 Who are we? All people and children! What do we want? Teeth tablets! No, you don't. Buying your grandparents a bad tablet is borderline elder abuse. So when Anthony told us his dad needed a new tablet, I did what any tech nerd would do and said, just get him an iPad. That's too expensive. It has to be less than $250. That's a little tougher. The budget tablet market is an absolute minefield of low spec and ad infested junk. Not wanting Anthony's dad to suffer, I did the next thing that I know how to do. I paid someone else to go and find the best tablet for $250 or less. Just like how MSI paid me for this sponsor spot. MSI's Optic MPG321QRF-QD is a 32 inch, 1440p quantum dot monitor with up to a 175 Hertz refresh rate. Learn more at the link down below. We ended up with five budget tablets, some new, some refurbished, some surprisingly good and some surprisingly bad. Regardless of our conclusions, we're gonna have all of them linked down below if you think one of them might be right for you. Let's start with the $98 on 10.1 inch tablet or as I call it, the e-waste special. Walmart, you truly spared every expense here. For starters, this is the only tablet in our roundup that actually has a plastic screen. The two megapixel shooter takes photos like a 2006 flip phone and the selfie camera. Ah, you look so pale. Have you been eating? Honestly, I think it'll make your grandmother cry when she sees you on a video call. My boy. It makes weird noises when you hold it like it, kind of creaks sometimes. But as Linux has shown us, garbage hardware can be redeemed by good software. And this is the only tablet of the bunch that runs the very lightweight Android Go OS. Unfortunately, it still chugs, even just swiping through the homepages. You also can't split screen two apps. And while it does come with an interesting feature called Google Entertainment Space that provides recommendations for things to watch, read, listen to, or play on your tablet, they, well, maybe it's better to just show you. This movie, for instance, is clearly mislabeled. If you've listened to the They're Just Movies podcast episode on licorice pizza, I think you'll know this ain't it. And we could play games like Twerk Race 3D. Oh my goodness. There's broccoli and burgers and what the? So I avoid broccoli. You gotta size up your badonkadonk. I don't understand. I got a new skin. That would be horrible even if it was running smoothly. Thankfully it runs the one thing that matters, lttstore.com. You couch ripper pillows, whack it, restock, add planet. Oh, and we've got a new feature where you can mouse over to see the size the model's wearing. Super cool. Of course, many people buy tablets purely for watching videos on the go. So how's the media experience? All I'll say is your two-year-old probably won't care, but I think Anthony's dad deserves better. Thankfully, a $50 jump in price brings us to the significantly better Amazon Fire HD 10. Amazon's tablets have long dominated the budget segment and for good reason. This one is reasonably rugged despite its plastic chassis. The full HD display manages to avoid actively harming the content. The speakers sound good up to about 50% volume. And the SoC can handle some light multitasking, especially if you stick to the lightweight integrated apps. The big gotcha, the penis rocket billionaire's ecosystem. Amazon uses Fire OS, a fork of Android, and they absolutely hate Google. So that means you're stuck with the Amazon App Store rather than the Play Store, and it's got about one seventh the number of apps. Not only that, but Google apps? Uh-uh. Not even YouTube or Gmail. Only web wrapper versions are available. And it's even missing popular games like Genshin Impact and Pokemon Go. The thing is, to help these tablets punch above their price class, Amazon subsidizes the hardware by cutting out Google's 30% cut on app revenue and replacing it with their own. And they also push the user hard to subscribe to their services. You can install the Google Play Store and enable Google services by downloading the relevant APKs. And for the sake of testing, we did do that, but it is a major inconvenience, especially if you're not that tech savvy, and especially if you're moving from an older Android tablet like Anthony's dad. Stepping up to the $200 price range then, and not being impressed by the big manufacturers, we found this promising little bundle called the KingPad K10 Pro. Sup, VastKing. The Pro moniker might be a little optimistic, but I guess VastKing's point is that they mean business. With the keyboard, folio, and active stylus all included, you will be business chic on the cheap with this entire package costing just $40 more than Apple's standalone smart keyboard. And shockingly, this keyboard is actually better