhere.

If I were to sum up my experience with the Lenovo Smart Tab P10, I would say it’s a well-priced tablet that isn’t the quickest, but the included speaker dock and built-in Alexa offers a lot more than a standard tablet in this bracket. It could easily function as a family tablet, or a cool first tablet for your teenager.

Lenovo Smart Tab P10 review: Design and Setup

Lenovo has a knack for making inexpensive tablets that look like premium hardware. The 10.1-inch Lenovo Smart Tab P10 is no exception to this. Taking it out on the box for the first time, I felt like I was holding something much more expensive. It’s glass front and back with a metal frame. It’s so clear and shiny that I spent a decent amount of time trying to take a photo of the back of it that didn’t look like a mirror selfie.

It also comes with a speaker dock, that it can rest and charge in as well as turning the tablet into a smart display using Alexa’s show mode. It’s a greyish-black plastic but doesn’t look out of place.

The only qualm I have is how stable the base is, or isn’t. The very first thing I did after placing the tablet in the dock was knock it over. It’s very top heavy in this position so I’d advise making sure it’s close to a wall.

Setting it up was a bit of a pain. I found myself in an hours-long cycle of updating firmware for the tablet, the dock, and Alexa. You also have to log in to both Google and Amazon to properly set things up.

Even after using it for a few hours, I found I’d still occasionally stumble across some new reason for which I had to update some permissions or log in to a website or app to make a native feature work.

That is all teething, the sort of problem that goes away once it’s done, but I found it to be a more complicated process than with other tablets, including those made by Lenovo.

Lenovo Smart Tab P10 review: Performance & Features

This isn’t the most powerful tablet, with 3GB of RAM, 32GB of storage, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 450 and Android 8.1 Oreo, it’s not the sort of thing that’s going to blow the doors off. But I did find that, while a little slower than the biggest and best tablets out there, it did pretty much handle everything I want a tablet for,

Even with some more intense android games, I found that, outside of slightly prolonged loading times, they ran fine when in action. I didn’t notice any issues with browsing or reading digital comics – though occasionally, the Smart Tab P10 would lag a little when switching between apps.

There’s an 8MP camera on the back and a 5MP camera on the front. These weren’t the best and I often found images to be grainy, If your teenager needs a tablet to be its main snapper then this won't be ideal. But then, most smartphones will far outperform most tablets in this regard so it’s likely not an issue.

Then there’s Alexa’s Show Mode, which turns the tablet into a smart display. If you were using this as a household device you could manage your smart home from here, or if it’s likely to sit in a teen’s bedroom then you can get Alexa to fire up YouTube, play music or any of the dozens of other things Alexa can do.

There is the possibility for creating multiple accounts on the Smart Tab P10, through both Google and Lenovo’s settings. This does let you set up a Kid’s Mode which opens up with a ton of games and apps. But if I’m honest, with the double glass design I’d be terrified of handing this to an unsupervised youngster.

That means parental controls aren’t as simple, or at least, they’re as simple as with any android device in that you’ll have to set them up through Google for your teen's accounts.  

Lenovo Smart Tab P10 review: Price & Verdict

It’s hard to know what to make of the Lenovo Smart Tab P10 in some respects. Our widgets will tell you what the latest price is, but at £249/$299 RRP it does feel like you might be able to pick up a tablet that’s a little more powerful. It's worth checking our Lenovo discount codes for a saving. 

But this isn’t just a tablet, it’s got the speaker dock and Alexa and can be used as a smart display. As a bundle of features, I can see this being easily worth it so long as you don’t actually need an ultra-powerful dedicated tablet. Certainly, there’s a pack of stuff there that a teenager can impress their mates with.

I’d recommend this tablet in two ways. One, as a household, smart display and smart home management system. Something simple and functional that will sit on a kitchen surface. Or, as a little tech ecosystem for a teenager, their own private smart display that they can still pick up and walk around with.

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