The Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 Review
by Brandon Chester on October 15, 2015 8:00 AM ESTSystem Performance: GPU
While CPU performance characterizes one part of an SoC, GPU performance characterizes another. Tablets have long been a form factor where GPU performance can be pushed much further than in a phone due to the larger chassis of a tablet having far fewer size and thermal limitations. While some tablets elect to use specialized SoCs with more powerful GPU hardware than smartphones, the Tab S2 uses the same ARM Mali T760 GPU used in the Galaxy Note 4 Exynos.
To characterize the Tab S2's GPU performance I've run it through our standard GPU benchmarks. First up is 3DMark which actually has both a CPU and GPU component, followed by BaseMark X and GFXBench which focus more strongly on the GPU alone.
In 3DMark all of the Tab S2's scores are roughly equivalent to the Galaxy Note 4 Exynos which is not unexpected. Unfortunately, it's clear that Mali T760 can't keep up with NVIDIA's mobile Kepler implementation or Apple's custom 8 core PowerVR 6XT part. While the Nexus 9 and iPad Air 2 both fall short in the physics sub test their scores in the graphics sub test are in a completely different league than the Tab S2.
In BaseMark X we again see the Tab S2 sitting fairly far behind the iPad Air 2 and Nexus 9. If I was considering the Tab S2 8.0 which retails for $399 these results would be perfectly fine, as the major competition at that price point is the iPad Mini 4 which has Apple A8 SoC. At $499 the GPU performance simply isn't competitive, and it outlines the issues with trying to make one SoC fit many different devices.
In GFXBench the Tab S2 is in the same situation as the previous tests. GPU performance is right around where the Galaxy Note 4 and iPhone 6 are, and it's just not good enough to justify the $499 price tag of the Tab S2.
Like I said on the last page, the fact that most Android tablet OEMs aren't providing CPU and GPU performance that is anywhere near competitive with the iPad Air 2 is a very bad thing for the entire tablet industry. Apple decided to not even update the iPad Air 2 despite it being a year old, and it's hard to blame them when nobody is close to them as far as performance is concerned. Having various manufacturers pushing each other to constantly improve is one of the primary drivers behind the advancements made in the mobile space, and I'm concerned that this no longer exists in the tablet market as the only tablets that come close are ones with NVIDIA's SoCs which also happen to be tablets that don't ship in very great volume.
System Performance: NAND
While it's still not advertised in specifications like on laptops, a mobile device's internal storage is now being recognized as a highly relevant part of overall system performance. Internal eMMC NAND solutions have traditionally had very poor storage performance, and different vendors have done different things to address the problem.
Both sets of read and write results are right around what you'd expect. Random writes in particular are very fast, and all the other results are fairly similar to those of the Galaxy Note 5. I don't expect internal NAND speeds will be a bottleneck on the Galaxy Tab S2, which is expected and fitting of a flagship tablet.
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Brandon Chester - Thursday, October 15, 2015 - link
Thanks for the correction.extide - Thursday, October 15, 2015 - link
Exynos 5433 in late 2015?? WTF Samsung. At least you harped on it pretty hard in the review Brandon, and I agree that a custom designed tablet SOC would be the ideal, even the Exynos 7420 that they are putting in practically everything now would have been a huge improvement. It has a bigger GPU implementation, and the better process would help with power, and GPU throttling, which should clear up quite a few of the negatives of the overall device.extide - Thursday, October 15, 2015 - link
Hrmm, maybe they are using up all their 7420 / 14ff manufacturing capability with the 7420 (plus the A9/A9X) -- and are using up some of the much cheaper 20nm capacity that is just sitting around by using the 5433. Still seems like a bad idea though, I mean a premium device should have a premium SOC.Also, I think devices are thin enough. I'd rather add on a couple extra mm and have more battery capacity.
johnny_boy - Thursday, October 15, 2015 - link
Despite the better display and dimensions, I would still go Nexus 9 over Samsung. It's cheaper, faster, running the latest near-stock Android, and will continue to get the latest updates well into the future. That said, I don't think software updates are as huge a deal as people make them out to be, at least now that Google ships basically all their core apps/services through the Play Store.Solandri - Thursday, October 15, 2015 - link
"moving away from the 16:10 aspect ratio and adopting a 4:3 display ratio which is very close to the 8.5x11" paper used in North America"This is incorrect. 4:3 (1.33 aspect ratio) is close to 8.5x11" (1.294 aspect ratio) only if you include the margins of the paper. That is, your tablet has bezels, then you waste pixels on white margins, then display the actual information content of the page.
