I snapped up a budget tablet for less than £90 – now I wouldn’t be without it

Ahead of a four-hour flight with no entertainment screen, I was keen to find an affordable device to pass the time, enjoying my favourite shows and films on a reasonably-sized screen. That’s when I picked up for a remarkable £89.99. Six months on, I use it most days and wouldn’t be without it, but it wasn’t necessarily love at first sight.

After a few teething problems (and the dreaded feeling that I’d got exactly what I’d paid for), with a bit of perseverance and tinkering, the Lenovo M10 has become a part of my daily life.

Out of the box, has the look and feel of a much more premium device than the sub-£90 price tag suggests. The tablet has a generous 10.1” screen perfect for comfortably watching TV and films while on the go, and the body comes in a sleek “Storm Grey” colour.

It was easy enough to find a wide range of stylish protective covers to fit the tablet too – adding is ideal if you’re planning to use the device for streaming on a train or long flight without having to hold it still in your hands for hours on-end, while the magnetic closure and soft backing protects the screen from scratches while carrying it in a bag.

My initial bugbear with the M10 was the amount of bloatware it came preloaded with. Bloatware is unwanted software that comes prelooaded on a new computer or mobile device by the manufacturer, usually as a form of marketing to promote services. This is generally in the form of trials of paid-for apps and games.

According to , “many device manufacturers can lower their prices by pre-installing this type of software,” which is why you’re more likely to experience the phenomenon on devices with a lower price tag. But the issue is that each of these programs, like any other download, gobbles up space on your device and ultimately slows it down.

The M10 was no exception – on first start-up, the home screen was littered with games and apps before I’d even used it. Having gone through the painstaking process of deleting each of these one by one, I was frustrated to see that, following a system update minutes later, the apps automatically reinstalled.

This could have been down to me making those changes while the tablet was setting itself/updating on first-time use, perhaps if I’d allowed it time to do all of those things before making changes, that wouldn’t have happened. Having repeated the process of deleting the bloatware a second time, it has not returned since, so I’m hopeful that I’m rid of it now.

I consider my tablet needs to be that of a basic user, as I’d usually turn to my iPhone 14 pro or HP laptop for most tasks, but as an entertainment device for convenient internet browsing and streaming, it ticks all of the right boxes. And if you’re looking for a similar basic device, I’d recommend.

Performance-wise, the M10 offers an impressive streaming experience with a crisp and colourful screen which can be dimmed and brightened to adjust, and the bluetooth connectivity to support the use of headphones was of decent quality. I was also impressed by the speaker quality for the price.

The battery life is also impressive, although the charging itself can feel a bit slow if you’re used to devices with fast charging. The use of security features like facial recognition login have worked consistently well, and it will always ask for a PIN number as an added layer of security on start-up, which is reassuring.

In short, if the trade-off for saving hundreds of pounds compared to a higher-end tablet like the latest or iterations means spending a little time deleting a few nuisance apps, and the end result being a respectably stylish and useful tablet – I’ll take that every time.