The Samsung Galaxy Tab A series has established an impressive reputation for delivering an excellent tablet at a reasonable price. While it doesn’t pack the most powerful processor and it doesn’t feature all the features of the flagship Galaxy Tab S range, Samsung’s affordable tablets have always nailed the value factor. Samsung has decided it’s time to refresh its affordable Android tablet with a sleek new design, but is its beauty more than skin deep? Find out in our Samsung Galaxy Tab A8 review.
Overall, the updated design looks and feels like it belongs in the modern Samsung Galaxy family. Small touches such as a redesigned camera and updated colour options go a long way towards building a seamless ecosystem, as despite the price it would not look out of place next to Galaxy S series phones. The metal construction feels good to the touch and is far more premium (even if it is heavier as a result) than plastic tablets. Samsung continues to not include a fingerprint reader in its cheaper tablets.
[content-egg-block template=offers_logo hide=price]It is not surprising given that its predecessors did not have one, but this means you will have to rely on software-based security options. Facial recognition is hands-free and easy to use, but not very secure. On the other hand, tracing patterns and entering PINs can be difficult when you have such a large display.The Samsung Galaxy Tab A8 is powered by the Unisoc Tiger T618 processor and 3GB or 4GB of RAM. This isn’t the savviest chip on the market and you might expect Samsung to use one of its own Exynos chips, but it performs reasonably well for a budget tablet.
The display is OLED rather than LCD, meaning the contrast is not perfect and you miss out on those majestic deep blacks that characterise OLEDs. Samsung is usually a champion of OLED screens, even in budget smartphones, so it’s a little disappointing that it failed to capitalise on its expertise with this device. The display supports more than 16 million colours, with a good level of colour depth and a resolution of 1200 x 1920p. on a smartphone in the same price range, this quality is very good, but on a large-screen tablet, you will feel its shortcomings more, as it is not as ultra-sharp as you are used to when viewing the same content on a high-definition TV in your living room, for example.
We had no problems at all with light games such as online chess, and puzzle games can be tricky even on large-screen smartphones, but the size was just right and felt similar to a physical table-top game. We also experienced no lags or freezes in the interfaces of streaming apps such as Netflix and MUBI.
However, there was noticeable lag when flicking between apps, sometimes freezing the screen for a few seconds. Also, when exiting an app and entering another app, a pause was sometimes required or the screen would show that another app had been touched. Even searching the settings menu takes a long time. Using the camera app was also time-consuming to determine. If you plan to use the tablet for more than light web browsing, simple apps and video playback, you should buy something a little more capable, such as the iPad 9 or its successor.