[Android] Samsung Galaxy Tab A Hits USA, but Is It Cheap Enough?

Gets poor comments at the bottom of the review for crappy specs, and far too expensive.

http://www.xda-developers.com/samsung-galaxy-tab-a-hits-usa-but-is-it-cheap-enough/

John.

 

That's a fair bit overpriced, you can still find the Nexus 7 2013 edition for cheaper. And those screens are terrible, I had a Tab 2 (1.2 TI-OMAP, 1 GB RAM and a terrible 1024x600 screen). Seems like not much progress has changed for Samsung to be selling at that low 200 price point, but the Nexus 7 2013 edition was consistently found UNDER 200 in the US.

 

I have an Samsung Galaxy Tab S 10.5" and it`s amazing, but at £250-300 it`s worth every penny to me.

John.

 

The article suggests that this is a follow-up to the Tab S; I think it's clear it's a follow-up to the low-end Tab 4 instead. Similar price point, similar resolution.

It's a hard sell when the exact same $229 price gets you a Lenovo Yoga Tablet 2 8" with a 1920x1200 screen instead of an 8" 1024x768.

http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/tablet...ga-tablet-2-8/?menu-id=lenovo_yoga_tablet_2_8

 

I have the Lenovo Yoga 8" the first version, and it was my tablet of choice before i bought my 10.5" Sam S, I loved the 18hr battery life, the built in stand, and the front facing stereo speakers.

John.

 

Samsung really has no place in tablets in my opinion unless they're Note tablets. They're always overpriced and under specced compared to their competition and Samsung has had a horrible track record with updates for them too.

 

On the other hand, the Tab S line has REALLY pretty screens. For someone who uses tablets for media consumption, that screen is frickin' beautiful. At least in my opinion, but I'm not a professional photographer (and my understanding is that some people find high-end Samsung screens to be oversaturated).

 

High gamut, infinite contrast, zero G2G lag and perfectly omnidirectional. It is a physically very, very good screen. Low power consumption for dark images is a huge plus too.

If you feel it's oversaturated blame the non-colour-managed content, and maybe change the screen calibration if necessary. The screen itself should not be blamed in anyway for that.


Speaking of Samsung LED screens, does anyone use Galaxy Note here? How much battery life can I expect if do note taking or drawing with a black background?

 

I did not know that there was an Samsung Galaxy Note Edge, see battery specification in the link below, It looks like between 10-14 hours.

http://www.samsung.com/uk/consumer/mobile-devices/galaxy-note/smartphones/SM-N910FZKEBTU

The Galaxy Tab S has four screen modes, adaptive display that uses the rgb sensor, amoled cinema, amoled photo and basic, basic has even less saturation than amoled photo has.



John.

 

If you buy a moderate to high end device, Samsung does update them, but they are really slow to push out updates. I'm still awaiting 5.0 on my Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 edition, hopefully TouchWiz will be better (but I'm not holding my breath as I've already played around with the S6/S6 Edge). Their low end devices are pretty miserable as most having only 1-1.5 GB of RAM alongside TouchWiz is a pretty slow, laggy experience.
All of Samsung's high end tablets have beautiful screens, as does my Galaxy Note 10.1 with the 2560x1600 screen.

 

I am in two minds whether to install 5.0.2 on my Tab S 10.5" when it is available, I will be in no hurry to install it, I will wait and see what other people think and the problems they find.

negative - memory leak, battery apps need root to get battery data, all the white in the settings menu is bad for the amoled battery life, I think i heard battery problems but i am not certain.

positive - write to microsd for third party apps.

John.

 

The write to MicroSD issue can be solved easily by patches or mounting a specific app's media_rw/sdcard0 path to a sdcard1 path.

Menu color shouldn't be a problem. You won't be looking at it most of the time.

 

They do have gorgeous screens but I am just not willing to drop that kind of cash. My Nexus 7 2013 is still plenty of horsepower for a tablet.

I did consider buying a Note tablet though... In the end it was just too much money.

 

Yeah, I think the Galaxy Tab S tablets are superb options for the "price is no object" market (I feel the same way about iPads), but I'm the sort of buyer who would much rather spend 50% as much to get something "pretty good" than pay 100% that much to get "the best that year has to offer."

And regardless of how nice the Tab S is for the price-is-no-object market, in the 50%-of-the-price-for-"pretty-good" market, these Galaxy Tab A devices really seem underwhelming for 2015. For criminy sakes, you can get a refurbished Galaxy Tab S for just $30 more than the 1024x768 Galaxy Tab A.

http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-8-4-I...5232&sr=8-1&keywords=galaxy+tab+s+refurbished

 

There's really no excuse for that low of a resolution. The budget priced Nexus 7 2013 was 1920x1200... Come on.

 

When Asus and Lenovo introduce their next-gen Android 5.0-equipped affordable tablets at the same price point, they're going to eat this thing for breakfast. Maybe not in terms of pure sales numbers (yay marketing?), but certainly in terms of a back-to-back dollar-for-dollar comparison.

 

As people start seeing tablets as a media consumption device, they see the price and performance first over hardware. Now most people on NBR probably doesn't best represent what overall average joes are going to buy, as screen quality as well as resolution was a big important factor for me. I also don't believe in buying entry level devices for personal use.

The Nexus 7 (2013) is still the best overall 7" tablet you can buy. It is the most balanced tablet in terms of performance, overall fluidity (cause of stock Android), battery life, build quality. Oh and it's also under 200 bucks.

The Note was a fair bit of coin for me. I got it for 350 dollars, which honestly isn't the WORST amount of money. I wanted a stylus and an overall larger tablet. Most entry level 10" tablets start at 300-400 dollars, and the price only goes up. Of course I bought this on eBay but it was new in package. Amazon still sells it closer to 500 dollars and that was a bit much. Thus I jumped on the 350 price pretty quickly. I think for a flagship device (even though it is getting to 2 years old) overall I love the purchase. I'm still awaiting 5.0 for it, but hopefully it gets 5.0.2 without the memory leaks.

 

I jumped on a refurbished $359 Tab S 10.5 off of Amazon and it's been fantastic. Don't regret it at all. Installed the 5.0.2 lollipop update and see no issues so far. Talk about a beautiful screen. My wife has a Tab 4 10.1 and there is no comparison in performance and the screen. But that's fine for her, all she uses it for is for facebooking, surfing the net,email, paying bills. She doesn't even watch video on it, much less game. So it's the perfect tablet for her.

 

The Tab S 10.5 and Tab Pro I had looked at but Samsung didn't integrate an S-Pen on anything but the Galaxy Note. Mine is still sitting on 4.4.2

 

I have no use for an S Pen, so the Galaxy Tab S 10.5 is perfect for me. No issues with 5.0.2, and the tablet is fast and efficient the screen size is perfect for me. Don't have a use for anything smaller, otherwise I'd just get a large phablet instead. I bought the Tab S 10.5 for the screen size because that's what I wanted and needed. Battery life is outstanding!