Top positive review
144 people found this helpful
The best mid-range tablet around, Samsung nailed it with this one.
By Erick Walbridge on Reviewed in the United States on December 27, 2020
First impressions of this device are solid, the screen is bright, the battery life is impressive, the speakers sound awesome, and the software is feature-rich and well-thought-out. TLDR, a very fairly priced high quality mid-range tablet with great performance, respectable battery life, and a great display. Design This tablet is designed very similarly to the nearly double priced Galaxy Tab S6, with the only removal being the pins for the first party keyboard. It does however, gain a 3.5 mm headphone jack, which is a must-have for any high quality headphone user. It is made of aluminum and glass, with the only plastic being for the Wi-Fi / LTE antenna bands. Very modern and sleek with minimal bezels that aren't too small, nor too large making the tablet look dated. However, I wanted to protect this tablet for years to come so I won't be looking at the bare metal chassis too much, as I purchased a case for it. I recommend doing that, since it will keep the resale value of the device high, and prevent it from being damaged as easily. That and a screen protector are a must-have for this tablet. I recommend the Poetic Revolution case. Features This tablet features, two speakers tuned by AKG certified for Dolby Atmos, facial and pattern unlock, the latest Bluetooth and Wi-Fi standards, a 3.5 mm headphone jack, an 8 megapixel rear camera, and a 5-megapixel front-facing camera. No fingerprint reader unfortunately, that is something in the higher-priced regular S6. 64 or 128gb of storage. This tablet also includes a passive S-Pen that does not require charging and can magnetically stick to multiple places on the tablet. Software As of 2021, this tablet is running Android 10, with Samsung One UI 2.5. Android 10 is a great operating system, but is even better when paired with One UI 2.5. Samsung really knows how to make a good tablet OS, but considering they're pretty much the only company who's making decent Android tablets, there's not much to compare it with. I would be here all day talking about every little detail, and I don't think I found everything yet. But here's some of the highlights. Dark mode, smart select which allows you to take screenshots of a custom size using the S-Pen, Samsung Notes which allow you to take notes with the S Pen, allowing apps one time or partial location only when in use, better battery management, better notification handling, and many other things that I haven't discovered or noticed yet. What you should take away from this, is the operating system is very well-balanced and has very few bugs that I have discovered, Samsung knows what they're doing. Hardware The Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 Lite is running an Exynos 9611 Octa Core processor (4x2.3GHz + 4x1.7GHz) with 4GB of ram. While the processor is a bit weak, it is acceptable for multitasking and moderate gaming. This tablet runs Minecraft, Terraria, Call of Duty mobile, and Asphalt 9 with decent frame rates. Note it does not run fortnite officially, and unofficially very poorly. Some of that is due to poor optimization, but if you want to game at high settings buy a tab S6 or S7. It is perfectly acceptable for watching videos or TV, and the 4GB of ram makes multitasking very effective. It's much more powerful than a Fire tab or something cheaper, so it's certainly very usable. Storage By default this tablet comes with 64 or 128 GB of storage, with around 20 GB of it being reserved for the system. It has plenty of space for all your apps, and a decent amount of downloaded content. Not to mention it also has MicroSD expansion, which allows you to expand the storage up to 2TB, not that you could actually find 2TB micro SD cards for a decent price, or at all. To save some money, I would recommend buying the 64GB model, and buying an SD card later. Screen This tablet is using a 2000 x 1200 resolution LCD display. While it is certainly not an AMOLED display, it is bright, vibrant, and certainly high resolution enough for mostly anybody. It's actually visibly brighter and sharper than my old Galaxy S6 Edge screen, but that's a first or second gen OLED. If you want a high-quality OLED screen, buy a tab S5E or S6. It certainly perfect for watching movies or TV, and unless you are directly comparing it with an OLED you won't notice much difference. There is some slight backlight bleed but it is not noticeable in my unit. Battery This tablet is using a 7040mAh lithium ion battery, which is unchanged from the tab S6. So naturally since this tablet has a lower power consumption it's battery life is slightly better, I went through almost an entire day and still had 35% battery left. As for the battery health, it's still perfectly fine now, but this tablet is less than a month old, so have yet to see how much it will degrade over time. Charging this tablet has been somewhat interesting. On my original Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge wall adapter it actually fast charges over the spec of the wall adapter. Measured on the app Ampere, the charger is rated for 2.1 amps but the tablet charges at up to 2.6. This shouldn't be an issue, as the charger has in-built safety features that will shut it off if it gets too hot or if something draws too much current. I've also tested it on an Anker Powercore 26800 power bank, and an Anker Powerport Speed 5 USB charger. Interestingly, it does fast charge using the blue ports on my USB charger, it does not fast charge using the black ports nor any of the ports on my power bank. It's not totally an issue, because it's only about a 30-minute decrease in time for the fast charging ports, just somewhat annoying. Keeping in mind all of these ports can deliver the current and voltage required to fast charge. Camera The camera on this tablet is perfectly fine. While it's no Flagship smartphone camera, it's certainly good enough for scanning documents or video calling, since I doubt you're going to be hauling your tablet around taking pictures with it. The rear camera is 8 megapixels, and front facing camera is 5 megapixels. Both 1080P, and the rear shooter can shoot video in 1080P 30fps. S Pen Ah yes, the S Pen. The S Pen is Samsung's claim to fame with this tablet, this S Pen is different from the one on the regular S6, as the one on the S6 is active and needs charging for the fancy Bluetooth features. This S Pen however is a passive stylus, made internally by Wacom and licensed to Samsung. Samsung made the right call in this decision, as the S Pen feels great, is well-balanced and not too heavy, and has minimal latency when drawing fast. Even though the S pen is made of plastic, It Is by no means cheap plastic and feels very quality in the hand. It does have replaceable nibs, as it rubs off a little bit on the screen protector I have. If you lose or break your S Pen, since it's a passive stylus it's only $60 for a new one. Still expensive, but not too bad. The S-Pen stows away on the side of the tablet with the point facing up, using magnets it is quite a strong hold and the pen is unlikely to fall off unless you bump it. With the case I chose, the pen is still in that location, just with a bit of plastic in the way of the tablet. This is not really affect the magnets, and the pen stays where it's put. Certain apps don't support the S Pen, but most of the first party Google ones and Samsung ones do, and Samsung has built in some extra features like screen write, that takes a screenshot and that allows you to write on it immediately, smart select which allows you to capture a custom size screenshots of most content except most streaming services, and some added functionality with Google Translate. I actually found myself using the S-Pen to navigate the tablet, rather than just writing. It's very precise and easy to use, and easy to put away when you're done. Conclusion Overall this is an outstanding tablet, a very major upgrade from A Fire tab, or a cheap Chinese one. With it's relatively low-cost especially if you can get it on sale, decent performance, well thought-out software, large storage with expansion, great LCD display, and free S Pen, this tablet should be a major consideration in anybody's tablet buying process. 5/5 Stars.
Top critical review
242 people found this helpful
As good as an Android tablet gets, but no better—iPad probably better for most.
By PRNLM on Reviewed in the United States on October 6, 2020
I'll preface this review by saying: (1) I strongly prefer Android to iOS as an environment (2) This review may not be entirely "fair" to Samsung, but it's fair to users/would-be buyers I own an iPad Pro already, but there are some significant things that I wanted from this tablet: - Something more "holdable" with a large screen, which you can't get with Apple's 4:3 screen shape - The ability to access and cary files from my "main" computer far more easily than is possible with iOS - The ability to run Termux for Linux access - The ability to use a mouse with my tablet at times on the go, with a *pointer* All of those things meant that I needed an Android tablet. In the past I'd have gone with Huawei but now they're not a good bet due to all the geopolitical intrigue and software limitations. I didn't pick up the Tab A because it doesn't have a light sensor (no screen auto-brightness) or a full S6 because the price was just too high. So the S6 Lite seemed like the right bet. PROS: - Thin, light, well-built, with slim bezels - Far more responsive to touch than the Tab A series of tablets - Plenty fast enough for most uses - Far better screen color than the Tab A series of tablets - TFT (rather than AMOLED) screen tech means far less degradation over time - All the flexibility and power of the latest Android versions CONS: - TFT (rather than AMOLED) means that brightness and color still are uneven across the screen - Bad edge lighting issues (bright halo at screen edge) and poor viewing angles for the modern era - Brightness and color of