Pros-
1. Gorgeous display.
2. Slim and light. Great portability.
3. Very fast, good performance.
4. Good battery life.
5. Fingerprint sensor.
6. Micro SD card support up to 128 GB.
Cons-
1. The tablet comes with a lot of bloatware.
2. No S Pen support.
3. Camera is mediocre.
I have managed to get my hands into the Samsung Galaxy Tab S 8.4 for the last couple of weeks. I was very excited to give it a try when I saw the Samsung announcement. I have to say after a trying it out for some time I can honestly say I am impressed. Below I will give you my thoughts on the tablet.
Pros-
1. By far the most compelling reason to buy this tablet is the display. It looks really amazing. It has top of the line resolution of 2560 x 1600 giving it 359 pixels per inch. But it is not the resolution that makes the display so unique but the Super AMOLED technology that creates bigger contrast in colors. Colors look saturated and slightly unrealistic but there is no denying they look great. At the end I think it is a matter of preference, if you like the display of the Samsung Galaxy S5 then you will certainly like the display of the tablet. You can tell Samsung made this particular tablet for content consumption. Everything from pictures, videos to magazines look very impressive.
During sunlight exposure the display has to be cranked up almost all the way up for you to read comfortably. I noticed that videos look better in direct sunlight that previous Samsung tablets I have used. I put my Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 (2012) model tablet side by side and it just pales in comparison.
2. This tablet is one of the thinnest and lightest tablets in the market. It is even lighter than the IPad Retina Mini and that is certainly saying a lot. In terms of weight it easily rivals 7 inch tablets. It weight the same as the Nexus 7 (2013). Keep in mind the Nexus 7 screen is only 7 inches as opposed the Tab S 8.4 inch display. I can easily hold the tablet one handed for extended periods of time. In terms of weight it is as close to the Amazon Kindle E-reader as I experienced. As far as the outside of the tablet is concerned it is made of the exact material and texture of the Samsung Galaxy S5. It is plastic but it has a soft, very comfortable dimple back that does not collect fingerprint. Not as nice looking as the IPad but a great improvement from previous generations. Besides that plastic back is what allows the tablet to keep the weight down.
3. The Samsung Galaxy Tab S 8.4 is considered a high end tablet and it has the specs to back it up. The Wifi model that I have been using has a Samsung made Exynos 5 Octa core processor. Four of the cores are running at 1.9 GHz and four cores running at 1.3 GHz. It also comes with 3 GB of RAM memory. What does this all mean? That it can handle just about everything you can throw at it and more. The processor in this tablet is designed for optimum performance. In my time using the tablet I have not discovered any slow down at all. Multitasking works incredible well. The only thing I did not like was the Samsung Keyboard. I personally do not use it because it tends to lag. Instead I installed the Google Keyboard. It performs much smoother. The rest of the interface however is fluid and smooth. Games open very fast and browser performance is better than ever. I have absolutely no complaints when it comes to performance.
4. The battery in the tablet has a capacity of 4900 mah. Samsung claims that the battery life is for 10 hours of web use. On a typical day after using it to catch up on morning news, listening to some music, a couple hours of Netflix and YouTube I still go to bed with around 40-50% battery. That is with the brightness at a little less than half. One day I was reading outside and decided to crank up the brightness all the way up. I lost about 20% in an hour. Games also tend to use the battery faster but that is to be expected. For normal everyday use you should have no problem getting through your day with it.
5. Android has a lot of different locking method for your devices. I feel that other than a long password the safest way to lock your device is by fingerprint. The fingerprint scanner in this tablet is the same model found on the Galaxy S5. You have to swipe your finger across it as opposed to the one in the IPhone 5S where you only have to place your finger and it unlocks itself. I found the fingerprint scanner to be more accurate than the one on the S5. You still have to be careful how you swipe the finger but it fails less often than on the Galaxy S5. You have the option of using several fingers to unlock the device that way more than one person has access to the tablet at all times.
6. The tablet supports Micro SD cards up to 128 GB in capacity. This is great because the tablet itself only comes with 16 GB of storage built in which is lacking in today’s world. I myself use a 64 GB card with the tablet and there I have been able to store over 10 movies, over 1000 songs and a few hundred family pictures. The Micro SD cards now a day are cheaper than ever and they provide so much flexibility. It is a real convenience and I am glad Samsung has decided to support its use for so long.
Cons-
1. If you have ever used a Samsung Galaxy phone in the past you know they usually come with a lot of prepackaged apps. That is not the exception here. It comes with a TON of Samsung apps. The vast majority of them I have not even touched until this day.
2. One of the things that bummed me out a little bit about this tablet is that it doesn’t support the S pen. The S Pen is useful to take notes and to make drawings and it has been a staple of Samsung tablets over the last couple of years. I have a feeling they did not included because the S Pen might not be compatible with the Super AMOLED screen.
3. You can clearly tell that manufacturers just don’t place much emphasis on the camera for tablets. Even though the Galaxy Tab S is a premium tablet the camera looks more like one found in a mid-range phone. The camera on the back is 8 MP. That is above average for tablets but is not really anything that will impress you at this point. Photos in good sunlight came out fairly good. Indoors and at night the pictures looked grainy and you had to be really still for them not to get blurry. The same performance was seen during videos. The camera has no image stabilization therefore you have to have a very steady hand or else the video looks very shaky. I can’t really say I am going to be using it much. The front facing camera is 2.1 MP and it performs as well as you could hope for. It is all right for the occasional Skype call but nothing too spectacular. It is average.
Overall, do I recommend this tablet? I whole heartedly do, especially if you are looking to use it for entertainment and media consumption. The display is fantastic for movies, pictures and reading. The design of the tablet itself is very thin, light and comfortable to use. In terms of overall size and weight the tablet is rivaling the 7 inch models from last year. The exclusion of the S Pen makes this tablet not the best in terms of productivity. If you are looking for productivity on a tablet maybe the Samsung Note series might be a better option for you.
I hope this review was useful and I will be looking to update it in the coming weeks.
If you are still unsure whether to purchase this tablet go to a local retail store and see for yourself. Compare it side by side with other tablets once you take a look at the display and the overall aesthetic I promise you will be impressed.
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