Samsung Galaxy Tab S3
The world’s first tablet that can run HDR video you can’t watch
Samsung was the one of the first companies to release an Android tablet, back when the iPad was brand new and exciting. The Korean giant has tried selling a huge variety of models over the years, hitting multiple target audiences, sizes and price points. While excitement about the tablet category as a whole has died down, Samsung continues to push its high-end Galaxy Tab S which competes directly with Apple’s iPad and iPad Pro.
A new top-end Android tablet is a rare occurrence these days, and after using Samsung’s Galaxy Tab S3, I can sort of see why.
This iPad Pro-chasing tablet is good-looking, fast and has a gorgeous screen, but I can’t fully recommend it because the Android user experience on a tablet still isn’t quite up to scratch. Samsung has tried its best, but the future for high-end Android tablets isn’t looking too rosy.
The new Samsung Galaxy Tab S3 is slim and fashionable, with high-end specs and a bundled stylus. It can also be paired with a keyboard case if what you want is productivity on the go. However, it costs as much as many mainstream laptops, so there are a lot of pros and cons to weigh when deciding whether this is the right device for you.
Samsung Galaxy Tab S3 Design
While not quite on the same level as Galaxy S smartphones usually are, the Galaxy Tab S3 is certainly premium. Its most distinct design features are the all-glass back, and overall thinness of just 6mm. The back isn't slippery at all, and this tablet is easy to hold in one hand, which you'll do a lot if you use the S-Pen. Unfortunately, the body is too thin to accommodate a silo for the stylus, so you'll have to carry it around separately and make sure you don't misplace it.
The Galaxy Tab S3 is a mixture of the very best and the very worst of Samsung’s industrial design. It’s thinner than an iPhone 7, with a flat back and slightly curved sides that make it a pleasure to hold. Weighing in at just 429g it’s also noticeably lighter than the latest iteration of the regular iPad.
The Tab S3 is about the same size as an iPad Pro 9.7-inch, but the all-black colour is a hue I’ve been wishing Apple would introduce for its tablets since the matte-black iPhone 7 arrived.
There are clicky volume and sleep buttons on the side, while the headphone jack and USB-C port sit slightly off-centre on the bottom. Like the iPad Pro, four speakers are dotted around the tablet and they have some software trickery that angles the sound depending on how you’re holding the device. There’s also a very fast fingerprint scanner below the screen, flanked by two capacitive ‘back’ and ‘overview’ buttons.
It’s a stunning piece of kit, until you start using it. The glass back, for me, is a wrong step for a tablet. After using the Tab S3 for a few minutes the behind becomes completely covered in oily fingerprints.
We also expect tablets to be much more durable than a phone, mainly because they spend a lot of time being bunged inside a bag or passed around a group of people. An iPad can comfortably live inside a full rucksack without getting damaged, but I’m already starting to see tiny marks appearing on the Galaxy Tab S3. I understand a glossy, glass back might be a flashier design choice, but I’d prefer a matte metal back.
Samsung Galaxy Tab S3 Display
It's a stylish, all-glass tablet with an impressively crisp and vibrant screen and four speakers, making it an excellent portable movie theater. It's also the first HDR-ready tablet, although there are a few asterisks to that bullet point. (HDR stands for high dynamic range, which means a spectacular, noticeable difference in contrast and color range in comparison to regular HD.)
The thing that really gives it the edge over Apple’s tab is the screen tech used. While Apple uses IPS LCD panels, Samsung uses AMOLED, which allows for much richer colours, deeper blacks and a more immersive screen for bingeing on media.
The tablet packs the same 2048 x 1536 resolution as the Tab S2, but it’s now HDR-enabled when you’re watching supported content either through Netflix or Amazon Prime. HDR (high dynamic range) gives much greater peak brightness, with blacks appearing deeper and more natural as a result.
The Tab S3’s support of the new HDR10 standard is actually a bigger deal than if Samsung packed a 4K screen into a 9.7-inch tablet. The expanded brightness range does more than extra pixels would at this small size – more pixels matter when you’re dealing with a larger 4K television.