course not as good as AMOLED - Default icon set and Samsung UI feels clunky (fix with alternative launcher and icon set) - APPS. APPS, APPS, APPS Powering up a large Android tablet again for the first time in a few years, it's obvious that Android tablet apps have gone nowhere since the last time I experienced them. There are serious problems: (1) 95% of Android apps just show a single column of full-screen-width content, just like they do on a phone. That layout is fine for a phone, or a 7" tablet, but on a large tablet like this, it makes apps hard to use. You have all this screen real estate, but no columns. Effectively zero layout. Most iPad apps have two or three columns—navigation and controls on the left edge, content in the larger right panel. iPad apps use the screen real estate in sections, like a desktop application does, because you have all that space to work with. The Android apps on tablets? They treat the tablet screen like a giant phone screen. Twitter on iPad OS? Multiple columns, nice layout. But on Android? One full-width column, like a phone, all those tweets ending up as wide one-liners and limited navigation in a single line across the bottom of the screen. Evernote on iPad OS? Three columns, one navigation/options, one for list, and one for note content. Evernote on Android? One full-width column, like a phone, making it far slower and more difficult to sort through notes. Same for Reddit. Same for just about everything. Serious usability hit. (2) Most of the *best* apps still don't exist on Android. Ulysses or Scrivener for writers? Nope. Bear for note organizing? Nope. Sente or Papers for research? Nope. Adobe creativity apps? Nope. There are very few *serious* applications on Android. Yes, you may dislike the way that iPad OS handles multi-window and mouse (I dislike it!) BUT the range and weight of the iPad OS applications means that it can stake a legitimate claim to being a laptop replacement for many people. Android? No. It's a giant-screened phone. Now, that said—there are a few heavy-hitters that are well done on Android. Google Docs/Slides/Sheets and Microsoft Word/Excel/Powerpoint/office on Android are full-featured, serious apps (though the iPad OS versions still have key features and usability improvements missing from the Android versions, for example non-Page-veiw editing, rather than having to do initial drafting on distinct "pages" in Word). But that's about the whole list. App for app, between the two platforms, when apps exist on both, the iPad OS version feels like the "full" application, and the Android version feels like the "lite version—for phones" of the same application. And, beyond that, there really isn't much of an app for app comparison to be made, as there are *so many* heavy-hitter apps absolutely worth paying for on iOS, and only as many as you can count on your fingers on Android. It's an ironic twist that while Samsung's S-Pen is great and works very well on the tablet, there's precious little you can do with it in a serious way. There are *so many* serious productivity and creativity apps on iPad OS to use with Apple Pencil (my favorite being Notability) compared to... Samsung Notes (not *nearly* as powerful) and that's basically it on Android. So they've gone to all the trouble to make great hardware—but there's just not much in the way of software. If you just need Office (either Google or Microsoft) and Netflix on your tablet, and you can't afford an iPad, then an Android tablet like this one makes sense. If you need to run Termux and also move files on and off the tablet filesystem with ease, accessing them directly, then an Android tablet like this one makes sense. But for everyone else, it's hard to say that iPad OS isn't a far better tablet environment at this point. As a user, I seriously prefer Android vs. iPad OS by far, as least as far as the UI and user experience of the OS goes. But also as a user, there's no denying that while an iPad edges ever closer to a legitimate laptop replacement (albeit with restrictions I struggle to live with—hence buying this), an Android tablet is still just a giant Android phone—with mostly phone-like apps, and far fewer of them, than iPad OS with its increasingly serious productivity ecosystem. It's a shame, because for the price, the hardware is great, the screen shape makes a lot more sense, and the openness of Android means that many more power user things are possible. But there just aren't many power user apps to go along with that ethos. So—would I recommend? If you know you need an Android tablet and are willing to put up with the compromises, yes. The hardware here is very reasonable, esp. for the price, and there's very little adware. I'll use it for the things I need it for, and for everything else, use my iPad Pro when a tablet is needed. But for regular users? Take this money and spend it on the lowest-priced iPad, and take advantage of what the iPad OS and its ecosystem offer, which will—for most users—be far more appropriate.
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