Samsung Galaxy Tab S2
High-end Android tablets
are becoming few and far between, indicating to us that the tablet segment in
general has been seeing a slowdown. Most consumers seem to be more gravitated
to either picking up a low-cost laptop hybrid, or the many inexpensive tablets
that pack reasonable value for the money. On that note, it’s no surprise to us
that many companies have stopped production and development for high-end
tablets on the Android side. And then there’s Samsung!
The Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 has bright and vividly colorful screen. Its rail-thin
design is comfortable and ultracompact. It comes with 32GB of storage, a
microSD card expansion slot and fingerprint scanner. Battery
life is long.
Unlike previous models, there's no IR
blaster. Design:
The Galaxy Tab S2 feels nicer to hold in two
hands than the Samsung
Galaxy Tab S 10.5 and its sibling, the Galaxy Tab 8.4. In fact,
it's now light enough to comfortably clutch in one hand. Design
The Galaxy Tab S2 feels
nicer to hold in two hands than the Samsung
Galaxy Tab S 10.5 and its sibling, the Galaxy Tab 8.4. In fact,
it's now light enough to comfortably clutch in one hand.
The Samsung Tab S2 is lighter in part because it's backed by a
soft-touch plastic cover instead of an aluminium shell. Metal edges outline the
tablet instead of a plastic frame this time.
The entire device may not be metal, but it does feel smooth. It's
better than the dimpled plastic of the Samsung Galaxy Tab S, yet remains just
as grippy.
Two small, springy buttons are embedded into the back of the Tab
S2, but they're meant for clipping a cover onto the tablet and aren't releases
to pop off the back. It's all sealed shut.
There is, however, a microSD card slot on the frame to optionally
boost the 32GB and 64GB configurations with an additional 128GB of expandable
storage.
Alongside this same rail are a solid-feeling power button and
volume rocker. Stereo speakers, a headphone jack and an off-center micro USB
port line the bottom of the tablet.
The Tab S2 has a physical, fingerprint-sensing home button in
front with the usual oval shape, and two capacitive buttons on either side.
These keys light up by default every time the display is touched.
The beams of light are a bit distracting when scrolling and
reading text near the bottom of the screen, and turning them off in settings
doesn't help orient your fingers in the dark. This wider tablet isn't like a
narrower phone, where you know the exact location of these keys.
The latest Galaxy Tab comes in three colors:
Black, White and Gold. Gone are the fancy names like Dazzling White and
Titanium Bronze, reflecting Samsung's minimalist design with this year's ultra-thin
tablet. Display:
A tablet is all about the display and we've seen
some unusual flip-flopping in resolutions over the past few years. With the
2012 Nexus 10 (which is made by Samsung) plopping out a 2560 x 1600 pixel
display and the original Samsung Galaxy Tab S following suit, the Tab S2 now
steps down to 2048 x 1536 pixels (264ppi density). That's the
same resolution as we saw on the 2014 Nexus 9 tablet and it's the same as the iPad Air 2, which is the exact same size at
9.7-inches too. The shift from higher resolutions might be partly due to the
shift in aspect ratio from 16:9 (or 16:10) to 4:3, or it could simply be that
the returns for that resolution weren't hugely apparent. However, the Tab S2 is equipped with an
AMOLED display whereas most competitors offer LCD. Samsung is known for AMOLED
and has enjoyed great results on its Galaxy smartphones and Note tablets with
this technology. On the Tab S2, you're again rewarded with great contrast, lots
of punch in visuals, and deep, rich colours that are typical of such a
panel. You might notice that the richness
makes some content look a little dark so you have to bump up the brightness to
get best out of movies and videos. We found the colours a little overwrought in
the opening scenes when watching Mockingjay, for example, but the deep blacks
and brilliant blues set up Gravity nicely. On the flipside, some games are
incredibly rich, making us wish we could dial it down a little for a more
natural view. AMOLED can also struggle to produce clean and bright whites as a
result, something that Samsung has worked hard to improve on recent devices -
but there's a hint of cool blue white here. The thing you will notice, however, is that on
this size of display some of Android's apps don't scale as well as they should.