Here’s the problem, there’s not a lot of HDR video content available today. It’s being rolled out with streaming video services like Amazon Video and Netflix already on board on Samsung, LG and Sony TVs, but we weren’t able to find HDR video on these services at the tablet's launch.
The demo HDR footage we’ve seen looks tremendous. It’s a shame neither Netflix or Amazon has updated their mobile apps to support it yet, and there’s no word on when that might happen, which means for now the HDR support feels a little superfluous.
The screen’s much more colourful and saturated than the iPad Pro display, which can look a tad dull when they’re both side by side, but this is where the S3’s lead ends.
The Tab S3’s screen doesn’t perform as well in bright light due to its overly reflective coating, which I’ve found is particularly annoying on trains. It also lacks any of the True Tone tech found in the iPad Pro, which alters the colour temperature depending on your environment and makes reading in the dark easier on the eyes.
Samsung Galaxy Tab S3 speakers
There are two on the bottom and two on the top, and they’re tuned by the audio gurus at AKG.
They’re decent speakers, with plenty of volume and the positioning means noise will come out in all directions, but they do have a tendency to feel like the sound is far away from you and being pushed the wrong way. This might have something to do with the software that’s supposed to alter the sound depending on which orientation you’re holding it in. Even with this issue, they’re much better than the majority of tablet speakers.
What you can take advantage of right now are the quad speakers on the Tab S3. They reach a more powerful volume than what we've heard from the mono Tab S2 and so many other tablets. Better yet, they’re calibrated to your movements, so as you rotate the tablet the stereo speaker orientation changes, so you’re never holding it the wrong way for sound.
As long as you’re not expecting deep base, these AKG-tuned quad HD speakers go ear-to-ear with the those on the equally-rich-sounding iPad Pro 9.7. You can get some bass out of the Tab S3 with the right headphones, which you’re probably going to use more often when roaming with this tablet in public.
This tablet also has both a 3.5mm headphone jack on the bottom of the frame, and supports Bluetooth 4.2. No one is getting rid of headphone jacks in tablets – yet.
Samsung Galaxy Tab S3 Performance
We tried out the HDR screen with Amazon Prime's original series The Man in the High Castle and The
Grand Tour, and found that it did look great, with colours that really popped and extremely crisp reproduction overall. However, bandwidth was a big constraint. You'll need more than 15Mbps to stream at the highest quality and videos will consume nearly 2GB per hour when downloaded, so this isn't necessarily a practical feature for Indian conditions just yet. There were slight shifts in colour tone when we checked out viewing angles on the screen, but everything else from brightness to the text clarity was fine.
The S-Pen turned out to be quite fun and useful, and we found ourselves using it quite a lot even when just moving through the UI. The main problem with it is that pen-enabled apps, and even the input panel integrated into the default keyboard, all respond to touch as well as the S-Pen tip. This means that we'd often make a mark when we were just trying to rest a hand on the screen in order to start writing. You have to learn to hover your hand slightly off the screen, not treat it like a sheet of paper.
The Galaxy Tab S3 did stutter occasionally during normal use, which could be because of the graphical demands of such a high-resolution screen. Our benchmark scores reflected this as well - we got 138,828 points in AnTuTu, 3,934 in GeekBench's multi-core test, and 128 in WebXprt. 3DMark Sling Shot Extreme gave us 2,518 points but GFXBench's high-end Car Chase test running at the native resolution only managed 13fps.
Samsung usually has a lot to say about its smartphone cameras, but the ones on the Galaxy Tab S3 are nothing to get excited about. The app is quite barebones and doesn't even have an HDR feature, which is a strange omission. Photos are just okay, lacking detail and texture when seen at full size, but otherwise passable. Video recording goes up to 4K with a 10-minute time limit, and one small spot on the rear of the tablet does get quite hot after use. Thanks to the high resolution, videos are fairly crisp and smooth. The Galaxy Tab S3's camera is more than usable if you don't have your phone on you, but it shouldn't ever be your first choice.
