by MARC SALTZMAN

Tablets are popular for lots of reasons: They’re thin and light, feature a touch screen, have a long battery life and start up in a flash. But how to decide which tablet to go with? Here’s a look at the major players.

Apple’s iPad tablets are powerful devices with gorgeous screens. They support an optional Apple Pencil (stylus), and there’s Siri, Apple’s personal assistant that lets you use your voice to interact with the iPad.

All iPads offer a Wi-Fi version or a Wi-Fi plus cellular option, and it’s easy to find accessories for any iPad model in Apple’s lineup: iPad mini (8.3 inches), iPad (10.2 inches), iPad Air (10.9 inches, and with stunning Liquid Retina display) and the supercharged and larger iPad Pro (12.9 inches, with Liquid Retina XDR display).

Like other Apple devices, iPads are very secure. You have access to the App Store for more than a million iPad apps.

More than a dozen companies sell open-source Android-powered tablets, which range in size from 5 to 13 inches (though most are between 8 and 10 inches). Since Android is part of the Google family, most of these tablets have popular Google apps, such as Gmail, Google Maps, YouTube, Google Drive (cloud storage), Photos, Duo (video calls), Chrome (browser) and an integrated voice-activated Google Assistant, built in for your convenience.

The Google Play store has more than 3.5 million downloadable apps and games, plus there are other stores to download from. Some Android tablets even let you expand the tablet’s storage via a microSD memory card.

Several tablets run on Microsoft’s popular Windows 11 operating system—in sizes that go all the way up to 15 inches. And some models feature a removable keyboard to convert the device from a laptop to a tablet (such as some of the Surface-branded options), making them great for both work and play.

Windows-based tablets include a familiar interface and apps, and their files sync to Microsoft’s OneDrive (cloud storage) for safekeeping.

A built-in Windows Store can download new content to your device. And because Windows supports all kinds of accessories, you can easily connect extra hardware to expand its functionality (see “One step beyond”).