Two minute review
As we saw with the Nokia T20, under the guidance of parent company HMD Global, the Nokia brand is back in the budget tablet market. While the Nokia T10 we’re reviewing here comes a year after the Nokia T20, this tablet is actually smaller and even more affordable than its predecessor.
In other words, it’s a cheap and cheerful tablet designed to act as entertainment for the kids or something you can use to check your email or skip that latest must-watch streaming show. What you have here is very much an Amazon Fire 7 (2022) competitor, with prices and specs to match.
As is the case when choosing the best smartphone for your needs or the most suitable laptop for your next upgrade, choosing the perfect tablet for you involves figuring out where on the performance versus price line you want to land. The Nokia T10’s low price is definitely its biggest selling point, and as a result, you’re not going to get the sharpest display or the fastest performance.
When it comes to the screen and internal specs, we’re talking about good enough rather than anything special. Don’t expect to jump between apps or complete demanding tasks very quickly at all, but this is a tablet that does the basics well enough, and many people won’t want much more than that. If you just check social media and watch videos on the couch, you’ll be fine.
On the plus side, battery life is better than average, and the Android 12 software that comes with it is clean and mostly bloat-free. If you’re planning to give this tablet to younger kids, that’s something Android can now handle during the setup process, giving you access to parental controls via your own Google account.
If you need a cheap tablet to consume content and do some casual web browsing and social feeds, the Nokia T10 fits the bill. If you’re interested in serious levels of productivity, photo and video editing, and advanced gaming on your next tablet, you’d be better off looking elsewhere.
Nokia T10 price and availability
- Out now
- Costs $170 / £129 / AU$319
The Nokia T10 is out and available to buy now in the UK and US: you’ll need to pay $170 or so for it in the US, and somewhere in the region of £129 to pick it up in the UK. In Australia it retails for AU$319.
That’s a competitive price point for everything you get in return, and you may be able to find further reductions online.
Nokia T10 design and display
- Robust and built to last
- Looks simple and cheap
- The screen is adequate, but lacks brightness and resolution
The Nokia T10 looks very much like what it is: a cheap Android tablet. It’s relatively chunky at 9mm thick, and the look is about as plain as it gets – although its sea blue back catches the eye more than black or grey.
It tips the scales at 375 grams, which isn’t too bad, but you won’t mistake this for a premium-level Android tablet or iPad when you pick it up.
Smaller tablets don’t seem to be that popular – it feels like Apple is somewhat reluctant to keep the iPad mini line going, for example – and with a screen size of 8 inches, this is one of the smaller tablets on the market.
We actually like this size, which is fine to hold in one hand when needed, but that’s somewhat of a subjective choice. It also depends on what you will be doing with the tablet: there is plenty of space for watching videos, but not so much for editing spreadsheets.
With a typical brightness of 360 nits, the IPS LCD display panel isn’t top notch when it comes to brightness, and the 1280 x 800 pixel resolution is also quite underwhelming.
This is where you can see the cost savings have been made, but it’s still a screen that holds up well in all kinds of light except bright outdoor sunlight – where you might struggle to see what’s on the screen. The thickness of the screen frames again indicates the low price of the tablet.
The Nokia T10 certainly feels solid and built to last, even though it’s cheap and lacks waterproofing. There are two speakers built into the tablet, on either side when held in landscape mode. You then have a USB-C port for charging and data transfer, which is at the bottom if the tablet is in portrait mode, and a 3.5 mm headphone jack, which is at the top.
You also have a power button on the top and volume buttons high on the right side of the tablet, when you look at it from the front in portrait mode.
- Design Score: 3.5/5
- Show Score: 3/5
Nokia T10 camera
- A single 8MP sensor on the back and 2MP sensor on the front
- Photos from the main camera can be okay in good light
- Struggles in poor light
Most of us aren’t really going to buy a tablet to take pictures with it, so it doesn’t matter that the 8MP camera on the back of the Nokia T10 isn’t very good. Photos taken by the camera are ok in good light, but tend to be slightly overexposed, and the color balance and autofocus are not always reliable.