We were able to go for three or four days before needing to charge, based on a couple of hours' worth of usage each day. We watched lots of videos and played around with the S-Pen a lot, but also used the tablet to read and browse the Web. Our HD video loop test lasted 8 hours, 13 minutes.
Samsung Galaxy Tab S3 software
The one thing that's been common across all tablets that aren't iPads or Windows machines is of course Android, for the simple reason that no hardware manufacturer currently develops its own operating system, and no one wants to take on the burden of developing an entire app ecosystem. The Galaxy Tab S3 gets Android 7.0 with Samsung's custom UI on top which will be familiar to anyone who's used a Galaxy phone or tablet before. The S-Pen's functionality is deeply integrated into the Samsung skin, so this is one instance in which a third-party replacement is not an option.
The software is fairly pleasant to use, with no major shortcomings. You can easily enable or disable the Flipboard-powered Briefing news screen to the left of the first homepage, and we're happy to note that it takes full advantage of the big screen. You can use the S-Pen to navigate around, just like a fingertip. When you bring the stylus tip close to the screen, you'll see a cursor appear. Pressing its button brings up a rotary menu on one side of the screen. By default, it has shortcuts to pen-specific features, though you can add any app you like.
The tools include Samsung Notes, Smart Select, Screen Write, Translate, Magnify, and Glance. Samsung Notes is a full-featured app that lets you type, scribble and draw onto pages plus embed photos and voice recordings. When the tablet's screen is off, you can hover with the S-Pen and press its button to trigger a "screen-off memo" mode which lets you quickly scribble with only one tip style and colour, and then save your work to Samsung Notes. The app is a little awkward to use because of how tools are arranged and how it balances typing and stylus input. Thankfully, Samsung's deal with Microsoft to preload its Office apps continues, and we found that OneNote was far superior in terms of usage as well as organisation.
The rest of the tools are simpler - Smart Select lets you isolate parts of the screen and capture stills or even animated GIFs, Screen Write lets you annotate screenshots, Translate provides Google translations for words as you hover over them, Magnify is a simple zoomed-in frame that follows the pen tip around the screen, and Glance lets you pin a thumbnail of any one app to a corner of the screen, letting you jump to it no matter what else you're doing.
Samsung Galaxy Tab S3 S Pen
Another headline feature of the Galaxy Tab S3 is the S Pen stylus, which comes in the box rather than as a pricey add-on (listen up, Apple). It’s a squat, plastic pen that matches the colour of the tablet and feels nice to hold. It’s noticeably smaller than both the Apple Pencil and Microsoft’s Surface Pen. I’m also a fan of the fact that it has flat sides, to stop it rolling away when you place it down on the table.
The S Pen offers four times the pressure-sensitivity of Apple’s Pencil and can tell whether you’re shading or putting more pressure on the nib, which makes it very effective for everything from jotting down notes to doodling and digital painting.
Samsung provides a couple of pre-installed apps: Notes and an odd social network for sharing drawings called Pen.UP that seems to crash every time I try to use it. You can download Sketchbook Pro for free from Samsung’s app store, which is a far better app for making the most of the S Pen.
Handwriting and drawing are naturally better on a tablet using a thicker S Pen, too. It’s around the same width as the Apple Pencil, but shorter and boasts four times as many pressure levels. It really captures every angle, which can be great for shading, depending on the app you’re using. Samsung includes two apps – Notes and the coloring-book-like PEN.UP – and there are more in the Google Play Store.
The S Pen doesn’t slot inside the thin tablet, so you can’t seamlessly hide the thicker stylus when it’s not in use. Instead, Samsung has added an pen holder loop for the keyboard – if you buy the keyboard. The good news is that the S Pen doesn’t need to be charged, and doesn’t roll away constantly, as it has two flatter sides and a clip. The Apple Pencil likes to roll off tables because there’s nowhere to put it and, if frequently used, is always at risk of being out of juice.
It would have been nice to have a slot in the tablet to store the pen when it’s not in use, but considering how thin the Tab S3 is, that was never really an option. If you pick up the keyboard accessory, something I haven’t managed to test yet, then there’s a neat pen loop attached to that.
