Modern tablets are quite powerful. That is why we decided to contrast tablets vs laptops. What is the difference between a tablet and a laptop? You need to analyze them depending on the way you will use your device.

Let's compare laptops with tablets by their main features and look through laptop vs. tablet pros and cons. It will help you distinguish the most important features for you and choose the right device.

What is the Difference Between Tablet and Laptop Display?

Battery Life. Which Device Is More Long Lasting?

Storage

Tablet PC vs Laptop Performance

Price. Which One is More Cost-effective?

Laptop or Tablet: Which Is Better?

Laptop vs. Tablet Portability

The winner here is a tablet. No matter how small a laptop or an Ultrabook is, it weighs more than any tablet because it has a keyboard, a heavier battery, more powerful components, and, hence, a cooling system. While an average tablet can be easily kept in any bag. It's very convenient for traveling.

However, there are highly portable and exceptionally light laptops in the market like the Acer Swift 7 and Google Pixelbook Go.

Laptop Keyboard vs. Tablet Keyboard

Well, the difference here is clear: all laptops have a physical keyboard while tablets don't. Most tablets, however, support Bluetooth keyboards. 2-in-1 tablets have detachable keyboards. So, if you have difficulties with typing on a virtual keyboard, you can make your tablet less portable.

But if you need to type a lot, a laptop is a better choice for you because it is bigger. And it is more convenient to hold it on the lap than a 2-in-1 tablet.

What is the Difference Between Tablet and Laptop Display?

The main difference is the size. The laptop's screen size is bigger. Most of them come with lesser resolution than the resolution of tablets for the same price though. This is necessary for saving battery life, as a high-resolution screen consumes much CPU and GPU power.

There is one more detail. All tablets have touchscreens like smartphones while most laptops don't. They have touchpads and mice can be connected to them.

However, more and more touchscreen laptops like the foldable 2-in-1 Lenovo YOGA 920-13 or the HUAWEI MateBook X Pro appear on the market today.

Battery Life. Which Device Is More Long Lasting?

The battery life of a tablet is longer because laptops have more powerful hardware that consumes more energy and there is not so much place left for a big battery in a modern thin Ultrabook, unlike a tablet, the battery of which takes up the most of its interior.

Besides, laptops, in general, have bigger screens. And screens, as you know, are the most power-hungry parts of laptops, tablets, and smartphones.

There are exceptions among laptops, however. Some advanced laptops have batteries that can last up to 12 hours approximately if being used not too intensively. If it is a dual-battery laptop, you can use it even longer. But you'll have to pay more for such a laptop.

The average laptop battery lasts for about four to eight hours, while tablets usually run for about eight to twelve hours, depending on how you use them. If you are going to play games a lot, you'll drain the battery quickly on any device.

Storage

Modern tablets use solid-state drives (SSD) for internal memory for better performance and less weight, compared with hard drives (HDD) that were used in earlier versions of laptops and provided more storage space. Some modern laptops, however, still use HDDs for a large amount of internal memory. Now, most of the laptops also use SSD and the storage size of these disks became bigger.

However, some low-end laptops come with the eMMC types of storage that is slower and smaller than SSD but faster than HDD. As for high-end premium laptops, they usually feature M.2 NVMe SSDs — the most compact and fastest type of storage today.

Most tablets come with internal memory up to 128 GB, expandable with a micro SD card (excluding iPads). 2-in-1 tablets like the Microsoft Surface Pro 7 support external memory up to 2 T. By the way, this tablet can have 1 T of internal memory. So, it's more like a small laptop.

Most laptops have about 512 GB of internal memory, more expensive ones have 1 T. Laptops tend to have a bigger internal memory, but often it can't be expanded with a micro SD card. You can use an external SSD though, not to mention that the laptop's internal storage can be upgraded.

Tablet PC vs Laptop Performance

Laptops are better for multi-tasking usage because they have a more powerful CPU with an internal fan and bigger RAM. However, if we compare a low-end notebook with an advanced modern tablet PC like the Pixel Slate, a tablet, in this case, may outperform a laptop.

For less demanding tasks like web browsing, playing video or audio both devices will work great for these activities need little CPU power.

So comparing tablet vs notebook performance, keep in mind that it depends on CPU and GPU chips, as well as the cooling system of the device, and on the tasks it will have to handle.

Software Difference

Since tablets mostly have mobile operating systems, while laptops are based on the same systems that are made for desktops, applications for tablets are more limited like any mobile OS is, compared with a desktop OS.

