The Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 Review

Final Words

This feels almost completely obvious but the Tab S2 9.7" is definitely the most compelling tablet that Samsung has released to date, and I think it's a good overall upgrade over the Tab S 10.5". Over the course of the review I've found some aspects of the Tab S2 to be really great, and others that need improvement next time around. It's worth going over them all again before coming to any final conclusions about the tablet.

Being the thinnest and lightest full size tablet around is really awesome, and the Tab S2 delivers a level of portability and comfort that I've never seen on another full size tablet. While the original Tab S was within range of the iPad Air's mass despite being made of plastic, both models of the Tab S2 undercut their iPad competitor's mass by a significant amount. In the case of the Tab S2 9.7" this leads to it being the first large tablet I've ever used where I never feel fatigued when holding it for long periods, and that I'm willing to bring everywhere I go even when I have my laptop with me as well.

Of course, achieving such a low mass required making the Tab S2 mostly out of plastic. While it's not like the hyperglaze plastic of years past, and certainly not the dimpled back of the Tab S, it's definitely no iPad or Venue 8. Whether or not the trade-off is worth it will depend on a specific user's preferences, but it's definitely worth pointing out that despite how much I care about the build quality and industrial design of a product, I found myself envious of the Tab S2's lightness compared to the Nexus 9 or iPad Air 2.

The display on the Tab S2 9.7" is phenomenal. It's every bit as sharp as the iPad Air 2, every bit as accurate, and has the best black level and contrast ratio you'll find on any device. It did seem a bit more difficult to use in unforgiving lighting than the iPad Air 2 due to the differences in brightness and reflectiveness, but in most scenarios it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that it's the best tablet display that I've ever seen, and that's a huge win for Samsung.

Performance is unfortunately not the Tab S2's strong point. This was an issue with the original Tab S as well, and in my view it's simply due to the fact that shipping the same SoC across your phones and tablets does not make for competitive products when your competitors are designing and implementing SoCs designed specifically for the size and thermal profile of a tablet. Both CPU and GPU performance lags well behind the Nexus 9 and iPad Air 2, with both being about a year old now. It's just really not acceptable unless you're willing to undercut the competition on price, and Samsung has done no such thing, with the Tab S2 9.7" retailing for the same $499 price tag as the iPad Air 2. That does get you an additional 16GB of storage compared to the iPad Air 2 which is $499 for 16GB or $599 for the 64GB model, but I would rather leverage the cloud and get substantially more performance than trade that performance for 16GB of NAND.

The rear camera on the Tab S2 is one of the best cameras on any tablet. Effective resolution is as good as the iPad Air 2, and Samsung's processing has improved significantly in the past year. I do wish they would reduce the amount of sharpening occurring, but beyond that I have no issues with image quality. Night time shots still suffer from the overexposure that is also prevalent on the Galaxy S6, and it's worth noting that this has been remedied on the Galaxy Note 5 so it's already something Samsung has gotten around to fixing on other devices. Video quality was also very good for a tablet, although there was a visible jiggle effect in some frames which is caused by the EIS. Ultimately I'm not a tablet photographer, but I think anyone who is will enjoy the quality of the photos and videos produced by the Tab S2.

As for battery life, this is again an area where I feel things didn't turn out well. There's simply an imbalance between the battery capacity Samsung decided to put in the Tab S2 and the power required by some of the components. In a display or SoC heavy workload your battery life will much shorter than what you'll get from an iPad, and your performance across that period won't be near as fast and much less consistent on top of that. You can definitely achieve good battery life if you have a remarkably mixed workload or only watch movies on your tablet, but my personal results certainly tended toward the battery life you see in the tests with the worst results, and my tablet workflow is heavily focused on productivity.

On top of the less than stellar battery life, Samsung didn't build in any fast charging support to the Tab S2. It's actually possible that after a period of web browsing and gaming or CPU heavy productivity apps it will take longer to bring the Tab S2 back to 100% charge than it did to completely deplete it. It's just not a great situation, and I don't know why there wasn't some sort of fast charging implementation.

Interestingly enough, I think if the smaller Tab S2 8.0" packed an RGB display and had better battery life than the 9.7" model that it would be my definite recommendation for a small Android tablet. There's certainly a large leap in expectations even when moving from a $399 tablet to a $499 one, and part of that simply has to do with what sort of competition exists in each price bracket. The Tab S2 9.7" definitely has some great aspects, but there just aren't enough premium features to justify the premium price that Samsung wants for it.

In the end despite its issues the Tab S2 9.7" is probably the best Android tablet I've reviewed, if only for its incredible lightness and amazing display. Unfortunately I just don't think those things are enough to justify the $499 price tag, and the performance certainly isn't anywhere near where it needs to be in order to give the user the same performance for their money that an iPad Air 2 would. It's really disappointing, because a tablet with this kind of display quality and level of portability has the potential to be one of the best, if not the best full sized tablet out there.