A new top-end Android tablet is a rare occurrence these days, and after using Samsung’s Galaxy Tab S3, I can sort of see why.
This iPad Pro-chasing tablet is good-looking, fast and has a gorgeous screen, but I can’t fully recommend it because the Android user experience on a tablet still isn’t quite up to scratch. Samsung has tried its best, but the future for high-end Android tablets isn’t looking too rosy.
The new Samsung Galaxy Tab S3 is slim and fashionable, with high-end specs and a bundled stylus. It can also be paired with a keyboard case if what you want is productivity on the go. However, it costs as much as many mainstream laptops, so there are a lot of pros and cons to weigh when deciding whether this is the right device for you.
Samsung Galaxy Tab S3 Design
While not quite on the same level as Galaxy S smartphones usually are, the Galaxy Tab S3 is certainly premium. Its most distinct design features are the all-glass back, and overall thinness of just 6mm. The back isn't slippery at all, and this tablet is easy to hold in one hand, which you'll do a lot if you use the S-Pen. Unfortunately, the body is too thin to accommodate a silo for the stylus, so you'll have to carry it around separately and make sure you don't misplace it.
The Galaxy Tab S3 is a mixture of the very best and the very worst of Samsung’s industrial design. It’s thinner than an iPhone 7, with a flat back and slightly curved sides that make it a pleasure to hold. Weighing in at just 429g it’s also noticeably lighter than the latest iteration of the regular iPad.
The Tab S3 is about the same size as an iPad Pro 9.7-inch, but the all-black colour is a hue I’ve been wishing Apple would introduce for its tablets since the matte-black iPhone 7 arrived.
There are clicky volume and sleep buttons on the side, while the headphone jack and USB-C port sit slightly off-centre on the bottom. Like the iPad Pro, four speakers are dotted around the tablet and they have some software trickery that angles the sound depending on how you’re holding the device. There’s also a very fast fingerprint scanner below the screen, flanked by two capacitive ‘back’ and ‘overview’ buttons.
It’s a stunning piece of kit, until you start using it. The glass back, for me, is a wrong step for a tablet. After using the Tab S3 for a few minutes the behind becomes completely covered in oily fingerprints.
We also expect tablets to be much more durable than a phone, mainly because they spend a lot of time being bunged inside a bag or passed around a group of people. An iPad can comfortably live inside a full rucksack without getting damaged, but I’m already starting to see tiny marks appearing on the Galaxy Tab S3. I understand a glossy, glass back might be a flashier design choice, but I’d prefer a matte metal back.
It's a stylish, all-glass tablet with an impressively crisp and vibrant screen and four speakers, making it an excellent portable movie theater. It's also the first HDR-ready tablet, although there are a few asterisks to that bullet point. (HDR stands for high dynamic range, which means a spectacular, noticeable difference in contrast and color range in comparison to regular HD.)
The thing that really gives it the edge over Apple’s tab is the screen tech used. While Apple uses IPS LCD panels, Samsung uses AMOLED, which allows for much richer colours, deeper blacks and a more immersive screen for bingeing on media.
The tablet packs the same 2048 x 1536 resolution as the Tab S2, but it’s now HDR-enabled when you’re watching supported content either through Netflix or Amazon Prime. HDR (high dynamic range) gives much greater peak brightness, with blacks appearing deeper and more natural as a result.
The Tab S3’s support of the new HDR10 standard is actually a bigger deal than if Samsung packed a 4K screen into a 9.7-inch tablet. The expanded brightness range does more than extra pixels would at this small size – more pixels matter when you’re dealing with a larger 4K television.
Here’s the problem, there’s not a lot of HDR video content available today. It’s being rolled out with streaming video services like Amazon Video and Netflix already on board on Samsung, LG and Sony TVs, but we weren’t able to find HDR video on these services at the tablet's launch.
The demo HDR footage we’ve seen looks tremendous. It’s a shame neither Netflix or Amazon has updated their mobile apps to support it yet, and there’s no word on when that might happen, which means for now the HDR support feels a little superfluous.