You'll find softness becomes apparent in some games, for example, or some of
the graphic elements in apps don't look as sharp as they do on your smartphone,
phablet or smaller tablet. Take Real Racing 3 as an example: it looks blocky,
so visually it's not as pleasant as on smaller or even 16:9 tablets with less
display height. If that's a factor for you, the smaller 8-inch Tab S2 model
might be the better
choice. The display
aspect also means the Tab S2 works a little better in portrait orientation than
16:9 devices, making for a better reading experience, whether that's on the
included Flipboard-based Briefing newsreader, or when using something like the
Kindle app. On the flip side, you'll have a lot of empty space top and bottom
when watching movies in landscape - especially if they are shot in the
cinematic 21:9 aspect ratio.
Hardware
The Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 houses an
octa-core Exynos 5433 chipset, comprised of a 1.9GHz and 1.3GHz quad-core CPU.
It also has 32GB of internal storage and a microSD card expansion slot that's
expandable up to 128GB. The Samsung website lists a 64GB version, but only the
32GB model is available for purchase; Samsung hasn't released details on when
and if the 64GB one be available.
Other features include Bluetooth 4.1 with
low-energy function (BLE) and Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac MIMO -- which is faster
than regular Wi-Fi.
SOFTWARE
The Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 runs the latest
version of Android with the scaled-down version of TouchWiz. It's a similar
software experience to what we see on the Note 5 and latest Galaxy S6 devices.
There are not too many apps loaded out of the
box, but since this is an AT&T LTE model you get plenty of bloatware from
this US
Samsung apps include Galaxy Apps, Hancom
Office Viewer, Memo, Samsung Milk Music, SideSync, and Smart Manager. You will
also find several Google apps, but these have been reduced by Google so loading
up your preferred Google apps is up to your own preferences in many cases.
One of the reasons to pick up a Samsung tablet
is to be able to use a couple apps at the same time in a side-by-side format. As
you can see in a couple of screenshots in my gallery, many apps look absolutely
terrible in this format and neither app ends up being useful.
The Samsung Galaxy Tab S2's brilliant
screen, plentiful storage capacity and slender build make it a great tablet for
everyday use at home or on the go. Price ;$347.99
Samsung Galaxy Tab S
Samsung has been pouring a lot of effort into making a really
decent iPad rival, and that strategy has seen some hare-brained decisions (such
as launching the Tab Pro in January 2014, and then replacing it a few months
later with the Galaxy Tab S).
But, apart from
annoying anyone that's already bought into the Tab Pro range, this strategy has
finally yielded a brilliant tablet in the shape of this Super AMOLED-shod Tab S
duo. Available in both 8.4- and 10.5-inch screen sizes, Samsung has taken the
best of its OS and technology ability, fused them with the best display on a
tablet and created something pretty special. Performance
The Galaxy Tab S
8.4 is, generally speaking, very smooth and slick. The kinks and jerkiness we
detected in the Tab Pro 8.4 are mostly absent, though the Tab S 8.4 doesn’t zip
along quite as smoothly as the Snapdragon powered Galaxy S5.
The processor
behind this is Samsung’s Exynos 5 Octa (5420), which is in eight core chip with
four ARM Cortex A15 CPUs clocked at 1.9GHz, and four lower-power ARM A7 cores
at 1.3GHz. It’s right up there with the most powerful processors on any Android
phone or tablet, scoring 904 in Geekbench’s single-core test, and 2,669 in the
multi-core. Even accounting for Samsung’s reputation to boosting benchmarks
with high performance modes, it’s clear this is a very powerful device — it’s
only slightly slower than Galaxy S5, HTC One M8 and OnePlus One.
It’s a slightly
less impressive performer in the graphics department, though it’s still more
than powerful enough to run even demanding games smoothly. It scored 13,518 in
the 3D Mark Ice Storm Unlimited test, whereas the latest phones are getting
close to 20,000 these days. It’s only a few thousand points less than the iPad
mini 2, though, and you’re unlikely to find any games that won’t work on it. As
with most phones and tablets at present, the Tab S has more processing power
than it really needs.
The battery life is great, the screen has to be seen to be
believed (and is excellent for media and internet viewing, which is really the
point of a tablet) and the price is on a par with the rest of the industry.
Well done, Samsung.
Weight: 467g | Dimensions: 247.3 x 177.3 x 6.6mm | OS:
Android 4.4.2 | Screen size: 10.5-inch | Resolution: 2560 x 1600
| CPU: Quad-core 2.3 GHz | RAM: 3GB | Storage: 16/32GB | Battery : 7900mAh | Rear camera: 8MP
| Front camera: 2.1MP
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