you could learn about the differences between tablets and laptops to help you decide which best fits your needs.
Information in this article applies broadly to a wide range of devices.
Check the specifications of individual products for a more direct comparison.
Lifewire / Nusha Ashjaee
Overall Findings
Longer battery life.
Designed for media consumption.
Programs typically have more features.
You’ll want a laptop if you’re free to only afford one gadget.
Budget laptops cost the same as mid-tier tablets and can do much more.
Since tablets have no keyboard, you must bang out on virtual keyboards with varying layouts and designs.
Laptops are better for people who bang out a lot.
Size: Tablets Are More Portable
Most tablets weigh under two pounds.
The main difference in size is that the keyboard and trackpad take up additional space.
Laptops with more powerful components require additional cooling, adding to the size.
Most of a tablet’s interior is the battery.
Laptops, on the other hand, use more powerful hardware.
The battery within a laptop takes up a far smaller percentage of the space needed for its internal components.
Many tablets can support up to ten hours of web usage before requiring a charge.
The average laptop only runs for about four to eight hours.
This technology has one major disadvantage: the amount of data it can store for the drive’s price.
Most tablets allow between 16 and 128 gigabytes of storage.
The average budget laptop has a 500 GB hard drive, and the pricier options come with 1-2 TB.
Both laptops and tablets include features like USB ports or microSD card slots that allow adding external storage.
Things get more complicated once you start performing more demanding tasks that involve multitasking or HD graphics.
In these cases, laptops typically perform better.
There are exceptions, though, such as for video editing.
Some high-end tablets can outperform laptops thanks to specialized hardware.
The two other major tablet platforms, Android and iPadOS, require applications specific to their operating systems.
Many apps are available for each platform, and many will perform the most basic tasks on a laptop.
The iOS environment now applies only to the iPhone.
Cost: It’s a Toss-Up
There are three tiers of tablets on the market.
Most budget models cost less than $100 and are ideal for simple tasks.
Primary-tier tablets cost from about $500 to more than $1000.
They may provide the best performance but offer worse performance at these prices than a laptop.
Final Verdict
Laptops still offer greater flexibility for mobile computing.
