Review: Samsung’s new Tab S takes on tablet market

From €399

Samsung’s Galaxy Tab S was unveiled in a blaze of publicity last month in New York, with the Korean firm setting out its plans for a premium Android tablet that would take on the iPad Mini. Now it’s available in Ireland, and hoping to make its mark on the tablet market here.

Samsung is covering all the bases, from screen sizes and connections to capacity. It's available in wifi only and LTE models, with 16GB and 32GB storage.

The wifi model covered here has the same eight-core Exynos 5 system-on-chip processor that the latest Note 10.1 uses, which means it has a quad-core ARM 1.9Ghz chip, with a back-up 1.3GHz chip that is less power hungry. In theory, that should have an impact on battery life.

The tablet comes in titanium and white; both look pleasingly high end, and feel sturdy yet lightweight.

The Good

The Tab S comes in two sizes – 8.4 inch and 10.5 inch – but no matter what size you choose, the screen is impressive. This review looked at the 8.4-inch version, a rival for the iPad Mini and the size that seems to offer the best compromise between size and convenience.

The Super Amoled screen is what originally caught everyone’s attention, and it should. It’s bright and vibrant when it comes to reproducing colour, and crisp on text. The pixels-per-inch count clocks in at 356ppi, which outdoes the iPad Mini and the Retina version, which has 163ppi and 326ppi respectively.

Samsung has included adaptive display technology that will automatically adjust the screen’s colour, sharpness and contrast depending on whether you are reading a book or watching video. In short, the display is hard to fault.

At 6.6mm the Tab S is thin too – not quite as thin as the Sony Xperia Z2, which just edges it at 6.4mm – and now holds the title as Samsung’s thinnest tablet.

If you have an Android phone running Kitkat, you can connect it to the tablet, so you can make calls, transfer files, send messages, and treat your Tab S as an extension of your mobile phone.

The Remote PC function, meanwhile, will connect the device to your PC, so you can access your PC screen from your tablet. It works for both Mac and Windows computers and it’s free to connect one PC to your Samsung account; after that you have to pay a fee.

The bad

The adaptive display technology, while welcomed, is limited to seven apps currently on the device, including the gallery, camera, internet, video, e-book, VT Call and UI apps. Outside of that, there are three screen modes that users can choose from to make their viewing experience a little better – Amoled Photo, Cinema and Basic Mode. They’re more of a blunt instrument though; we ended up ditching them eventually.

A quick note on Side Sync too: the call forwarding function is currently available on the Galaxy S5, although there are plans to roll it out further. Until then, though, other users will just have to be patient.

The rest

Samsung is pitching the Tab S as a premium tablet. And to put that price tag in context, the iPad Mini Retina costs from €399 for the 16GB wifi-only version (the regular version starts at €299).

However, it you are looking for something a little more budget friendly while still retaining the quality, the Nexus 7 might be more palatable.

Battery life clocks in officially at 11 hours; it held up well in tests, so you should get enough time to get online, watch a few videos and maybe look at some ebooks too.

Like the Galaxy S5, the fingerprint sensor is included as a security measure. The entire device can be encrypted too, which makes sense for security-conscious users. And if you want to hand it over to a child, there’s a kid’s mode included that will lock down certain features and give them limited access to apps.

Although on-board storage starts at 16GB and tops out at 32GB, compared with the iPad Mini’s 128GB, you can add up to 128GB courtesy of a Micro SD slot on the device. That makes it more flexible than other tablets, and cheaper – you can pick up a 128GB MicroSD card for about €100 these days, which puts the total cost below the top end iPad Mini.

The rear-facing camera is a respectable 8 megapixels while the front facing camera is 2.1 megapixels, just about right for video calls and the like.

The verdict

Samsung’s Tab S is a good contender in the premium tablet market, with a screen that, in our opinion, eclipses most of what’s out there. ****