Quite frankly, that's stupid. You're paying hundreds of dollars for the extra 2-3 diagonal inches of a 10" tablet over a 7-8 inch tablet. Why waste that extra screen space displaying margins? The tablet already has a bezel which provides whitespace (or blackspace) around the edges, just like margins. Allowing you to pick it up and hold it without covering up any information.
If you subtract the margins, 8.5x11 with 1" margins becomes 6.5x9 or a 1.385 aspect ratio. With 1.5" margins (common with low-density business correspondence) it's 5.5x8 with a 1.455 aspect ratio.
A4 is 210x297mm, or a 1.414 aspect ratio. With standard 2.5cm margins, it becomes 160x247mm and a 1.544 aspect ratio.
The Time magazine format is 8.25x10.75. Without margins, the "live" area is 7x10, or 1.429 aspect ratio.
National Geographic is 7.125x10.24. It's live area is 6.125x9.25, or a 1.510 aspect ratio.
Combine that with tablets frequently being used to display 16:9 movies (1.77), and a 3:2 aspect ratio (1.5) is probably ideal.
Spectrophobic - Thursday, October 15, 2015 - link
Yes, 16:10 and 3:2 are still the better choice for high-end tablets considering its specs are more suited for multimedia consumption. I honestly think 4:3 are more suited for mid-/lower-end tablets which more or less being used as e-readers.My personal favourite resolution is 1920 x 1280 (3:2) found on the Surface 3. Slightly better than 1920 x 1200 and allows me to watch 720p videos 1:1 when on portrait. Yes, the letterboxing is immense, but I'll take it over interpolating it to 1920 x 1080 or having black bars on all four corners... But that's just me.
R. Hunt - Friday, October 16, 2015 - link
16:10 is just horrible IMHO for anything other than watching video. 3:2 at least is usable in both orientations.Spectrophobic - Friday, October 16, 2015 - link
Well, it's just a matter of preference. I like the 16:10 more as I view more vertical scrolling websites more and watch a lot of 16:9 content (YouTube, anime, etc.).Also, for Android at least, 3:2 is pretty much non-existent.
IUU - Thursday, October 15, 2015 - link
A tablet is useful primarily for it's portability. As much as it could bring from the desktop for a longer period of time is most wanted.Reducing thickness to beat Apple in fashion and slickness , while reducing battery capacity is childish and a grave mistake. It could keep the previous thickness or even increase thickness by 1 or 2 mm as long as it would provide us with a 15 hr lasting battery , or more.
In addition we are approaching dangerously the 1st quarter of 21st century. Putting 16 or 32 or 64 gb of internal storage is hilarious to put it kindly no matter what cloud options you have. Also, a limited amount of peripheral ports slowly grows to being more than a defect.
Further more, speaking too much of performance makes no sense, both because despite all their improvements these are weak processors with many cores only to deceive the naïve.
Even if this is not so, you can't do many things with them to justify "uping" the performance. A tablet to be useful(ie to provide its resources for work) it should be able to connect to just about every monitor keyboard, mouse and computer and not adopt some obscure connection protocols in case they miss a dollar or a penny and consumers don't buy their screens.
For now they are excellent consumptions devices and could become great creativity tools if Samsung and Apple weren't so narrow-minded and stubborn and pushing them more as fashion and entertainment devices rather than serious computing machines. Despite their limitations these devices could be useful even now, but these businesses don't realise the potential. Maybe it's for the best , someone else will, and will disrupt their practices.
name99 - Thursday, October 15, 2015 - link
"Samsung has settled on 8.0" and 9.7", the latter of which surprises me as it's the exact same size as the standard iPad"Sure, "surprise", that's the right word...
Will you be similarly "surprised" when Samsung introduces a feature very much like 3D-Touch and haptic feedback very much like the Taptic engine? Because I assure you the rest of us will not...