Yesterday, Samsung announced a boatload of new products, including the latest adaptation of its prescriptive Rota smartphone and the next folding phone in its portfolio. Moreover in the mix was the new Galaxy Tab S7 and S7 Plus, the company's latest high-end Android tablets examined to go blow-for-blow with the iPad Pro.
As expected, the Tab S7 duo assemblage the specifications sheet, at microcosmic as far as Android devices go. They have everything from 5G to 120Hz displays to quad-speaker systems. However they moreover cost a stack, starting at $649.99 for the 11-inch Tab S7 and $849.99 for the 12.4-inch S7 Plus. Numbering Samsung's keyboard page casing to the mix tacks on culling $199.99 (11-inch) or $229.99 (12.4-inch) to the tally, significancy you can facilely spend over a grand on one of these tablets.
I've been stalwart to test-drive a Tab S7 Runnerup for a few days, and lifing are my thoughts on the highs and lows of the experience. Don't booty this as a impregnated review; this is unaffectedly a preproduction unit, and Samsung isn't planning to ship it until this fall, so a homiletic sensing will have to disclosed later. However I can requite you an memorizing of what it's like to use the Tab S7 Runnerup for both work and comedy postliminary a few days. Let's start with what's good.
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. Oh my god, this screen
Unsurprisingly, the in-built all-time thing by far anyway the Tab S7 Runnerup is its display. This 12.4-inch OLED console is bright, vibrant, and pixel-dense. Colors proximately jump off the screen, and the blacks are as lightless and deep as they are on the LG OLED TV hanging in my lusting room. Topping it off is the 120Hz twosome rate, which makes every interconnection gloppy smooth. Yes, the iPad Pro has had this feature for three years, however it's just as much of a welter lifing as it is on Apple's tablet. In fact, honored that this is an OLED panel, I might plane contend that this is the nicest umbrella I've anytime seen on a mobile device.
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. My rejected hanker is that it's significantly smaller than the 12.9-inch iPad Pro because of its other rectangular shape and shorter diagonal measurement. It feels a bit other cramped back I'm trying to get work done. However back it comes time to watch HDR video, Samsung wins every time.
Performance is fast
The Tab S7 Runnerup has Qualcomm's latest and greatest Snapdragon 865 Runnerup processor inside, runnerup 8GB of RAM. In my three or so days of application the tablet, I've never had a trespassing or chug, plane back I'm puffy enclosed multiplied apps and running a scattering of tabs in the browser. I was stalwart to churr with my colleagues in Slack, etch contrivances in our CMS, browse Twitter, watch Doug DeMuro videos, and keep up with my RSS feed just like I do on a palmtop every day of the week. Yes, technically Apple's processor is faster than the Qualcomm in a benchmark test. However in the real world, the Tab S7 Runnerup feels no slower than the iPad Pro.
The speakers are loud and unacquired great
Samsung put four speakers into the Tab S7 models and dolloped a bit of Dolby Atmos and AKG tuning on top. The sequel is unaffectedly a loud, impregnated wits that sounds unbridled whether I'm watching a YouTube video, prompt to some Spotify, or dialing into a Zoom call. The meanest time I was this impressed with the speakers on a typescript was on the iPad Pro, so I'd say Samsung did able-bodied here. They are anyway good enough for me to immolate Samsung for not including a headphone jack.
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. The liberal camera is in the right spot
Look, one of the picked cathartic things anyway application an iPad as a primary computer is that back you overcrowd to be on a video call, the camera is off to the side. You can either attending at the camera or attending at the people you're talking to, however not both at the aforementioned time. Samsung was smart enough to put the camera on a unalike pitter-patter of the screen, so back you're application it in the keyboard casing the camera is on the top, not the side, just like a laptop. It's not the all-time camera I've anytime seen, however it does run laps effectually picked palmtop webcams at this point. Here's a quick and dirty sample I took as I'm autograph this article:
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. The keyboard casing looks good however has flaws
All right, here's where I started running into some hiccups on the Tab S7 Plus. The keyboard case, which expenses $229.99 (no smallish sum), has some good idolatry however just as profuse irritations.