The screen’s much more colourful and saturated than the iPad Pro display, which can look a tad dull when they’re both side by side, but this is where the S3’s lead ends.
The Tab S3’s screen doesn’t perform as well in bright light due to its overly reflective coating, which I’ve found is particularly annoying on trains. It also lacks any of the True Tone tech found in the iPad Pro, which alters the colour temperature depending on your environment and makes reading in the dark easier on the eyes.
Samsung Galaxy Tab S3 speakers
There are two on the bottom and two on the top, and they’re tuned by the audio gurus at AKG.
They’re decent speakers, with plenty of volume and the positioning means noise will come out in all directions, but they do have a tendency to feel like the sound is far away from you and being pushed the wrong way. This might have something to do with the software that’s supposed to alter the sound depending on which orientation you’re holding it in. Even with this issue, they’re much better than the majority of tablet speakers.
What you can take advantage of right now are the quad speakers on the Tab S3. They reach a more powerful volume than what we've heard from the mono Tab S2 and so many other tablets. Better yet, they’re calibrated to your movements, so as you rotate the tablet the stereo speaker orientation changes, so you’re never holding it the wrong way for sound.
As long as you’re not expecting deep base, these AKG-tuned quad HD speakers go ear-to-ear with the those on the equally-rich-sounding iPad Pro 9.7. You can get some bass out of the Tab S3 with the right headphones, which you’re probably going to use more often when roaming with this tablet in public.
This tablet also has both a 3.5mm headphone jack on the bottom of the frame, and supports Bluetooth 4.2. No one is getting rid of headphone jacks in tablets – yet.
Samsung Galaxy Tab S3 Performance
We tried out the HDR screen with Amazon Prime's original series The Man in the High Castle and The
Grand Tour, and found that it did look great, with colours that really popped and extremely crisp reproduction overall. However, bandwidth was a big constraint. You'll need more than 15Mbps to stream at the highest quality and videos will consume nearly 2GB per hour when downloaded, so this isn't necessarily a practical feature for Indian conditions just yet. There were slight shifts in colour tone when we checked out viewing angles on the screen, but everything else from brightness to the text clarity was fine.
The S-Pen turned out to be quite fun and useful, and we found ourselves using it quite a lot even when just moving through the UI. The main problem with it is that pen-enabled apps, and even the input panel integrated into the default keyboard, all respond to touch as well as the S-Pen tip. This means that we'd often make a mark when we were just trying to rest a hand on the screen in order to start writing. You have to learn to hover your hand slightly off the screen, not treat it like a sheet of paper.
The Galaxy Tab S3 did stutter occasionally during normal use, which could be because of the graphical demands of such a high-resolution screen. Our benchmark scores reflected this as well - we got 138,828 points in AnTuTu, 3,934 in GeekBench's multi-core test, and 128 in WebXprt. 3DMark Sling Shot Extreme gave us 2,518 points but GFXBench's high-end Car Chase test running at the native resolution only managed 13fps.
Samsung usually has a lot to say about its smartphone cameras, but the ones on the Galaxy Tab S3 are nothing to get excited about. The app is quite barebones and doesn't even have an HDR feature, which is a strange omission. Photos are just okay, lacking detail and texture when seen at full size, but otherwise passable. Video recording goes up to 4K with a 10-minute time limit, and one small spot on the rear of the tablet does get quite hot after use. Thanks to the high resolution, videos are fairly crisp and smooth. The Galaxy Tab S3's camera is more than usable if you don't have your phone on you, but it shouldn't ever be your first choice.
We were able to go for three or four days before needing to charge, based on a couple of hours' worth of usage each day. We watched lots of videos and played around with the S-Pen a lot, but also used the tablet to read and browse the Web. Our HD video loop test lasted 8 hours, 13 minutes.
