I spent way too long agonizing about which tablet I wanted to get, and wasted quite a bit of time looking at videos (only to find out they were paid) and other reviews (likely also paid).
I'm not a techie, so don't expect any massive breakdowns on hardware/power use.
Use case:
•I needed a tablet in the 300 USD range for college.
•Preference was given to tablets that included a pen, since I would be using it for note-taking 90% of the time, and I can't be bothered to buy those things separately.
•I'd rather eat a jean jacket than ever give a cent to apple again my life, and I know better than to get a surface
•Battery needed to last at least 8 hours (not a huge ask, considering what a lot of tablets boast)
Samsung had a few options in my budget, but the drop-off in quality between their flagship and budget devices is just...godawful. I've tried one of their a-series phones, and it was basically that junk you can buy from behind the counter at Family Dollar.
The TCL NXTpaper 11 was tempting, due to it being on sale. I opted against it because there were negative reviews regarding bugginess/lag, and poor quality control.
I ultimately went with Lenovo, because I've had decent experience with their laptops (I have a 2006 thinkpad that I can still power on and use to this day). The Idea Tab came with both a pen, and case.
It works perfectly for what I needed it for: Taking notes, viewing assignments in canvas, and the occasional youtube video/music streaming.
I do not game on tablets. I have literally no idea if you can load up Overwatch on this thing, and I simply don't understand the appeal of gaming on a tablet over a laptop. It has 8 gigs of ram, so I can't imagine it would be completely unusable for games. Its a 300 dollar tablet, so I can't imagine that it would be completely stellar for gaming either.
While everything works flawlessly for my limited scope of use, I do have a big giant gripe with the bloatware that comes installed on this thing.
There is a feature called "App recommendations", and an app called AppServices that will relentlessly install brainrot games on the device until disabled/deleted. It took an annoying amount of time to wade through the settings and apps to stop these apps from bombarding me. I deleted mahjong about 4 times before finding the correct thing to remove.
I understand that this is a huge issue with all major brands' devices, and went through the same tango with my Acer laptop earlier this year. I'm sure they're making a bunch of money by harassing us with these unwanted, garbage apps, but forcing "Candy Crush Soda Slurpers", "Brick Bash Gem Royale: Must Consoom" or whatever onto users and UN-DELETING them is insulting.
Once I got the crapware off of it, the tablet became exactly what I was looking for. The battery lasts from when I leave the house at 1pm to when I get home at 12am. The pen and palm-rejection features work exactly as one would expect, and it feels natural to write on. I have not had any issues with apps crashing or freezing (with several browser tabs, youtube music, freenotes, and email open). The speaker quality is decent, and it wouldn't hurt my head/ears to listen from it if I were to forget headphones.
I was pleasantly surprised to see that there is a SIM slot, and I'm going to pick up a prepaid sim to take advantage of that feature since I commute between several places often, and don't always have steady wifi.
Camera/mic quality is passably good for things like zoom meetings, but if you're looking to stream on this thing you may want to look elsewhere due to exposure issues and general camera quality. Document scanning is well....not good, even in perfect lighting. Pictures come out rather grainy and dim which makes this less than ideal as a "scanner".
To summarize: If you're on a budget, need a tablet for school/note-taking and other light use, and don't mind dealing with annoying bloatware, the Lenovo IdeaTab 11" "College Tablet" will work just fine.