Samsung has a history of making solid tablets that live up to the needs of many. With the Samsung Galaxy Tab S, they haven’t held anything back. It’s fast, it hardly weighs a thing, super-thin and packs a wonderful 10.5-inch screen.
The Tab S has one of the best screens that we have seen in tablets. Beating out the competition, it’s super-AMOLED offers a 2560×1600 resolution, 359ppi (pixels per inch), has a wide viewing angle, amazingly rich colors, solid blacks and the idea that it doesn’t get any better than this without going 4K (which would be over-kill for its size).
Design-wise, it has the thinnest make on the market, beating out the iPad Air by 0.9mm (0.26″ vs 0.29″). It is also lighter than the Air, larger than the air and (as just mentioned) has a better display.
It feels perfect in the hands, providing no feeling of it wanting to slip around and has a great bevel to it. The back-side has a familiar pattern/texture to it, which adds a little (little) to grip as well as aesthetics. It comes in both bronze and white colors.
The power button is located on the top, with volume, speakers, and IR. The headphone jack, micro-USB port and microSD slot are located on the sides.
The IR blaster at the top edge of the tablet allows you to use the tablet to remote control your A/V devices (ie, TV, receiver, disc devices and so forth).
The screen is quite responsive to the touch allowing the most accurate adjustments, making it perfect for image touch-up applications as well as drawing. This also helps a lot with games as it adds a heightened feeling of comfort while playing for long period of time. I find it hard to “accidentally” touch the incorrect part of the screen or hit one the navigational buttons.
The Tab S runs on Android 4.4 (with Samsung’s TouchWiz UI) and packs a fast Exynos 5 Octa 5420 Processor (1.9 GHz Quad Core + 1.3 GHz Quad Core) with 3GB of memory (RAM). Everything from apps to games as well as navigation feels smooth, responsive and never lags. Multi-tasking is natural, it boots pretty quick and you tend to feel like Tony Stark a bit while walking around with it (disclaimer: this may or may not result in the same feeling for everyone).
There is a fingerprint scanner (similar to Apple products) which allows you to unlock the device as well as exorcise payment applications such as PayPal. It isn’t perfect, but none of these devices have quite mastered this just yet. In its defense, it worked better than we had initially expected it to.
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It comes with a collection of apps and features including SideSync which is a new feature that allows you to wirelessly sync your Tab S with a Samsung Galaxy S5. This feature does not support any other phones at the moment. There are a number of other fun apps that can be found in Samsung’s app store.
We really enjoyed that the video app as it allows you to control many aspects of your audio and video pleasures. It offers a special cinema mode that enhances the color of the screen while watching your favorite movies which helps take advantage of what that AMOLED screen can really do. It doesn’t work well for every movie, but it all comes down to personal preference.
As most tablets, it sometimes feels odd with volume coming out the top (or bottom, or sides…as some other tablets do) vs right out the front. However, since most of our cellphones do the same thing, it is nothing you can’t live with. At times, you don’t even pay much attention to it. In the end, the quality of audio is only so good coming out of those tiny little speakers.
On-board the Tab S is a 7,900mAh battery which seems to last forever. This is a MAJOR requirement for us. We tend to drop the score of devices immediately if we feel the battery doesn’t live up to our expectations for its type of device. In this case, the Tab S does great. Obviously, if you are a heavy user, you will probably get around to (up to) 8-10 hours of usage. With average usage of it throughout the day, you won’t have to recharge until the following day.
The Tab S also features a ultra-power saving mode that takes power conservation to a whole new level if the battery runs too low. It doesn’t just cut WiFi and other wireless services, but can also adjust the tablet to grayscale and cuts access to certain power hungry apps. Of course this is adjustable and only happens when it has nothing else it can do to preserve its battery life.
Our Conclusion
We were pretty impressed with the Samsung Galaxy Tab S. It performs well, feels great, looks great aesthetically and offers a perfect screen for a tablet (as least, to today’s expectations). Battery life is great thankfully and the tablet comes with all of the right features. We want to say that it would have been nice to have HDMI but this tablet focuses heavily on wireless sharing of it’s screen, which works out much better in terms of user friendliness. We decided to give the Tab S an 8/10 score. It isn’t perfect (almost nothing is to us), but it is most definitely the best tablet on the market, today.
Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTRoTlHUP_Y
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbrM7XqVuJw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXNaRYMNprE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jc29eU9ls1I
Additional Images:
Specifications:
Network | LTE : 800/ 900/ 1800/ 2600+850/ 2100 |
|---|---|
Processor | Exynos 5 Octa (1.9 GHz QuadCore ? 1.3 GHz Quadcore) or Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 2.3 GHz Quadcore* |
Display | 10.5” 2560×1600(WQXGA) Super AMOLED |
OS | Android Kitkat (4.4) |
Camera / Flash | 8MP w/ Flash LED + 2.1MP Full HD |
Video | H.263, H.264(AVC), MPEG4, VC-1, WMV7, WMV8, VP8 |
Audio | MP3, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, WMA, Vorbis, FLAC |
Content Services / | Papergarden, Professional pack, Multi-user mode, Sidesync 3.0, Gear & Gear fit manager |
Free Downloadable | Group Play, S-Note, S Translator, Samsung Link, Scrapbook, Story Album, Video Editor |
Gear Manager, Gear Fit Manager, Samsung Smart Switch, Samsung Level, E-meeting, Kids Mode, Kids Piano(Ding Dong Tap), S-Console, Hanshow, Hancell, Hanwrite | |
Google Mobile | Chrome, Gmail, Google Search, Maps, Play Store, Voice Search, YouTube, Google+, Hangouts, Play books, Play Games, Play Newsstand, Play Movies & TV, Play Music, Drive, Google setting, Photos |
Connectivity | WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac MIMO, WiFi Direct, Bluetooth®4.0, IrLED |
GPS | GPS, GLONASS, Beidou(not supported in USA, Canada) |
Sensor | Accelerometer, Fingerprint Sensor, Gyro Sensor, Geomagnetic Sensor, Hall Sensor, RGB Sensor |
Memory | 3GB (RAM) + 16/32GB internal memory |
Dimension / Weight | 247.3 x 177.3 x 6.6 mm , 465g(Wifi)/ 467g(LTE) |
Battery | 7,900mAh |
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