Review: Samsung Galaxy Tab S

Samsung makes a lot of different kinds of tablets. In fact, Samsung makes so many tablets that it’s hard for one lineup to stand out amongst the company's offerings, let alone the competition.

But with the 8.4-inch ($400) and 10.5-inch Galaxy Tab S ($500), Samsung has managed to stand out quite a bit. They’ve also done it without resorting to ridiculous gimmicks. These Wi-Fi-only tablets are incredibly thin and incredibly light without sacrificing performance, and they come with two of the best-looking screens in the game.

Those beautiful displays are part of what make these tablets so thin and light. Both have 2,560 x 1,600 AMOLED screens that don’t require LED-backlight systems, which shaves thickness from their frames. True to OLED's core strengths, they’re tack-sharp, vivid, and bright enough to view in sunlight. While both tablet screens have the same higher-than-high-def resolution, the 8.4-inch model has a higher pixel density due to its smaller size: 360ppi vs. 287ppi for the 10.5-incher.

The 8.4-inch Tab S weighs a mere 10.4 ounces and is 6.6mm thick, which is both lighter and thinner than the 7.9-inch Wi-Fi version of the iPad Mini (11.7 ounces/7.5mm). The 10.5-incher is the same thickness as the smaller Tab S, weighing about the same as the 9.7-inch Wi-Fi version of the iPad Air (one pound) with a slimmer profile and a larger screen. These tablets are so light, I thought they were fake props from IKEA stores when I first picked them up.

But all those nips and tucks don’t amount to a hill of beans without solid performance, and the Galaxy Tab S lineup delivers on that front. Each tablet is powered by a pair of quad-core Exynos 5 processors—a 1.9GHz quad-core ARM CPU and a 1.3GHz ARM CPU—and the devices flip between them to conserve battery life depending on the processing needed for the task.

These tablets have the same micro-dimpled plastic backs of the Samsung Galaxy S5. It looks better on these devices, but the plastic is one of the Tab S's few drawbacks. They feel sturdy despite their lightness, but because of the plastic, they don’t feel as solid overall as an iPad.

Each size also has the same solid 8-megapixel main camera and practically the same specs, but there are a couple of differences. One is that the home button is on the bottom in landscape mode for the 10.5-incher, while it’s on the bottom in portrait mode for the 8.4-inch Tab S. Same goes with the orientation for the cameras. But the major difference is battery capacity: The larger 10.5-inch tab has a 7,900 mAh battery, while the 8.4-incher has a 4,900 mAh battery.

I did the bulk of my day-to-day testing with the 8.4-incher, which has the lower-capacity battery. With "normal" daily usage—surfing the Web for an hour or two, checking e-mail, watching a video here and there, and playing around with apps—I got about a day and a half per charge. You can squeeze more life out of the battery by using each tablet’s “Ultra Power Saver” setting. It limits your homescreen and app options, disables Bluetooth, and displays everything in black-and-white. I liked the latter effect; it’s like using a tablet in film-noir mode.

Both tablets come with 16GB of on-board storage, plus a MicroSD slot that supports up to 128GB of user-provided space. The home button on each tablet doubles as a fingerprint reader. After registering your own fingerprint, which takes eight swipes to set up, swiping downward over the home button unlocks the tablet. It works pretty well, although I had to swipe a few times if my finger wasn’t completely flat on the surface of the tablet. If you want to, you can use your finger swipes as an authentication for PayPal transactions.

The tablets run Android 4.4.2 KitKat, with your app needs handled by the Google Play store and several of the Google essentials pre-installed: Gmail, Google Drive, Google Maps, YouTube, Hangouts, and with a long press of the home button, Google Now. But you don’t get the stock experience of a Nexus tablet; Samsung’s TouchWiz interface is layered on top of KitKat.

That means there are many more preinstalled apps compared to a stock Android device: Samsung’s own offerings, such as S Voice, WatchOn, Milk Music, and a new Papergarden app that gives you free and paid access to digital magazines. You can’t delete those preinstalled apps, but you can hide them from the app menus. There are also some solid third-party apps installed, including Netflix, the New York Times, Evernote, Dropbox, Hancom Office Suite, and Flipboard. It’s bloatware, but much of it may be stuff you’d install anyway.

Some of the TouchWiz add-ons are useful, including a “Multi Window” mode that lets you run supported apps side-by-side on the screen. For example, you can look up a location on Google Maps on one half of the screen while typing an email on the other half without having to jump between apps. That feature is particularly useful on the 10.5-incher, as the extra screen real estate helps.

Another extra is a “Quick Briefing” menu that gives you a rundown of your upcoming calendar events, alarms, stocks you’re tracking, and quick access to a few Web pages. You bring it up by swiping right from the home screen. If you have a Samsung Galaxy S5, S4, or Note 3, you can make use of the tablet's SideSync feature. It lets you mirror the phone’s screen on the tablet, drag-and-drop files to shuttle them between devices, and pair the table to a Galaxy phone to take and make phone calls.

The tablets themselves are great, but I wasn’t a huge fan of the separately-sold Galaxy Tab S covers. Aesthetically, they are nice: They mimic the micro-dimpled look of each tablet’s back, and they look like quality leather notebook covers. However, using their fold-up-to-use-as-kickstand feature can be baffling. The cases attach to each tablet with snaps that pop into retractable circles on the back of each device. It’s a unique approach—and a very secure fit—but it takes a lot of force to attach or remove the cases. I felt like I was going to break those snaps off whenever I removed the case, because they snap in there pretty good.

The Galaxy Tab S devices give Android users two slim and solid alternatives to the iPad Air and iPad Mini. Stock Android would have been great, and metal backings wouldn’t have made these ultralight tablets too heavy at all. But neither of those things are as important as these flagship Samsung slates’ strengths: Superb screens, smooth performance, solid battery life, and unbelievably svelte physiques.