If you're in the market for a new tablet, especially one for enjoying a movie, most people will look to an Amazon Fire tablet. That's fair enough. They are good at that exact thing; I call Fire tablets "Netflix boxes."
There is another – much bigger – option, though. The Blackview Mega 8 is a massive, 13-inch tablet that runs Android 16 out of the box. Said box includes a case, a tempered glass screen protector, a stylus, and a SIM tray ejector pin – which we will discuss in a bit.
All this checks in for just under $250 on Amazon. Even Amazon's own biggest offering, the $189.99 Fire 11 tablet, has a smaller (11-inch) screen and nowhere near the number of accessories. But, there is a reason for the Mega 8's low price tag.
To start, the screen is not amazing. It's a full HD panel using IPS technology, which is not the best you can get in a tablet these days. Typically you'll want the richer colors and deeper black levels of an AMOLED screen, especially for enjoying media. The Mega 8's panel is a touch dimmer than I'd normally like, but I have definitely seen worse. It falls into the "just OK" column.
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The audio, which is also important for entertainment, is quite good. You get a nice full range of sound – as good as any tablet speakers can provide, anyway. They are loud, which is definitely nice. They don't provide super-low bass, as you might find in a music video or action movie explosions, but they're very respectable for the category.
On the inside, you have a Unisoc Tiger T620 processor, which is…fine. Unisoc is a very beginner-level processor maker that powers devices on the weaker end of the spectrum. Running the Geekbench 6 benchmarking app, the tablet returned mediocre scores of 508 in the single-core and 1,558 in the multi-core tests. The Mega 8 has plenty of power for streaming media apps like Netflix, but Blackview makes bigger claims.
It advertises the Mega 8 as a gaming tablet and says that it can run AI models on the device (not simply accessed over the web). Blackview specifically cites Deepseek Deepthinking (R1), ChatGPT-4o mini, and Gemini AI 2.0 with FlashThinking Experimental on its website, but it doesn't include those preinstalled on the device.
These claims are likely based on the screen size and the advertised "36 GB of RAM," but that figure is misleading. The tablet has 12 GB of onboard RAM and can use up to 24 GB of VRAM, which is very much not the same thing. It's simply utilizing some SSD hard drive space to pose as additional RAM, but it doesn't have the same speed, so it's not terribly helpful.
Even if the Mega 8 had 32GB of onboard RAM, running the T620 processor with it would be like taking a bicycle on an empty highway. Sure, there's plenty of space, but you can't get very far. I tried running "Asphalt: Legends" on the tablet, and it ran decently for a graphic-heavy game. But the graphics themselves were pixelated and blocky, which is what you'll get when there isn't enough horsepower to generate graphics smoothly.
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On the bright side, this tablet has an 11,000 mAh battery, which means it can last a long time on a single charge. It's not the biggest battery you'll find in a tablet, but it's more than enough to get you through several movies and/or hours of work.
The Blackview Mega 8 has dual SIM slots, so it can get online over 4G LTE when away from WiFi. I didn't have a chance to test connectivity, however. I don't have a SIM card for a data plan, and this tablet doesn't seem to support eSIMs, which is definitely going against trends lately. Blackview doesn't specify which carriers it can work with. Based on my experience with overseas phones that also weren't certified on U.S. networks, it's probably a good bet that you'll get connectivity, but of course, your mileage may vary.
More than anything, though, you're buying this tablet for enjoying video or audio, or perhaps to use as a mobile writing or web-surfing device. It would do a good job at any of those activities.
The brightest part of the Blackview Mega 8 remains that price tag: under $250 for a 13-inch tablet. Android 16 is also a good deal. Pair this up with a keyboard, and you can get some work done, and then take in a movie. Try to go beyond that though, and you may be disappointed.
[Image credit: Adam Doud/Techlicious]
