Samsung Galaxy Tab S Review (10.5 & 8.4-inch)
by Anand Lal Shimpi on June 24, 2014 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Tablets
- Samsung
- Mobile
- Galaxy Tab S
Final Words
The Galaxy Tab S is easily the most compelling tablet family Samsung has ever released. The devices are incredibly thin, very light and boast displays that can be easily configured to be among the most accurate in the industry. In the Android tablet space it’s often a stretch charging $399 or $499, even for a flagship, given how good the Nexus line ends up being. With the Tab S, I think Samsung has something that’s worthy of a price premium over the more cost effective Android tablets.
The Galaxy Tab S, regardless of size, is easy to hold and has a screen that’s great to look at. These are two of the most important things to get right when building a tablet and the Tab S delivers on both.
The features around the edges are nice additions. The integrated fingerprint scanner works better on the tablet than it does on the phone, and is a decent time saver if you’ve got a long passcode. Having 2-stream 802.11ac support is nice as well, although the implementation isn’t as good as it is on the Galaxy S5. If you do have a Galaxy S5, having the ability to answer calls directly from your tablet is a neat feature.
The devices aren't perfect however. The Exynos 5420 SoC in both tablets is no longer class leading. CPU performance is reasonable but the GPU does seem to have issues keeping up with the high resolution display. If anything, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 805 would probably have been a better fit for the tablets across the board. I suspect Exynos 5420 won out due to pricing, but as a result we end up with a tablet that has the dimensions and display of a flagship and an SoC that is simply good enough.
Battery life is either going to be amazing or below par depending on your usage model. If you spend a lot of time looking at web pages, you’ll find the high resolution AMOLED display to be a power liability. If however you mainly use your tablet to watch TV and movies, there’s literally no better option on the market today when it comes to battery life. Even the tiny 8.4-inch Galaxy Tab S managed to best all of the other tablets we’ve tested in video playback battery life, delivering over 15 hours on a single charge. Start browsing the web however and you’re looking at roughly half of that. It’s an interesting tradeoff for sure.
Overall the Galaxy Tab S feels like a solid reboot for Samsung’s tablet ambitions. The trick from here on out will be to continue to iterate the design without losing focus. A successor with a better SoC might be a good start. Perhaps Snapdragon 808/810 might be a good option next year, or an 805 based solution by the end of this year depending on how aggressive of a schedule Samsung sticks to for tablet releases going forward.
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theduckofdeath - Tuesday, June 24, 2014 - link
Read his other comments, are you'll find out how he's able to come to that quick conclusion from a YouTube clip... :)GC2:CS - Wednesday, June 25, 2014 - link
I also think that one video is too little to draw a conclusion, but it's far more useful than any set of numbers can ever be to describe a display. I don't care how used camera and my crappy TN LCD display could screw the video because you are wrong as the perceived characteristics of botch evaluated displays is changed in the same way. I see that the iPad has an picture and the tab S has the same picture that looks differently, and I also know that the iPad Air makes very accurate colors and the tab S is making apparently different colors, which logically implies that it's not as nice colored as the iPad. Yah an quick conclusion, but can you tell me where I made a mistake, or make your own different conclusion from that video ?ESC2000 - Sunday, July 6, 2014 - link
The sky is orange. I'm holding this orange next to it and it doesn't match so it's not orange.That is the exact same logic you are following but it illustrates the flaw in it.
hung2900 - Tuesday, June 24, 2014 - link
I think you really have a problem with your reading skill. The Tab S 10.1 definitely won in white accuracy (quite significant), grayscale accuracy (far), GMB accuracy (quite). iPad Air won with Gamut accuracy (quite to medium) and saturation (quite much).At least a basic person can see that Tab S 10.1 won 3/5 points of the comparison. While with users, the grayscale is much more important that everyone should have a same perspective, while the minor saturation is only subjective from person to person.
Not forgot to say the biggest advantage is the infinite contrast (which triumps when you read/see everything indoor) and better outdoor visibility with automatic brightness (supposed to be, as GS5 vs iPhone 5s) brings better image outdoor.
So what is your point?
hung2900 - Tuesday, June 24, 2014 - link
Forgot to say: If you or anybody have ever used the old Tab 7.7, you can see the contrast advantage is MUCH more notable. That's the reason why many people and Tab 7.7 ex-users have waited for these tablets for so long.GC2:CS - Tuesday, June 24, 2014 - link
The point is that everybody expected this new thing to just kind of crush everything, not slightly outstrip an retina display from 2012.theduckofdeath - Tuesday, June 24, 2014 - link
And it is crushing everything else. As hung2900 says, contrast is what has the biggest impression on any normal user, and this tablet is literally killing everything else on that point.the_ether - Tuesday, June 24, 2014 - link
Wow, that's a bit rude.So,
a) who's to say that each test has the same weighting? Perhaps colour reproduction is more important than say, greyscale accuracy, especially to say, an artist;
b) I already stated that contrast was another factor not tested that should be considered, so repeating that point was moot.
So the point is that it is not an obviously better screen than the iPad Air.
mhannigan - Wednesday, June 25, 2014 - link
Yes, it is.ESC2000 - Sunday, July 6, 2014 - link
Don't take it so personally. So what if your iPad doesn't have the nicest screen of all tablets? The truth is there are many parts of an iPad that are bested by other tablets but that shouldn't stop you from enjoying yours.