During an Unpacked event that featured the announcement of five key new devices, the Galaxy Tab S7 didn't get a lot of love. Understandable, perhaps. It doesn't quite have the star power of the Note line, nor does it have the novelty of a new foldable or Bluetooth headset. Tablets in general aren't as exciting as they once were.
But Samsung kept connecting. The company produces many tablets. It's just a little bit his thing. Why create one when you can make a dozen, each with different prices and audiences? It's the Galaxy Tab line, however, that has always been the one to watch, offering a premium slate experience designed to complement its Galaxy phones.
Indeed, in a world where Android Tablets are largely the realm of budget devices, Samsung remains one of the few out there yet to produce a device that can compete with the iPad. The latest model offers a number of key features, although the greatest of all is not available on the Tab S7 + review unit that the company sent.
The device will be among the first tablets to receive 5G connectivity. Pricing and availability is still available on that SKU, though honestly, I don't imagine a lot of people will require cellular connectivity on their tablets as long as so many people continue to work from home. When the journey finally begins again, it could be a different story.
That said, the model Samsung sent right after the Unpacked event is a beast. It is the specified version of the Tab S7 +, which starts at $ 849. The highest tier increases RAM from 6GB to 8GB and storage from 128GB to 256GB. Add the state-of-the-art Snapdragon 865+ and you'll have an extremely capable machine on your hands here.
The design matches the premium specifications. The plastic design of the first models has disappeared, mistaken for an elegant and robust design in glass and aluminum. It's a tablet that looks and feels premium as its price tag indicates. It's a bit heavy, though, at 1.26 lbs for the 12.4-inch model, versus 1.41 lbs for the 12.9-inch iPad Pro. The truth about these devices is that they are no longer designed to be held high above your face while you are in bed.
They are, of course, meant to be true multitasking work / game machines. I have to note that I'm writing this as someone who continues to use a laptop for all of their work, but I can certainly appreciate the progress the category has made over the past few years. I also know a handful of people whohave mostly successfully swapped their work machines for a tablet, be it an Android, Surface, or iPad device.
The value of a tablet as a work machine is, of course, as good as its casing - a claim you cannot reasonably make on most products. Along with the device itself, Samsung has updated the case in a couple of nice ways. The typing experience doesn't quite match a dedicated laptop keyboard, but it's been pretty well finished. The keys have decent travel and a nice spring for a laptop cover. The leather case also comes off in two pieces, so the back can be used as a stand, without the keyboard present. Of course, the trade-off for this type of case is the fact that it can't really be used on your lap without things falling off and pieces falling apart.
It wouldn't be a Samsung tablet without the S Pen, of course. The peripheral is, fortunately, included. There's no stylus slot (something I keep asking for but never get; life is tough sometimes), but it magnetically clips to the top of the device, albeit a little weakly. Samsung has definitely created a little ecosystem for the input device and I'm pretty constantly impressed that it's able to recognize and convert my chicken scratch. Seriously, my already terrible handwriting has only atrophied over time.
It also points to a beautiful OLED display with a 120Hz refresh rate. Depending on what you're trying to do with it, you may need to activate it to save on battery life. Both models are pretty solid on that front, with 8,000 and 10,900mAh respectively, but the 5G models will no doubt have a hit.
Samsung is really pushing DeX to the max, even harder than it has in the past. You can set it to automatically turn on desktop approximation when the keyboard is connected. The interface is an attempt to approximate something akin to the Windows desktop experience, but a number of apps don't yet support the interface and overall still feels clunky. It's easy to extrapolate a little and imagine how things like multitasking will improve, but it doesn't seem like it's all there.