The best tablet PC for gaming?

Whether its EA’s Real Racing 3, or the mindless finger-tapping craze that is Candy Crush, your tablet PC needs to be up to modern specs.

Thanks to Engadget’s very cool review aggregation system – which gives average scores collected from multiple reviews for a single bit of tech – we can present the best tablets for gaming, in a table. A tablet table:

Tablet	iPad Air	iPad mini (with Retina display)	Asus Nexus 7 2nd Gen	Amazon Kindle Fire HDX 7-inch	Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 (2014 Edition)	Sony Xperia Tablet Z
Screen size	9.7-inch	7.9 inches	7.02 inches	7 inches	10.1 inches	10.1 inches
Display resolution	2048 x 1536	2,048 x 1,536	1,920 x 1,200	1,920 x 1,200	2,560 x 1,600	1,920 x 1,200
SunSpider test	388ms	423ms	602ms	553.7ms	1069ms	1382ms
Battery life	13hrs, 45 mins	11hrs, 55 mins	7hrs, 14 mins	10hrs, 41 mins	9hrs, 36 mins	8hrs, 40mins
Price	R8,999.00 (32GB with WiFi and Cellular)	R7,899.00 (32GB with WiFi and Cellular)	R5,999.00 (32GB with WiFi and Cellular)	R5,199.00 (64gb with Wifi and Cellular)	R9000.00 (32GB with WiFi and Cellular)	R7,999 (16GB with WiFi & Cellular)
Engadget score	92%	92%	90%	85%	80%	82%

The SunSpider benchmark test was the common standard among all the tablets, so we added it in as a second ranking measure. Please note that the lower the SunSpider score, the better the performance.

It is no real surprise to see the iPad Air coming out tops in both the Engadget score and SunSpider test, and at a shade under R9000.00 its owners will feel somewhat vindicated in their purchase.

We stacked Engadget’s scores up against AnandTech’s tablet GPU benchmarking table and the iPad Air game up second best.

Above it was the Microsoft Surface Pro, which did not receive great reviews from Engadget and others due to its poor design choices and low battery life – and therefore does not come recommended despite its strong benchmark performance.

Below are the top 10 tablets according to the AnandTech GPU benchmark scoring: