If you actually want a high quality, nice Android tablet in 2020, this is just about it. There really aren’t any major issues at all, just some nit picks for me.
First, if you don’t know much about the tablets specs or haven’t done much research on it, here are some important specs & differences between the Tab S7 and the S7 Plus:
- The Tab S7 uses an 11in, LCD at 2560x1600 resolution @ 60hz(274ppi), S7+ uses a 12.4in Super AMOLED display at 2800x1756 resolution @120hz (267ppi)
- Snapdragon 865+ Processor (both models)
- 128, 256, 512 or 1tb of on-board storage (with micro sd card support up to 1tb)
- 6gb RAM for 128gb model, 8gb all others
- S7 battery is 7040mAh, S7 Plus is 10090mAh. Both are capable of fast charging at 45w (however Samsung only includes a 15w, 5v 2a charger in the box - shame Samsung!)
- S Pen included, latency reduced to 9ms (claimed same as Apple iPad)
- Dual rear & single front facing camera (Main camera 13MP Samsung ISOCELL S5K3M5 sensor, f/2.0 26mm autofocus, HDR, nightsight; Ultrawide camera 5MP f/2.2; front facing camera 8MP, f/2.0 26mm fixed focus
- S7+ has an in screen fingerprint sensor, while the S7 has its fingerprint sensor built in to the power switch
- USB type C (fast 3.2 gen data transfer)
- 5.7mm thick, 574g (about 20 Oz)
- Samsung "Dex" mode ("Windows" like operating system experience)
- WiFi 802.11 A/C/B/G/N, option for 5g cellular connectivity
There are a lot more differences, but there’s enough here to make things confusing if you’re not very techy. The biggest difference by far, would be the screen. The LCD panel that Samsung is using on the regular S7 is fine, but Samsung’s Super AMOLED screens are arguably the best screen available on current devices. The blacks are pitch black, and the color and saturation is the deepest (which can be dialed back). Also, high refresh rate screens about 120hz vs 60hz, basically just means how “smooth” the feeling is when scrolling. It’s hard to explain until you experience it – it's more noticeable with computer monitors, but the effect is welcome here.
The Snapdragon 865+ is Qualcomm’s top of the line, fastest cpu they’re using in electronics & phones. My newest device is an old Google Pixel 2 XL using a snapdragon 835, and this is really really snappy fast. There really hasn’t been much lag doing anything, from browsing the web, to watching videos or YouTube, to installing & playing games. It’s fast. Also, it has one of the strongest wifi antennas of any device I’ve owned – in places where my Pixel or Nintendo Switch drop signal, the Tab S7 Plus has almost full bars.
The 6gb vs 8gb RAM isn’t that big of a deal to me personally. I’ve noticed that with the 8gb I can keep dozens of apps (including large games) on “standby”, so unless you’re the kind of person that literally never closes any app you open, 6gb is likely fine.
I’ve been using it for a few weeks now, & it’s almost perfect. There’s plenty of fast storage, so don’t need to worry about how many apps installed, there’s a micro sd card slot so you can put things pictures, movies or files on it & not fill up the devices storage. The battery lasts a long time, I can binge youtube videos at medium brightness, and watch for maybe 4-5 hours and not even get to 50% battery. The 10,000mah battery on the S7+ performs very well, and I’m glad they included a “battery saver”charging option. The tablet is capable of super fast charging, up to 45 watts (!), but you can also enable a setting that only charges the battery to 85%, at a more standard 15watts, which helps increase the life of the battery. The happiness I feel from having this available to me is offset by the fact they didn’t include a fast charging power adapter with an $800 freakin tablet. The power wart in the box is only a 15watt 5v 2a charger. Not even a fast charger. I have an anker 60watt USB c to c fast charging wall socket, and if you turn on fast charging on the tablet, it charges stupid fast. It wasn’t that expensive, but the fact Samsung didn’t even include one kind of sucks.
Samsungs UI is a little strange – I’ve been using a Pixel 2 XL for so long, so I’ve been used to the “stock” Google Android experience. It’s a bit of a change for me, but if you’re used to Samsung, or use multiple devices, it should be fine. The main issues for me are, the navigation buttons are swapped – the back button on stock Android is on the bottom left & recent apps is on bottom right, but on Samsungs UI back button is on bottom right & recent apps is on bottom left. It threw me off a bit at first, and I still have to make sure I’m pressing the right button, but you could get used to it. The other things like notification drop down and settings menu are different too, but nothing that can’t be changed by throwing on a custom launcher.
There’s quite a few bloatware apps, but nothing as bad as a branded att or Verizon phone. Some are useful, too – like the apps for the pen. The worst however, is the galaxy shop. Samsung wants a slice of that developer app pie, so some apps try to get you to install them using the “galaxy shop” instead of the Google play store. This is just irritating and for people less tech savvy, confusing. I stopped using this immediately.
The S Pen is surprisingly good – I’m a very poor drawer, all my art compromises of stick figures and ugly shapes lol. It’s fun to just doodle with the pen though, especially with the low millisecond rate (down to 9ms from high 40s or 60s I believe). There’s almost no delay or “lag” from when you press the tip to the screen and start to write. It doesn’t really “feel” like you’re writing on a digital device, the pen works shockingly well. I find myself writing notes and short journal like entries more often now, and could even think of using it as a daily journal type thing. If you’re more creative and can actually draw/sketch/paint, there’s lots of apps that make this thing shine. I’m 100% positive you’d be very happy using this as a drawing device.
The palm rejection is quite good, it only started to get “wonky” when I was getting towards the bottom of the tablet, and my palm wasn’t even on the tablet much anymore. The only downsides I can think of for it, are the pen has one flat side only that’s intended to sit for charging, so it’s a little weird, but worse is the button on the pen. It’s really nice to be able to hot-swap the pen with an eraser, but it’s in a bit of an awkward spot, and is a little hard to actuate. It feels like it needed to be about an inch lower to be comfortably useful to me, but maybe they just wanted to make sure it wasn’t being activated accidentally. It’s enough of an issue for me though.
I’m not 100% what else the pen can do, outside of holding the button and doing “air motions” like a Harry Potter wizard wand lol, but things like going forward, backward, quick opening a notepad on top of whatever app you’re using is really convenient – I was playing a puzzle game, and could quickly bring up a “cheat sheet” that didn’t close or minimize the game, and even kept running on the side of the note app. You can resize it so you can do both at once. Very cool! It’s also able to do other cool things like quick stuff with the lasso to copy/paste, highlight text & convert quickly to other languages, and the notation conversion from handwriting to digital text is really, really good. I don’t have the worst chicken scratch, but it was able to transform my handwriting into digital text with almost zero errors. There’s a lot the pen can do – its not just a throw away add on.
The camera is ok, it’s a tablet so it’s not great for some reason (why not just put the galaxy or note cameras in it?), but it has some cool AR things in there. Stuff like snap chat filters or AR head swaps, and a few others that are cool to check out for a second, but you’d likely never use. The video is fine, chatting with someone using Google duo, or zoom or Skype is fine. It’s not super high quality, but it’s more than passible. Plus, the front facing camera is at the top when you’re holding the tablet in landscape mode – how you’re likely going to use it – and it’s a nice feature. Makes video calls look great.
One thing that Samsung says they are planning to implement, is second screen capability. Basically, being able to use the tablet as a second screen or monitor for another device, like a TV or video game console screen or with a PC. This is my biggest hope, as I was heavily debating this and the Microsoft Surface Pro 7. I wish the surface pro 7 had this screen, it’d be an amazing device lol. There’s 3rd party apps like “spacedesk” and “synergy” I believe and others, but I’ve had issues with things like this for a long time, so I’ll hold my breath until something is officially endorsed by Samsung.
On that note, I haven’t used their “windows clone”, Dex mode very much, but it seems to be pretty intuitive. Launcher button in the lower left side, Taskbar at the bottom with open windows, individual windows of apps you have open, etc. It’s like a windows/Linux hybrid sort of – merely visual I should say. One cool thing is if you plug a USB c hub into the S7 that has hdmi or displayport out, it goes into Dex mode, but the tablet still works and turn into this huge track pad thing for navigating Dex. It’s surprisingly thoughtful, and useful. The tablet get a little warm while using it this way, but it’s completely functional, and did everything I threw at it (granted it wasn’t much – half dozen apps, a game, youtube video, etc. It’s weird using android apps this way instead of an emulator like bluestacks or something lol. It’s surprisingly functional. Youtube still turns background playing OFF unless you pay for the full version. Thankfully, you don’t need to do the “developer mode enable” thing to be able to install 3rd party APKs. It’s enabled by default, so you could just throw on youtube vanced and enjoy ADless youtube for free ;)
One thing that I’m having quite a bit of trouble with is the in display fingerprint scanner. I’ll scan my fingerprint, it’ll go over it again and again, but then when I go to use it, it’ll almost always never work first try. It’ll take 3 or 4 tries, or even have to switch to a different finger to get it to work. I have the face unlock set as well, which seems to work VERY well. It’s almost instant if you have the tablet facing you when you unlock it, but the fingerprint thing sucks, and confuses me as to why it sucks so bad. My old pixel 2 xl never has this much issues with unlocking on its back scanner.
So to sum it all up, the only downsides to this thing for me personally would be the cost, Samsung deciding not to include a 45watt fast charge power adapter, and having a hard time finding a case for it. I tweeted at otterbox if they were making a case for it, as one of their “defender” or even “commuter” series cases would be better than anything else, but alas they said they have no plans to make one. That really, really sucks, because dropping this thing really is a heart stopping moment. I have the spigen case, which is nice, but doesn’t do much for the corners (where it’s most vulnerable). I’ll be on the lookout for a seriously robust case, and if I find one, I’ll update my review here.
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| Standing screen display size | 12.4 Inches |
|---|---|
| Max Screen Resolution | 2800 x 1752 Pixels |
| Card Description | Integrated |
| Wireless Type | Bluetooth, 802.11a/b/g/n/ac |
| Number of USB 3.0 Ports | 1 |
