O2 has extended its O2 Refresh price plan system to include tablets. Like the network already offers with smartphones, you can pick up a tablet device on a monthly contract, with the SIM plan as a separate payment.

You can choose a tablet from a selection including the recently-launched Sony Xperia Z2 Tablet, Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 10.1, Galaxy Tab 3 8.0, Nexus 7 and Asus Fonepad. You then add a separate data plan, with monthly capacity limits from 500MB to 8GB available.

The cost will be spread over the 24-month contract to avoid an up-front fee. And where O2 Refresh differs from some other networks' tablet and data combination packages is that you can upgrade the tablet at a later date by paying off the cost of the tablet alone, not the rest of the data plan contract.

An example given by O2 is that a Sony Xperia Tablet Z2 usually costs £529.99 on its own, but on O2 Refresh with the 3GB per month data plan you will pay £21 a month with no up-front cost for the device and £15 a month for the data (a combined monthly fee of £36).

READ: Sony Xperia Z2 Tablet review

This actually means the tablet will work out cheaper across the whole 24 months, £25.99 cheaper in fact. And should you want to upgrade your device for a new tablet after a year, you would only have to pay off the remaining £252. Traditional network contracts demand that you also pay off the data fees too, which in this case would amount to an additional £180.

"Only with O2 can you change your tech whenever you like without having to pay the penalty on your airtime. Encouraging feedback from our customers has led us to launch it on tablets this week," said Nina Bibby, marketing and consumer director at O2.

You can find out more about O2 Refresh for tablets at o2.co.uk/tablets.