Nokia T10 review

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 binge-watch the latest must-see streaming show. What you have here is very much an Amazon Fire 7 (2022) competitor, with pricing 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, picking out the perfect tablet for you involves working out where on the performance vs price line you want to land. The low price of the Nokia T10 is definitely its biggest selling point, and as a result of that you’re not going to get the sharpest screen or the speediest performance.

When it comes to the display and the internal specs, we’re talking about just 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 a lot of people won’t want a lot more than that. If you’re just checking social media and watching videos on the sofa, you’ll be fine.

On the plus side, the battery life is better than average, and the Android 12 software that comes on board is clean and largely bloat-free. If you’re planning to give this tablet to younger children, that’s something that Android can now handle during the setup process, giving you access to parental controls through your own Google account.

If you need a cheap tablet for consuming content and some casual browsing of the web and your social feeds, the Nokia T10 fits the bill. If you’re interested in serious levels of productivity, image and video editing, and high-end gaming on your next tablet, you’re going to 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 the US: you’ll need to pay $170 or thereabouts 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 might be able to find further reductions online.

• Value score: 4.5/5

Nokia T10 design and display

• Sturdy and built to last
• Looks plain and cheap
• The screen is adequate but lacking in brightness and resolution

The Nokia T10 looks very much like what it is: a cheap Android tablet. It’s relatively chunky with its 9mm thickness, and its looks are about as plain as they come – although its Ocean Blue backing does catch the eye more than black or gray would. 

It tips the scales at 375 grams, which isn’t too bad, but you’re not going to confuse this for a premium-level Android tablet or iPad when you pick it up.

Smaller tablets don’t seem to be all that popular – it feels as though Apple is somewhat reluctant when it comes to keeping the iPad mini line going, for example – and with a screen size of 8 inches this is one of the smaller slates on the market.

We actually quite like this size, which is fine for holding in one hand when necessary, but it’s something of a subjective choice. It also depends what you’re going to do with the tablet: there’s plenty of room for watching videos, but not so much for editing spreadsheets.

At a typical brightness of 360 nits, the IPS LCD display panel isn’t top of the line when it comes to brightness, and the 1280 x 800 pixel resolution is rather underwhelming too.

It’s here that you can see that the savings on costs have been made, but it’s still a screen that holds up well in any kind of light except bright outdoor sunlight – where you might struggle to see what’s on the display. The thickness of the display bezels again indicate the low price of the tablet.

The Nokia T10 certainly feels sturdy and built to last, even if it is cheap and lacks waterproofing. There are two speakers built into the slate, at either side when held in landscape mode. You’ve then got a USB-C port for charging and data transfer, which is at the bottom if the tablet is in portrait mode, and a 3.5mm headphone jack, which is at the top.

You’ve also got 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
• Display score: 3/5

Nokia T10 camera

• A single 8MP sensor on the back and 2MP one on the front
• Images from the main camera can be okay in good light
• Struggles in low light

Most of us aren’t really going to buy a tablet to take photos with it, and so it won’t matter much that the 8MP camera on the back of the Nokia T10 isn’t very good. Images captured by the camera are okay in good light, but tend to be a bit overexposed, and the color balance and autofocus isn’t always reliable.

We’re not saying you can’t get appealing pictures 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.

The picture quality gets worse in low light, as you would expect, although to be fair you can still grab some usable images if there’s a bit of illumination around.

Perhaps more worrying is that you only get a 2MP selfie snapper on the front, so if you’re going to be making video calls with this device, don’t expect to be looking your best in terms of resolution.

The selfie camera works fine, and is okay at adapting to changes in lighting for example, but you’re likely to get something much more superior in terms of quality from the selfie camera on your phone.

Camera samples

• Camera score: 2/5

Nokia T10 battery life

• Should offer at least 12 hours of life
• Charges slowly

When streaming video – with the screen at maximum brightness and the volume set quite low – the 5,250mAh battery in the Nokia T10 dips by 8% an hour, which equates to around 12-13 hours of video watching overall.

That’s fairly impressive, and dim the screen and you will of course get more than that. In more general use, battery life on the Nokia T10 holds up well: you’re going to 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 need to accept the trade-off of the low price of the Nokia T10, although the battery life overall is pretty good – a benefit of going with lower powered internal specs and a not-so-dazzling display.

• Battery score: 4/5

Nokia T10 performance

• Sluggish performance with some stutters
• Everything should just about run

A quick peek at the internal specs of the Nokia T10 – a mid-range Unisoc T606 chipset, 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage (which you can expand via a microSD card) – and you won’t be expecting too much in terms of performance.

Geekbench 5 scores of 308 (single-core), 1175 (multi-core) and 514 (OpenCL) back that up. This is not the tablet to get if you want lightning fast performance.

The tablet is usable, though we suspect it probably wouldn’t be if the CPU or RAM was cut back any further. Every app and game will run, just about, but expect a few stutters and some lag when you’re trying to quickly switch between apps, move between menus, and launch 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 do like about the Nokia T10 is the integrated face unlock technology, which works well and saves you from having to enter a password or a PIN every time you want to get to the home screen – it’s not something that you often get on a budget tablet, and it’s one of the bright spots of the whole package.

• Performance score: 2/5

Nokia T10 software

• Minimal bloat
• 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 main operating system updates (to take you to Android 14) and three years of security updates. We suspect by that stage that the tablet will be sluggish enough that you’re going to want to replace it anyway.

We’re pleased to report that the Nokia Android experience isn’t much different from the stock Android experience, which is the same approach that we’ve seen on Nokia smartphones like the Nokia G21.

There are a couple of bloatware apps preinstalled – 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.

• Software score: 4.5/5

Nokia T10 score card

Should I buy the Nokia T10?

Buy it if…