than the Apple one. The included stylus though is pretty mediocre. It has pressure sensitivity, but no angle detection, though it does come with an easily replaceable quadruple A battery, and it glides nicely across the screen without bumps or grinding. Speaking of which, twerk Race 3D runs like a dream on this bad boy. The Unisoc T618 chipset proves to be adequately capable. It's actually the same chip Samsung is using in their brand new A8 series tablets. And the full HD display is sharp, but only manages dim washed out colors compared to our other competitors. And the speakers are disappointingly tinny. Also to save money, the devs have skipped out on Widevine DRM certification, meaning that you won't be able to stream in HD from services like Netflix. And battery life is pretty underwhelming. So media consumption ain't great, and the Kingpads productivity aspirations get hamstrung somewhat by its bare bones Android 10 operating system. At least it can open two apps simultaneously though, but compared to the multitasking capabilities of tablets from the likes of Samsung and Apple, it falls well short. Now beyond the $200 mark, we're getting dangerously near the edge of what we can safely call budget. But, oh, what's this? My God, it's iPad the gray, the Kleenex of tablets. And at just $230, Apple makes up 58% of the worldwide tablet market. And that's for good reason. This right here is a refurbished sixth generation unit from 2018 sporting Apple's A10 SoC. And what is there for me to say? Even as a PC Android kind of guy, I recognize that the iPad is just plain better than the competition. But hold on a second, is this four-year-old 32 gigabyte model the right deal at $230? Only you can answer that. Our other honorable mention is the base model ninth gen iPad for just a hundred dollars more. It's gonna have software support for much longer. It's got better, well, everything. And if it holds its value nearly as well as the sixth gen model did, you should be able to flip it for a decent price when you feel like upgrading. Also without expandable storage, this 32 gigs is gonna fill up pretty fast. Every other tablet we looked at has expandable storage, but Apple's too good for that. Finally, at the top of our budget, we have the Galaxy Tab S6 Lite, which while it is listed at 279.99 on Samsung's website has been going for $250 pretty frequently these days at retailers like Amazon. And you can probably expect prices to drop a bit more as Samsung rolls out its new eight series tablet lineup. Bundled with Samsung's excellent S Pen, you get the best screen out of the bunch, the best speakers, second best software, and the best build quality out of the lot. And with a 13 hour battery, a number it very nearly achieved in our battery test, this tablet is a great deal at 250 bucks. Yes, the device is coming on two years old at this point and Samsung doesn't have the best track record for software support, but this is such a good piece of hardware, it's at least worth giving a second look to. Some things to note though, is that even though this is a pricier tablet, Samsung has long struggled with GPU performance on their Exynos chips and that shows here. The gaming performance on this thing doesn't keep up with even the four year old iPad and in Geekbench, it was only slightly better than the Kingpad. So there you go Anthony's dad, that's our rundown. Which one will you buy? Realistically, there's no way you were gonna take the O N N thing, right? Not at all. Yeah, I didn't think so. Okay, so which one do you think is the best fit for you? For me, I would have to settle for the Samsung S6 Lite. Well, I've got a little surprise for you. We are actually going to just send this one to you. You don't have to worry about the budget for it at all. It's yours. Seriously? How sweet. You gave us Anthony, so I feel like it's the least we can do. I have to say, that's very nice of you. Thank you very much. No, no, thank our sponsor, Manscaped. Manscaped's ultra premium collection is an all in one skin and hair care kit for the everyday man and covers you from head to toe. It's all new. There's the two in one shampoo and conditioner, their body wash with cologne scent, their hydrating body spray, their deodorant and a free gift, moisturizing lip balm. Your man maintenance just got easier and best of all, all of Manscaped's products in the ultra premium collection are cruelty free, paraben free and vegan. Visit manscaped.com slash tech or click the link down below for 20% off and free shipping. So what do you guys think? Did we miss anything? Let us know in the comments. And if you liked this video, you'll probably like our video on the cheapest tablet on the market. It literally fell apart in my hands. Go check it out. Ah, too expensive.