a price-friendly tablet for the whole family

HMD Global has already released a lot of smartphones under the Nokia brand. Now the company hopes to score with its own tablet; equipped with Android, excellent specs and a favorable price; the Nokia T20. How does this tablet score? We look at it in our extensive Nokia T20 review.

Nokia T20 review

The Nokia T20 is secretly not the first tablet from Nokia, a few years ago (unsuccessfully) a tablet was released with the brand name of the Finns. This was the Nokia N1 and appeared in 2014. In the Netherlands, for example, this tablet was already not for sale. HMD Global is taking it more seriously this time, in the form of this Nokia T20. A tablet with apparently excellent specifications, without unnecessary fuss and that for a friendly price. Is that enough for him to succeed? We have tested this extensively for you in recent weeks, and you can read it back in the Nokia T20 review.

Sales package

In the rectangular sales package of the Nokia T20, we first see the tablet itself. In the packaging we also find a sim needle (if you have chosen the WiFi + 4G version of the tablet), a USB data cable, adapter and some paperwork. The basis is therefore present with the T20. You can purchase a cover for your tablet yourself.

Design and interface

We can hardly call the design of the Nokia T20 tablet special. It’s just an average tablet with a daily occurrence. And there’s nothing wrong with that at all. If you hold it horizontally, we see the front camera at the top. You will also find the slot for the SIM card and the volume key, on the right the speaker and USB-C connection and on the left the power button and another speaker. If you keep it upright, these are of course at the top. On the back is the single 5 megapixel camera with the LED flash.

What is immediately noticeable after playing briefly is that the Nokia T20 is very sensitive to fingerprints; something we often see in this price range. Not only are the back of the tablet covered with fingerprints, we also see the fingerprints on the screen.

The interface of the device is typical Android, with a clean interface. This means no unnecessary fuss in the design and a fairly standard Android experience. On the home page there is space for placing shortcuts to apps and of course placing widgets. You can access the quick settings and notifications window as well as the menu via the well-known swipe gestures.

Google Entertainment Space

Otherwise, however, is a swipe to the right. The left screen does not show the Google Feed, but another panel, which is also called the Google Entertainment Space. This app lists the various entertainment apps that you have installed on the tablet. You get tips from Google TV with, for example, popular movies and tips on YouTube. Optionally, content from, for example, Disney+ and Prime Video can also be shown. The ‘Games’ and ‘Reading’ tabs give you similar options for games and for books.

Kids Space

On the tablet, HMD Global has added the application ‘Kids Space’. The tablet can thus be made suitable especially for younger users. As a parent you can choose which apps can be used by the children, just like books and videos. Certain settings and functionalities can be adjusted. Thanks to the integration of Google Family Link, you can enable parental controls with, for example, a set screen time.

Connections

In terms of connectivity, the Nokia T20 has support for 5GHz and 2.4GHz WiFi. If you have the LTE version, it is not only possible to connect via WiFi, but also via 4G. In the past few weeks that we tested the tablet, we noticed that the WiFi connection was thrown out several times. This happened every few days, in different locations. It is striking that we experienced this on two models; with the first model this could be solved by turning the tablet off and on; on the second model by selecting the WiFi network again. Hopefully a software update can help with this.

In terms of connectivity, the Nokia T20 has support for Bluetooth 5.0, GPS and it was right about it. We don’t find NFC on the T20, but on a tablet this is actually no problem. Surfing the internet is smooth via the tablet version of Google Chrome. This gives you quick access to the open tabs that you see at the top.

Multimedia: image and sound

Nokia has also thought of multimedia on the tablet. The Nokia T20 has a big screen of course to watch everything on and there are stereo speakers for sound quality. Given the price of the tablet, we should not have high expectations. You will immediately hear that there are stereo speakers on the device. The sound may sound a bit on the cool side, but it is fine. It is more than fine, especially for the price range in which the Nokia T20 is released. Thanks to the 3.5 millimeter connection, you can also connect a headset, although it is of course also possible to connect a headset via Bluetooth.

As for the display, there is a 10.4 inch screen with a brightness of 400 nits and a resolution of 2000 x 1200 pixels. Due to this relatively low brightness, it can be more difficult to read the screen in (direct) sunlight. This can be a thing if you mainly want to use it outside.

Camera: photo and video

Tablets are generally not well known for their camera performance. Not very surprising, because taking photos is in most cases not something that is on the number one wish list of the tablet buyer, especially in this price range.

There is an 8 megapixel camera with an LED flash on the back, with support for autofocus. The autofocus in the tablet is not the fastest, so sometimes it can take a little longer before focus is achieved. The camera on the front has 5 megapixels and can be used for video calling, for example. Shooting selfies is also possible, but the quality is clearly less.

The photo quality itself is decent. For its price and the fact that it is a tablet, the quality makes sense; don’t imagine much. The sharpness is not always right; colors are fairly similar, but the saturation falls short and details remain hidden from the camera of the Nokia T20. Nice for the home-garden-and-kitchen snapshots.

Performance: battery, speed and memory

Nokia supplies the Nokia T20 with a Unisoc T610 chipset. It is a processor that is not head and shoulders above the rest, but simply carries out its work. The performance fits well in the price range of the T20. The tablet is certainly not slow; sometimes loading an application can take just a little longer. I have not experienced this as disturbing in recent weeks.

Playing games is therefore not impossible at all on the Nokia T20. We have launched several graphically strong games. The tablet delivers excellent performance and performs well. You notice with such games that this is not the tablet for playing very heavy games, but you really do not have to do without games.

Nokia supplies the tablet with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage. This is all fine for most users. The internal memory can be expanded with a microSD memory card with a maximum size of 512GB.

Update Policy

Nokia now has a good reputation in the field of updates. The manufacturer also has a good update policy for this favorably priced tablet. The Nokia T20 will receive OS updates for two years. Because the tablet comes with Android 11, we assume that the update to Android 12 and Android 13 is in the offing and Android 14 will not be released for the T20. The security updates will last longer, namely three years. These are rolled out every month.

Despite the phone running on a clean Android version, without unnecessary fuss, Nokia has installed some bloatware on the tablet. We see this in a number of apps that were already on the device when the tablet was started. Think of Amazon Shopping, Netflix, Spotify and ExpressVPN. Fortunately, you can remove these apps.

battery life

What about the endurance of the Nokia T20? The tablet contains an 8200 mAh battery. First the charging; that takes quite a while with the 10W charger; namely four hours. For charging, the tablet has support for charging with a maximum power of 15 watts. But what about the stamina itself? That is fine to call it. We arrive at a screen time of about 8-8.5 hours. It depends entirely on how many days you use. With average use, it lasted between 4 and 6 days. If you use it more intensively, it should be possible to use it for two days without charging it.

Rating

The Nokia T20 is a very good tablet for an equally good price. You can be sure of updates for a longer period of time, it delivers excellent sound quality, a solid housing and a good battery life. Those are the Nokia’s strongest points. We have not encountered any real downsides, although a software update may come in handy for the occasional WiFi connection. You should not have too high expectations of the camera, but otherwise you have an excellent tablet.

It is a pity that Nokia does not directly sell a cover with keyboard for the T20. You can, for example, buy a Bluetooth keyboard and connect it to the Nokia T20. The number of (official) accessories that Nokia has released for the tablet are very minimal anyway.

You can buy the Nokia T20 at: Bol.com, Amazon and Belsimpel.