We’re not saying you can’t get appealing photos from the Nokia T10, because you can. But you need a steady hand and plenty of light, and even then there are no guarantees – fine for quickly sharing moments on social media, but not for reliably capturing important memories.
Image quality suffers in low light, as you’d expect, but to be fair you can still take some usable shots if there’s some ambient lighting.
Perhaps more worryingly, you only get a 2MP front-facing selfie snapper, so if you’re going to be making video calls with this device, don’t expect to see the best in terms of resolution.
The selfie camera works fine, and is good at adapting to changes in light for example, but you’d probably get something much more superior in quality from the selfie camera on your phone.
Camera tests
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Nokia T10 battery life
- Should offer at least 12 hours of longevity
- Charging slowly
When streaming video – with the screen at maximum brightness and the volume set quite low – the 5250mAh battery in the Nokia T10 drops by 8% per hour, which equates to around 12-13 hours of video in total.
It is quite impressive and dims the screen and of course you want more than that. In more general use, battery life on the Nokia T10 holds up well: you’ll get at least two or three days out of it with intermittent use, or maybe a day of non-stop gaming.
It’s worth noting that there’s no wireless charging here, and rather slow 10W charging over a wired connection. These are other areas where you have to accept the trade-off of the Nokia T10’s low price, although overall battery life is quite good – a benefit of going with lower-powered internal specs and a less dazzling display.
Nokia T10 performance
- Slow performance with some stuttering
- Everything should just about run
A quick look at the Nokia T10’s internal specs – a mid-range Unisoc T606 chipset, 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage (expandable via a microSD card) – and you wouldn’t expect too much in terms of performance.
Geekbench 5 scores of 308 (single core), 1175 (multi-core) and 514 (OpenCL) support this. This is not the tablet to get if you want blazing fast performance.
The tablet is serviceable, although we suspect it probably wouldn’t be if the CPU or RAM were further cut down. Every app and game will run just about, but expect a few stutters and some lag when trying to quickly switch between apps, move between menus, and start the most intensive tasks.
Apps take a little longer to launch than you might expect if you’ve used the same ones on your smartphone, and feel a little less responsive.
Something we like about the Nokia T10 is the integrated face unlock technology, which works well and saves you from having to enter a password or PIN every time you want to get to the home screen – something you don’t often get on a budget tablet, and it’s one of the bright spots in the whole package.
Nokia T10 software
- Minimal bloating
- Updates to Android 13 and 14 promised
The tablet comes with Android 12 on board, and HMD Global guarantees you’ll get two years of major OS updates (to get you to Android 14) and three years of security updates. We suspect at that stage the tablet will be slow enough that you’ll want to replace it anyway.
We’re happy to report that the Nokia Android experience isn’t much different from the stock Android experience, which is the same approach we’ve seen on Nokia smartphones like the Nokia G21.
There are a couple of bloatware apps pre-installed – Amazon Shopping and ExpressVPN – but they’re easy enough to get rid of if you don’t want to use them. Google Assistant is of course here and available, and continues to get better and more useful over time.
Nokia T10 scorecard
| Attributes | Notes | Assessment |
|---|---|---|
| Design | Solid and built to last, but undeniably simple and cheap too. Not more than you’d expect for the price though. | 3.5/5 |
| Show | Adequate, but underwhelming in every way. But it will get the job done in most situations. | 3/5 |
| Software | Clean software with minimal bloat and the promise of several years of updates – not bad for something so cheap. | 4.5/5 |
| Performance | Definitely not a powerhouse. Apps are slow to load and sometimes stutter, but they should still run most things. | 2.5/5 |
| Battery | Surprisingly good life even when pushed hard. The only downside is slow charging. | 4/5 |
| Cameras | Incredibly basic cameras that will just about do the trick in good light, but your phone will almost certainly do better. | 2/5 |
| Value | Extremely cheap, and although the specs aren’t special, it performs either adequately or well in all areas, so it’s good value. | 4.5/5 |
Should I buy the Nokia T10?
Buy it if…
Don’t buy it if…
Also consider
If you’re not convinced that the Nokia T10 is right for you, consider the following three alternative options.
First considered: December 2022