Samsung Galaxy Tab S3 software
The one thing that's been common across all tablets that aren't iPads or Windows machines is of course Android, for the simple reason that no hardware manufacturer currently develops its own operating system, and no one wants to take on the burden of developing an entire app ecosystem. The Galaxy Tab S3 gets Android 7.0 with Samsung's custom UI on top which will be familiar to anyone who's used a Galaxy phone or tablet before. The S-Pen's functionality is deeply integrated into the Samsung skin, so this is one instance in which a third-party replacement is not an option.
The software is fairly pleasant to use, with no major shortcomings. You can easily enable or disable the Flipboard-powered Briefing news screen to the left of the first homepage, and we're happy to note that it takes full advantage of the big screen. You can use the S-Pen to navigate around, just like a fingertip. When you bring the stylus tip close to the screen, you'll see a cursor appear. Pressing its button brings up a rotary menu on one side of the screen. By default, it has shortcuts to pen-specific features, though you can add any app you like.
The tools include Samsung Notes, Smart Select, Screen Write, Translate, Magnify, and Glance. Samsung Notes is a full-featured app that lets you type, scribble and draw onto pages plus embed photos and voice recordings. When the tablet's screen is off, you can hover with the S-Pen and press its button to trigger a "screen-off memo" mode which lets you quickly scribble with only one tip style and colour, and then save your work to Samsung Notes. The app is a little awkward to use because of how tools are arranged and how it balances typing and stylus input. Thankfully, Samsung's deal with Microsoft to preload its Office apps continues, and we found that OneNote was far superior in terms of usage as well as organisation.
The rest of the tools are simpler - Smart Select lets you isolate parts of the screen and capture stills or even animated GIFs, Screen Write lets you annotate screenshots, Translate provides Google translations for words as you hover over them, Magnify is a simple zoomed-in frame that follows the pen tip around the screen, and Glance lets you pin a thumbnail of any one app to a corner of the screen, letting you jump to it no matter what else you're doing.
Samsung Galaxy Tab S3 S Pen
Another headline feature of the Galaxy Tab S3 is the S Pen stylus, which comes in the box rather than as a pricey add-on (listen up, Apple). It’s a squat, plastic pen that matches the colour of the tablet and feels nice to hold. It’s noticeably smaller than both the Apple Pencil and Microsoft’s Surface Pen. I’m also a fan of the fact that it has flat sides, to stop it rolling away when you place it down on the table.
The S Pen offers four times the pressure-sensitivity of Apple’s Pencil and can tell whether you’re shading or putting more pressure on the nib, which makes it very effective for everything from jotting down notes to doodling and digital painting.
Samsung provides a couple of pre-installed apps: Notes and an odd social network for sharing drawings called Pen.UP that seems to crash every time I try to use it. You can download Sketchbook Pro for free from Samsung’s app store, which is a far better app for making the most of the S Pen.
Handwriting and drawing are naturally better on a tablet using a thicker S Pen, too. It’s around the same width as the Apple Pencil, but shorter and boasts four times as many pressure levels. It really captures every angle, which can be great for shading, depending on the app you’re using. Samsung includes two apps – Notes and the coloring-book-like PEN.UP – and there are more in the Google Play Store.
The S Pen doesn’t slot inside the thin tablet, so you can’t seamlessly hide the thicker stylus when it’s not in use. Instead, Samsung has added an pen holder loop for the keyboard – if you buy the keyboard. The good news is that the S Pen doesn’t need to be charged, and doesn’t roll away constantly, as it has two flatter sides and a clip. The Apple Pencil likes to roll off tables because there’s nowhere to put it and, if frequently used, is always at risk of being out of juice.
It would have been nice to have a slot in the tablet to store the pen when it’s not in use, but considering how thin the Tab S3 is, that was never really an option. If you pick up the keyboard accessory, something I haven’t managed to test yet, then there’s a neat pen loop attached to that.
Samsung Galaxy Tab S3 keyboard
One of the most disappointing things about the Galaxy Tab S3 is its unremarkable Pogo keyboard case. It's similar to the iPad Pro 9.7's, connecting magnetically to its edge without Bluetooth.
