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.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
98 Comments
View All Comments
kyuu - Tuesday, June 24, 2014 - link
Right. So I guess if you were looking for an iOS tablet you'd be shopping around for a used OG iPad, and not an iPad Air? Because I mean c'mon, it's the same software. The only difference is the specs.Or if you were looking for a Windows tablet you'd find a deal on one of those ancient pre-iPad slates, right? I mean it'll run full Windows, so the software is the same. The only difference is the specs.
And I don't really get what you even mean to imply when you say "Oh right. It uses Android." No one will deny that iOS has the best app market, but I don't think Android has any shortage of software. In fact, you can get a lot of software that Apple simply won't allow on their app store.
sonicmerlin - Tuesday, June 24, 2014 - link
How about an OS that can scroll web pages smoothly? Android still stutters.genomecop - Wednesday, June 25, 2014 - link
To be fair iOS has its share of stuttering and other problems that are always associated with Android.ESC2000 - Sunday, July 6, 2014 - link
Not anymore. My nexus 5 and nexus 7 2013, each on 4.4.4, run like charms. Literally no lag ever. And I only spent $600 on both devices with no contracts. Check yo $800 iPhone and $500 ipad. And my devices don't freeze and crash due to low RAMNintendo Maniac 64 - Tuesday, June 24, 2014 - link
On the Galaxy S5 the "photo" mode corresponded to the Adobe RGB color space. It would have been a good idea to test that.GiantPandaMan - Tuesday, June 24, 2014 - link
What's with all the iOS users being so angry? It's a tablet review, not a discussion about gun control.xype - Wednesday, June 25, 2014 - link
Tablets don’t kill people, people kill people!!11oneeleventy:D
I’m an iOS user and I’ll likely never switch, but damn, it’s really nice to see the quality of Android tablets being pushed (even if Apple is the biggest reason Android manufacturers even give a damn) forward. It’s such a shame that Android users keep getting bombarded with cheap plastic and shitty build quality tablets most of the time. People deserve better than that.
And, yes, I’ve just been to the local electronics store and checked out the isle with 30+ nearly-identical Android tablets a few days ago… and they mostly felt like crap in the hand and when looking at the display. And the salespeople kept pushing them on people. :-/
althaz - Tuesday, June 24, 2014 - link
Love the hardware. First Android tablet I've been tempted to buy since my old Motorola Xoom.That said, I don't rate Android very highly for tablet use. If this had Win 8.1 or probably even Win RT on it, I'd be all over it as I feel Windows is a many times better user experience on tablets. Of course there's the app situation, but seeing as there are more Windows tablet apps than Android tablet apps (somewhat alleviated for Android by the possibility of using phone apps), for somebody like me who doesn't play games on their tablet, it's really no contest (for gamers it's a whole other story, tablet gaming on Windows tablets is in a pretty bad state by comparison to especially iOS but also Android).
I especially love the screen on this device, AMOLED displays just look so much better to me than LCD screens.
marytattoo - Sunday, June 29, 2014 - link
you might not have the windows experience, but you can have several windows open at the same time, and as far as i'm concerned, i have found everything i need in the Play store. i have and have had several ipads, and there is only one reason i have an ipad still - a knitting program, which most people probably wouldn't want. everything else, i get from android. i can also bring all of my computer music to android via a micro sd card. i have tons of uploaded music from my cds and audio books.Lavkesh - Tuesday, June 24, 2014 - link
No matter what they do, unless their tablets ship with stock Android, it remains a piece of junk. They may be good at hardware but their software sucks.