Not only does laptop software has more features, but there is also much more software available for laptops than for tablets.

There are tablets with Windows 10 OS now though. For these tablets, you apparently can use the same software as for laptops. The difference, in this case, is only in the device's performance.

If you are a gamer and like to play demanding PC games, a laptop would be the right choice as it has more processing power.

Cameras

Tablets usually have front and back cameras while laptops almost always are equipped only with front cameras for video calls, like a desktop with a webcam.

It's understandable, tablets are more convenient for taking photos and shooting videos because of their size (smartphones are even more convenient though, not to mention that they have cameras of higher quality). As for the quality of front cameras, it is often better on tablets, than on laptops.

Sound Quality

Tablets usually have a little worse sound quality of built-in speakers than laptops because they are smaller. There is just less space for speakers in compact and thin tablets. And as you know, the bigger the speakers are, the better sound they produce.

If a tablet is small with an 8-inch display, for instance, it most likely has only one speaker since there is no point in stereo speakers on such a small device with a short distance between the speakers, while the second speaker adds weight and battery consumption.

Laptops, on the contrary, are big enough to have 2 or even four speakers.

However, if we compare a big expensive tablet of great quality, such as the iPad Pro 12.9" with a low-end laptop, the tablet's sound is better.

Anyway, if you are a real audiophile, you will surely buy external speakers for your device to listen to high-quality music.

Connectivity

Laptops have more ports and connectors than tablets. Tablets usually have USB or USB-C ports (Lightning connectors for Apple devices) and a 3.5 mm headphone jack.

While laptops, too, have USB 3.0 or USB-C ports, a headphone jack, plus additional Ethernet, HDMI connectors, and others. You can also attach different accessories like a webcam, a DVD reader, or an external SSD, which may be hard or impossible to do with a tablet.

Both tablets and laptops support Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. As for cellular connectivity, there are a lot of tablets that can be used as phones, but for laptops, this type of connection is very rare.

Price. Which One is More Cost-effective?

The budget is one of the most important factors while buying a laptop or a tablet. The ideal purchase is when the price is in balance with the quality of a product suitable for you.

Tablets are cheaper than laptops in general. The price range for tablets is from about $80 to $1500 and for laptops, it is from about $180 to $2500.

Whatever you choose, remember: a cheap tablet in most cases works better than a cheap laptop, while a high-end tablet tends to have worse performance than a laptop for the same price.

Laptop or Tablet: Which Is Better?

Now that you know how to compare tablets to laptops, the question "Should I buy a tablet or a laptop?", probably, doesn't bother you anymore.

However, the difference between a laptop and a tablet is not the main factor in your decision. Before you choose tablet or laptop performance and form factor, you need to know what you want from your device.

If you need a device for browsing the web, watching videos, listening to music, reading, or playing casual games, you can use a tablet. Even a smartphone would be fine for these activities, but a tablet has a bigger display. This light and compact device with a long-lasting battery and high-resolution screen is also perfect for traveling.

You can select the size you prefer, using the filters on our site, or compare screen size and other specs in the tablet comparison tool.

The main advantage of a laptop is more powerful hardware. It's a mobile version of a desktop after all. So, if you need a more flexible device for multi-tasking work and a lot of typing, you may feel more comfortable with a laptop and find some useful tips in the laptop buying guide.

Although you can use a tablet with a detachable keyboard for typing, a device with a larger screen and a keyboard would be more convenient.

For entertainment or traveling, I would buy a tablet and for work, it would be a laptop.

Or if you want to be somewhere in the middle and have both, portability and advanced features of a laptop, you can choose a hybrid 2-in-1 tablet PC like the Microsoft Surface Pro X. Although it's not a laptop, it's highly productive.

Technology nowadays evolves quickly and offers a wide range of portable computers from classic laptops and Ultrabooks to hybrid 2-in-1 laptops with attached or detachable keyboards, for example, the Microsoft Surface Book 2 and 2-in-1 tablet PCs. But now you know the main advantages and disadvantages of tablets and laptops. Hopefully, it will help you make the right choice.

If you want to compare tablets and laptops, Fastchooser is at your service as it is a very convenient tablet finder or a laptop comparison tool, depending on what you need. If you made up your mind to buy a laptop, check the article about the best laptops in 2021. And the guide about the best tablets in 2021 can help you buy the tablet of your dream if you need one.