It feels cramped to type on, doesn't automatically shut off the screen when closed and can be unresponsive despite being connected properly. Plus the keys aren't backlit and it only offers one viewing angle, so it can't be adjusted to your liking if, for example, you're using it on your lap. Its only redeeming quality is that it offers a place to store the S-Pen stylus.
To add insult to injury, the keyboard caused performance issues. After disconnecting the tablet from it, the on-screen keyboard would occasionally fail to appear. I was still able to tap the area where the on-screen keyboard would be and letters would appear in text fields, but the on-screen keyboard would remain invisible. I had to restart the tablet to get it back to normal
.
Another irritating problem was how disconnecting the tablet from the keyboard would cause it to go to sleep. I often casually transition between tablet and laptop mode (and vice versa) in one sitting. When switching from laptop mode to tablet, I would have to annoyingly re-enter my pin or scan my fingerprint just to continue what I was doing.
The keyboard is sold separately and it's not a deal breaker, unless you really want a keyboard with your tablet. In that case, keep your options open. But to be a "laptop replacement" a tablet really does need a keyboard. We may fare better with the upcoming Galaxy Book, a Windows-based sister product that comes with its own, different, keyboard cover.
It feels cramped to type on, doesn't automatically shut off the screen when closed and can be unresponsive despite being connected properly. Plus the keys aren't backlit and it only offers one viewing angle, so it can't be adjusted to your liking if, for example, you're using it on your lap. Its only redeeming quality is that it offers a place to store the S-Pen stylus.
To add insult to injury, the keyboard caused performance issues. After disconnecting the tablet from it, the on-screen keyboard would occasionally fail to appear. I was still able to tap the area where the on-screen keyboard would be and letters would appear in text fields, but the on-screen keyboard would remain invisible. I had to restart the tablet to get it back to normal
Another irritating problem was how disconnecting the tablet from the keyboard would cause it to go to sleep. I often casually transition between tablet and laptop mode (and vice versa) in one sitting. When switching from laptop mode to tablet, I would have to annoyingly re-enter my pin or scan my fingerprint just to continue what I was doing.
The keyboard is sold separately and it's not a deal breaker, unless you really want a keyboard with your tablet. In that case, keep your options open. But to be a "laptop replacement" a tablet really does need a keyboard. We may fare better with the upcoming Galaxy Book, a Windows-based sister product that comes with its own, different, keyboard cover.
Samsung Galaxy Tab S3 Camera
The Samsung Galaxy Tab S3 has a 13MP rear camera that you’ll hardly use. It has autofocus, an f/1.9 aperture and a flash, it’s actually somewhat surprising pictures lack detail and depth.
The quality is good for a tablet, complete with gesture control and 4K video recording, although your smartphone camera is always going to be better. We’ve mostly seen people use tablet cameras for references shots, where the quality isn’t necessarily important.
The front-facing camera is more important on a tablet, and I would’ve liked Samsung to try a bit harder with the one here. It’s 5-megapixel, with an f/2.2 aperture, and it’s fine for video chats and not much else.
What we do like is that the Tab S3 borrows the improved camera interface of the recalled Samsung Galaxy Note 7. Flipping between the two cameras is done with a swipe up or down directly on the screen (much better than trying to find the tiny camera switch button). Menus are one swipe to the left, and effects are one swipe to the right.
Samsung Galaxy Tab S3 Battery life
Yes, this is the first important Samsung device to launch since the recalled Galaxy Note 7. Whenever you mention batteries and Samsung, the exploding Note 7 will probably come into the conversation. And considering the Tab S3 is one of the first big releases since that phablet was pulled from sale, it’s very important for Samsung that nothing goes wrong here.
Its 6,000mAh battery is slightly bigger than the Tab S2’s 5,870mAh, but it’s still undersized next to the power packs in the iPad Pro 9.7 (around 7,300 mAh) and Google Pixel C (around 9,200mAh).
The Samsung Galaxy Tab S3 costs $599 (£599, about AU$780), meaning it’s around the same price as an iPad Pro 9.7 at $599 (£549, AU$849). Besides the Wi-Fi-only model, there will also be a Wi-Fi+cellular option, which we anticipate will be slightly more expensive.
