Samsung Galaxy Tab A8 Review: Good Enough?

So today i am going to review the latest mid range tablet from samsung the galaxy tab e8. It is the successor to last years galaxy tab a7, which, if you recall, was one of the go to budget tablets of 2021.. However, a lot has changed since then. You see the demand for tablets, especially the affordable ones, has skyrocketed globally, as educational institutions were forced to go online. Amidst the ongoing pandemic, google even recently reported that there were nearly a hundred million new android tablet, activations in 2021, which is a whopping 20 year on year growth. This means that samsung has a lot more competition in the budget tablet market right now, compared to how things were a couple of years ago. Just take the number of android tablet releases. For instance, in 2021. we have tablets from brands like xiaomi, realme and nokia, while oppo oneplus and vivo are soon to follow suit as well anyways. Before i start, the review of this tablet, weve got to pay our office bills. With this quick shout out to the sponsor of todays video onsite go the fear of dropping. Your tablet is directly proportional to its cost, but i have a solution for you guys. Onsite goes spills and drop, slash damage protection plan. This plan gives me freedom from boring. Silicon covers, as even, if i drop my tablet and it breaks onsite go, will either repair it or replace it altogether. No questions asked and if you want to use your tablet for two to three years as it is generally the case, then you should also buy on site gos, extended warranty plan so that you have complete peace of mind.

I have put all the links in the description below and also dont forget to use code gb20 for 20 discount. Okay: first off lets talk about the design of the tap a8 here, as you can see, it has a typical design for a tablet in this price range. Its body is metallic for the most part, except this portion on the right, which is plastic, made im guessing thats for the wi, fi carrier, signals and other radio waves to pass through. But overall the galaxy tab a8 feels strong and it feels durable while weighing about 508 grams. My review unit has this matte black finish and samsung offers this tablet in grey and pink color options too. Over on the front, you get a big 10.5 inches display with a 16 10 aspect ratio. This screen real estate is plenty enough to view different types of documents, including pdfs and presentations, to make things simpler. The company ships it with microsoft office pre installed as well. Samsung notes is another helpful app here were using, which you can take notes, add annotations and such still, i believe samsung should have provided a better ips screen. Instead of this tft panel, i wouldnt say its downright this small, but given the growing competition, samsung should be doing better in this department. Although expecting an oled display in this price bracket is absurd. We have seen better lcd screens in much cheaper offerings like realme pad, as you can see, videos look better on the real me pad thanks to its better colors and vibrancy.

That being said, you wont face any problem watching videos on youtube on the tab. A8. You can even stream hd content on netflix thanks to the white one l1 certification here. Adding to the multimedia experience is the quad stereo speaker setup here that supports dolby, atmos audio. Having tested these two tablets to binge movies and listen to music, i would say that real me pats soundstage is comparatively narrower heres. A quick demo. Music Music now lets talk about its performance. Interestingly, samsung does not explicitly mention the exact chipset used in the galaxy tab. A8, but we can confirm that its powered by unisoft tiger t618 um qualcomms decision to go all in on 5g, even in the budget, category has created opportunities for mediatek and unisock to grow in the 40 market. In fact, 2021 was unisocs most successful year. By far in recent times, it even marched past samsung to become the third biggest chipmaker globally, according to a report by counterpoint and the t618 has been instrumental for unisock in this achievement, first announced in 2019. This chip is now more popular than ever, especially in the chinese market. In terms of raw cpu power. It is not that different than the snapdragon 662 on last years, galaxy tab e7 or the helio g80 on the realme pad. That being said, we found the t618 performing better on gpu benchmarks, such as 3dmark wildlife, and that reflects on the gaming side of things as well.

The tap a8 can handle pubg mobile at hd graphics, which was not possible on its predecessor. Although i found smooth graphics and ultra frame rates to be the optimal settings here, similarly, i had no trouble playing injustice 2 at its default settings in terms of day to day usage. The base 3gb ram variant that i have with me feels rather slow. Apps. Take some time to load and multitasking is not that smooth either. Likewise, with around 10 gb of storage already occupied by the system out of 32gb, you wont have much space for your apps and other files, so i will strongly suggest you get the 464 gb variant by pushing your budget a little moving on the one aspect that This tablet has an upper hand over the real me pad or any other android tablet. For that matter. Is the software given samsungs experience in making tablets and now foldables one ui for larger screen devices has gotten significantly better over the years. The best that new players can do is stick with vanilla, android or make the smallest bit of customization to their existing android skin to fit a bigger display. As things stand, samsungs software superiority is quite evident even when doing simple tasks such as browsing through the settings. I have talked enough of the edge panel and the galaxy ecosystem in my previous samsung tablet review, but something new on the galaxy tab. A8 is samsung flow and kids mode, while it does not support decks.

Samsung flow is a close substitute with this. You can connect the tablet to your pc over both wireless and wired mediums, allowing you to share messages, share clipboards and files between the two. Similarly, you can even cast your tablet to the pc to enjoy android apps on a bigger screen. On the other hand, the aforementioned kids mode is samsungs answer to google kidspace that you can find in many android tablets, including the realme pad. It is full of fun and kid friendly content. Moreover, users can set parental control to determine what their children can do inside this bubble, including the screen time allowed apps and more. In addition, you can also expect better software support from samsung this time, while the company has not explicitly mentioned it anywhere. The tab a8 should get at least two android updates, which is much better than realme, who recently confirmed no android 12 update for its debut tablet. Moving on the tab, a8 is obviously not going to wow you with its cameras, its 8 megapixel rear camera can handle things like scanning documents and notes, while the 5 megapixel front facing camera will get you through your online classes. Just fine. As for the battery, i was able to get up to 7 hours of screen on time on a full charge. Here i mostly used it for attending online classes, streaming multimedia and even gaming, every once in a while with a relatively less demanding workload, it will easily last you for two days, but charging this thing is a bit of a hassle, although the tap a8 can take In up to 15 watt of power, samsung only ships, a 7.

75 watt charger inside the box, i used the 15 watt power, brick that i had with me and it fills up the 7040 milliamp hour battery from zero to 100 in a little over three hours. Music. All in all the samsung galaxy tab a8 is a good iterative upgrade over the galaxy tab a7, but is good good enough for 2022. I dont think so and thats because of how good the competition has become. Yes, samsung still has an upper hand when it comes to software, um, brand recognition and global availability, but other android tablet makers have started to catch up. So yeah samsung needs to bring some major meaningful upgrades with the next tab that they launch. If they want to stay competitive in the budget tablet segment so guys there you have it. This was our full review of the samsung galaxy tab. A8.