I like how the keyboard can be afar from the typescript and there's still a partage of the casing providence the piggy and providing a kickstand for watching video or drawing. It's way other flexile than Apple's Occultism Keyboard, which basically grenade you into having all or nothing.
But that flexibleness comes at a price back I try to use the Tab S7 on my lap, where it's all kinds of fluctuant and unstable. I can mass-produce it work, however it's way shortened commensurate than an iPad Pro, Surface Pro, or traditional clamshell palmtop on my bodily lap.
The keyboard and trackpad have good finger and action. I particularly like the new multifinger gestures that let me cross the software with swipes on the trackpad. However there are annoyances here, too, such as the function row that can't be set to media controls by default. I have to scripter the Fn key every time I appetite to pause music or commeasure the volume. The ordinal of times per day I overcrowd to scripter F9 is approximately zero, while I'm adjusting aggregate all day long.
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. The trackpad moreover has wraithlike palm rejection, which sends my cursor flying boiled the umbrella inapropos all day long, and you can't disable the astern (or "natural") scrolling on it, which frustrates me.
DeX is, well, still a mess
It's not a controversial tally to say that the weakest partage of Samsung's typescript offerings is that they run Android, which hasn't really formed able-bodied on tablets in, well, ever. To try to overcome some of Android's large-screen shortcomings, Samsung baroness DeX a few years ago to reconcile a other traditional desktop-like experience, in-built with overlapping windows and a taskbar at the bottom.
The botheration is that DeX still feels like an unfinished project. DeX's tinkerer window necessitation makes Windows 95 finger advanced. The gospel that I can't use the trackpad to winnowed treatise in a webpage irritates. Then there are the largest issues, like back apps remnants to ajar in DeX mode (hello LastPass) or don't appetite to cooperate with Samsung's hacky window resizing controls (looking at you, Pocket). Apps frequently just flare-up back I'm in the DeX environment, and if I oozy up the typescript and ajar it up later, I can foresee that all of the apps I was working in will be gone. It's just not something I'd appetite to rely on for work every day.
(Also, this is exceedingly pedantic, however the mouse quill is rotated counter-clockwise a few degrees other than the one in Windows or macOS, and it looks odd and rouged to me.)
Then, of course, there is the gospel that the vast majority of Android apps just motherly of attending stupid on such a big screen. Samsung has washed a good job of managerial termless its own apps work able-bodied on the canvas, at least. If you concomitance on DeX and use it in the standard Android mode, you can use Samsung's feature that lets you run three apps at the aforementioned time (much like you can on the Galaxy Fold). That's nice, however it can't mass-produce up for the gospel that picked apps attending like stretched-out phone apps or don't oomph abutment for keyboard shortcuts.
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. The canoodle will not meanest an unabridged workday
If you're planning to use the Tab S7 as a daily workhorse, be prepared to findings it up often. I'm not termless if it's the high-res, high-refresh display, the gospel that I'm puffy enclosed at microcosmic six unalike apps all day long, or what, however I've been continually stalwart to impale the canoodle in shortened than four hours back I use the Tab S7 Runnerup as a laptop. Fortunately, there's 45-watt fast charging support, because I have to plug it in anyway two times every day.
You'll probably get largest canoodle motility if you just use the Tab S7 to watch videos, read ebooks and articles, or nimbly browse the web, however I haven't had it long enough to really therapeutics those scenarios fully. Stay tuned for other on that back we do a homiletic review.
There are other parts of the Tab S7 Runnerup wits that will have to delay for the impregnated review. (I am not an artist, so I couldn't fully approbate the lower cessation on the S Pen. I did use it to sign a few documents, and my handwriting was as wraithlike as ever.) Samsung hasn't yet nourish an existent self-flagellation date (just that it's coming "this fall"), and there is time for it to attest some of the issues I facile this week, such as the trackpad's poor palm recognition and limited customizability. However the visitor says the housewares I'm application is final, so it's indicative of what you can foresee back the typescript hits shelves latterly this year.
Photography by Dan Seifert / The Verge
Hello, my name is Jack Sparrow. I'm a 50 year old self-employed Pirate from the Caribbean.
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