If you have a spare £599 and want a tablet solely for getting the best video-watching experience around, then there isn’t a tablet better than the Samsung Tab S3. I could happily watch videos on the AMOLED HDR screen all day long. The included S Pen is great, too.
But it feels like Samsung is pushing the limits of Android on a tablet too far here. The software is unfinished and the multitasking capabilities are buggy and limited. I can forgive Android apps lacking the polish of their iOS counterparts when I’m paying £300 or less for a tablet, but when this is the same price as an iPad Pro, it’s harder to stomach.
If You want the best tablet, and demand only Android. That’s pretty much the audience for the Samsung Galaxy Tab S3. It has a finely crafted design, powerful AV capabilities and high-end tablet specs, even if they’re the guts of many 2016 smartphones. It’s future-proofed enough with the HDR-ready screen, but you’ll have to make do with the limited HDR video content out there for now.
The quality is good for a tablet, complete with gesture control and 4K video recording, although your smartphone camera is always going to be better. We’ve mostly seen people use tablet cameras for references shots, where the quality isn’t necessarily important.
The front-facing camera is more important on a tablet, and I would’ve liked Samsung to try a bit harder with the one here. It’s 5-megapixel, with an f/2.2 aperture, and it’s fine for video chats and not much else.
What we do like is that the Tab S3 borrows the improved camera interface of the recalled Samsung Galaxy Note 7. Flipping between the two cameras is done with a swipe up or down directly on the screen (much better than trying to find the tiny camera switch button). Menus are one swipe to the left, and effects are one swipe to the right.
Samsung Galaxy Tab S3 Battery life
Yes, this is the first important Samsung device to launch since the recalled Galaxy Note 7. Whenever you mention batteries and Samsung, the exploding Note 7 will probably come into the conversation. And considering the Tab S3 is one of the first big releases since that phablet was pulled from sale, it’s very important for Samsung that nothing goes wrong here.
Its 6,000mAh battery is slightly bigger than the Tab S2’s 5,870mAh, but it’s still undersized next to the power packs in the iPad Pro 9.7 (around 7,300 mAh) and Google Pixel C (around 9,200mAh).
Considering the size, We are actually quite impressed by the stamina of the Tab S3 and in my tests it managed to just about match the 12 hours of video playback Samsung is advertising. This could all change when HDR content becomes more prominent, though.
You can recharge the Tab S3 quickly (for a tablet) when using Samsung’s Adaptive Fast Charger, which comes in the box (it’s the same one that comes with newer Samsung flagship phones, so you may soon have two; +1 for brand loyalty). It took two hours and 55 minutes to go from 0% to 100%, beating Samsung’s 165 minutes claim by 10 minutes.
You can recharge the Tab S3 quickly (for a tablet) when using Samsung’s Adaptive Fast Charger, which comes in the box (it’s the same one that comes with newer Samsung flagship phones, so you may soon have two; +1 for brand loyalty). It took two hours and 55 minutes to go from 0% to 100%, beating Samsung’s 165 minutes claim by 10 minutes.
Samsung Galaxy Tab S3 Price and Conclusion
The Samsung Galaxy Tab S3 costs $599 (£599, about AU$780), meaning it’s around the same price as an iPad Pro 9.7 at $599 (£549, AU$849). Besides the Wi-Fi-only model, there will also be a Wi-Fi+cellular option, which we anticipate will be slightly more expensive.
If you have a spare £599 and want a tablet solely for getting the best video-watching experience around, then there isn’t a tablet better than the Samsung Tab S3. I could happily watch videos on the AMOLED HDR screen all day long. The included S Pen is great, too.
But it feels like Samsung is pushing the limits of Android on a tablet too far here. The software is unfinished and the multitasking capabilities are buggy and limited. I can forgive Android apps lacking the polish of their iOS counterparts when I’m paying £300 or less for a tablet, but when this is the same price as an iPad Pro, it’s harder to stomach.
Comments
Post a Comment
LEAVE A COMMMENT