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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dylan522p - Tuesday, June 24, 2014 - link
All points are not equal, Saturation and gamut are far mmore important.name99 - Wednesday, June 25, 2014 - link
This really seems like the narcism of small differences.Judging from Anand's comments, both displays are spectacular, and more fruitful avenues of competition would appear to be based on features other than improving the metrics Anand is measuring.
Given what appears to be substantially lower power (when displaying dark scenes) Samsung comes out ahead --- of course this is of little value if they do worse on displaying white scenes, which also appears to be the case, and if (like me) you spend most of your time reading black text against a white background.
In future whoever gets to variable refresh first (both to save power, and to display 24 and 48 fps content at the native rate) will have achieved a more useful advantage. Likewise I suspect that for at least some purposes an available refresh rate of higher than 60 fps (maybe 72, maybe 90 or even 120) may be valuable --- I don't know how high you need to go before motion (especially the difficult cases like horizontal pans) never judders.
lilo777 - Tuesday, June 24, 2014 - link
Let me just quote DisplayMate - a well know specialist in display evaluations: "Based on our extensive Lab tests and measurements, the Galaxy Tab S is the Best Performing Tablet Display that we have ever tested, not surprisingly with performance that is almost identical to the OLED Galaxy S5 Smartphone that we recently tested and found to be the Best Performing Smartphone Display."While I appreciate AnanTech reviews very much for their comprehensiveness when it comes to displays I prefer the opinion of the specialists in the field. You can read DisplayMate's full review here: http://www.displaymate.com/OLED_Tablet_ShootOut_1....
dylan522p - Tuesday, June 24, 2014 - link
You mean biased as fuck? He calls 113% gamut "great" and he says the saturation is also great look at the numbers and you see it's bullshit.the_ether - Tuesday, June 24, 2014 - link
Where does he say that?From what I can see, in reference to a gamut of 113% he has said, "Slightly Too High," and that is in reference to sRGB and the screen being in 'Basic Mode' instead of 'Photo Mode'. When in 'Photo Mode', the Samsung screen is said to be within 106% of the larger, Adobe RGB gamut.
Of course, a wide gamut capability is pointless without accuracy and according to his tests, the Samsung 10.5 screen is either "Very good" or "Excellent."
hung2900 - Tuesday, June 24, 2014 - link
I agree with the_either. Displaymate rated carefully and not biased.Color gamut:
- Air 108%: very good.
- Tab S 10.5 113%: slightly too high.
Absolute Color Accuracy Average Color Error:
- Air 3.2 JNCD Very good.
- Tab 10.5 2.1 JNCD Excellent
Absolute Color Accuracy Largest Color Error
- Air 7.9 JNCD Good.
- Tab 10.5 4.0 JNCD Very good.
So nothing wrong when Displaymate said Tab S has better color accuracy and is the best tablet display yet in market when combining with other factors.
P/s sorry for my rude comment above
the_ether - Tuesday, June 24, 2014 - link
Thank you hung2900.mhannigan - Wednesday, June 25, 2014 - link
You didn't read. One of the things he makes a point of several times is the ability to change the screen calibration. He notes that many people find the increased saturation pleasing to the eye - I do. But if you don't like it, there are other options, two of which are spot on with industry standard color gamut.ddriver - Tuesday, June 24, 2014 - link
It is hard to take anand reviews seriously just looking at their "CPU benchmark" choices, plus their heavy bias toward apple products. DisplayMate go further with testing and are more objective in their conclusions.hung2900 - Tuesday, June 24, 2014 - link
Anand's CPU comparison is so apple-and-orange comparison. Everyone know Sunspider is the mix of Browser optimization, CPU power and how CPU optimized toward browsing. Why didn't he use Chrome to mesure the Sunsipder of iOS?