Samsung Galaxy Tab S7 Plus
At the latest Galaxy Unpacked 2020 event, Samsung announced a host of new products, including the next flagship Note 20 lineup and the next Galaxy Z Fold 2 foldable phone. in order to compete with the Apple iPad Pro.
As expected, the Tab S7 received two versions at once. They have everything you need from 120Hz displays to 5G and four-speaker sound systems. But their prices are appropriate: $ 650 for the 11-inch Tab S7 and $ 850 for the 12.4-inch S7 Plus. The addition of Samsung's keyboard cover adds an additional $ 200 for the 11-inch and $ 230 for the 12.4-inch. That is, in fact, you can easily spend over a thousand dollars on one of these tablets.
For this review, I tested the Tab S7 Plus over the course of several days, and it has both pros and cons. However, this article should not be taken as a definitive opinion. This is just a preview and Samsung has no plans to sell it until the fall, so things may still change. However, today you can get an idea of what it is like to use the Tab S7 Plus for both work and play. And it's worth starting with what is done well in it.
Samsung Galaxy Tab S7 Plus
Great screen
Unsurprisingly, the best thing about the Tab S7 Plus is its display. The 12.4-inch OLED panel is bright and vibrant enough. Colors practically do not go beyond the screen, and blacks are as dark and deep as on an OLED TV from the same Samsung. To top it all off, the 120Hz refresh rate makes every screen interaction as smooth as possible. Yes, the iPad Pro has had this feature for three years, but here it is as enjoyable as it is on the Apple tablet. Considering it is an OLED panel, it could even be argued that it is the most beautiful mobile screen ever made.
The only concern is that it is significantly smaller than the 12.9-inch iPad Pro due to its more rectangular shape and smaller diagonal. And after using an Apple device, this screen feels a bit cramped to work with. But when it comes to watching HDR videos, Samsung clearly wins.
High performance
The Tab S7 Plus is powered by the latest and greatest Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 Plus processor and 8GB of RAM. For several days of use, this tablet never freezes, performance has not sagged. Even during video communication and switching between other applications at the same time, the operating speed remained consistently high. Yes, technically Apple's processor is faster than Qualcomm in our benchmark test. But in the real world, the Tab S7 Plus is in no way inferior to the iPad Pro.
Samsung Galaxy Tab S7 Plus design
The speakers are loud and sound great
Samsung has put as many as four speakers in the Tab S7 and added a bit of Dolby Atmos and AKG customization. The result is loud, full sound that sounds great whether you're watching YouTube videos, listening to music, or making a video call. The last time the iPad Pro had such impressive speakers in a tablet, we can say that Samsung is doing well with it. They're good enough to forgive Samsung for the lack of a headphone jack.
Front camera in the right place
One of the most frustrating things about using an iPad as your primary device is the camera. When you need to take part in a video call, you realize that the camera is on the sidelines. You can look into her or at the people you are talking to, but not both at the same time. Samsung is smart enough to center the camera at the edge of the screen. Therefore, when you use the tablet in a case with a keyboard, the camera is on top, like in a laptop, and not on the side. It is definitely not the best camera on the market, but it performs on par with most laptop webcams at the moment.
Keyboard case looks good, but has its drawbacks
From this point on, the Tab S7 Plus starts to have problems. The keyboard case, which costs $ 230 (not a small amount), is as good as it is annoying.
It's good that the keyboard can be detached from the tablet, and there is also a part of the case that protects the back edge and provides a stand for watching videos or drawing. It's much more flexible than Apple's Magic Keyboard, which gives you everything or nothing.
Keyboard Samsung Galaxy Tab S7 Plus
But this flexibility comes at a price. Trying to use the Tab S7 on your lap results in the tablet wobbling and unstable. Yes, it can be locked, but it will never be as convenient as with an iPad Pro, Surface Pro, or traditional laptop.
The keyboard and trackpad are pleasant to the touch. Particularly interesting are the new multi-finger gestures that let you switch between apps by swiping your finger across the trackpad. But it also has its annoyances, such as the F key bar, which cannot be configured for media controls by default. You have to press the Fn key every time you need to pause the music or adjust the volume. How many times a day do you need to press F9? Most likely about zero. However, you will be adjusting the volume often, so the absolutely uncomfortable combinations Fn + F8 and Fn + F9 will haunt you all day. And the buttons to switch and pause music are even further away: F10-F12. On a laptop, you can reconfigure the F keys so that you don't have to constantly press Fn to control multimedia. This cannot be done here.
The trackpad also constantly reacts to a palm passing by, causing the cursor to fly randomly across the screen throughout the day. And you can't turn off inverted (or "natural") scrolling on it, which is frustrating too.
DeX still disappoints
It's no exaggeration to say that the weakest part of Samsung tablets is that they run Android. And this OS never worked well on tablets. To try to overcome some of Android's disadvantages with the large screen, Samsung developed DeX a few years ago. It provides a more traditional desktop with overlapping windows and a taskbar at the bottom.
Samsung Galaxy Tab S7 Plus review
The problem is that DeX still seems like a work in progress. The elementary window management here is such that even Windows 95 seems more advanced against its background. The fact that you can't use the trackpad to select text on a web page is even more annoying. But then more serious problems arise. For example, when apps just refuse to open in DeX mode (hello LastPass) or don't want to work with Samsung's alien window size controls (yes, Pocket, that's about you). Applications often simply "die" while running in a DeX environment. And, if you close your tablet and then open it later, you can easily expect all the apps you've been working with to just close. It's not something you can rely on every day for work.
Many will take this claim as unnecessary digging, but why is the mouse cursor turned counterclockwise here a few degrees more than in Windows or macOS? It seems very strange, unusual and unpleasant.
Plus, no one would argue that the vast majority of Android apps just look silly on such a big screen. Well, at least Samsung has done a good job making its own apps work and look good. If you ditch DeX and use the Galaxy Tab S7 Plus in Android standard mode, you can activate Samsung's new feature that allows you to run three apps at the same time (just like on the Galaxy Fold ). This is nice, but it still cannot compensate for the fact that most applications look like regular phone applications, only they are very stretched. They also don't support keyboard shortcuts.
Battery will not last for a full working day
If you plan on using the Tab S7 as your everyday workhorse, be prepared to charge it frequently. It is impossible to say for sure that it is the display with a high resolution and high refresh rate that affects autonomy. Because constantly jumping between at least six different apps throughout testing killed the Tab S7 Plus' battery in less than four hours. Fortunately, there is support for 45W fast charging because you will have to plug it in at least once a day.
You will likely get increased battery life if you simply use the Tab S7 to watch videos, read e-books and articles, or surf the web lightly. But to be sure, you need to test the tablet much longer, in different scenarios. And for this you will have to spend more than a thousand dollars on it. No thanks.
There are other things about the Tab S7 Plus that cannot be fully appreciated in this preview. At the very least, you need an artist to fully appreciate the S Pen's latency. Samsung has yet to announce an exact release date (it just said the tablet will be out “this fall”). Therefore, the company still has time to solve some of the problems that you met in this review. For example, poor trackpad palm recognition and limited customization options. But the company claims that the hardware it has reviewed is final, and there will likely not be any changes.
