the samsung galaxy tab s7 plus is actually better than the ipad pro in some cases i use a lot of apple products including the 12.9 inch ipad pro and i’ve tried using android tablets in the past i haven’t really had the best experience when the tab s7 and s7 plus were released i was expecting outstanding hardware and performance and i wasn’t sure about the user experience and in some respects i was really surprised i’m going to give you the good and the bad cover everything from productivity everyday use and even some gaming so i can give you as complete an overview as i can now one of the main reasons i wanted to check out the tab s7 plus is the size it’s slightly taller but narrower than my ipad pro and definitely doesn’t feel quite as big which isn’t necessarily a bad thing now of course there’s also the s7 which comes in at 11 inches but they don’t have identical feature sets so i’m working on a dedicated review for it as well when i’m watching content browsing the web taking notes using the s pen applying emails comments editing photos and doing research for my videos this size worked great for me
the display gave me a lot of room to work with and multitasking was very good and speaking of multitasking is a real strength of the tab s7 plus so i have a dedicated section to it coming up and the reason why i gave it its own section is that when you’re buying a tablet at this price point whether you’re looking at this or the ipad pro i would think you’re looking for more than just a device to watch content on because they’re pretty expensive and you already have your phone when you need something portable you have your tv or your monitor when you want a large display so this has to serve a different purpose and my guess is that you’re looking for a tablet that will do more and this one does moving on to the design this is a really beautiful tablet samsung clearly used premium materials it’s thin it’s light it’s sturdy i’ve had no issues with it bending it very much looks like an ipad pro we’ve got the rounded corners and the squared off edges a matte finish back with a couple of design elements
and a smart connector at the bottom rounding out the design and looking at the edges we’ve got four speakers a power button volume rocker a usb c port and a micro sd card slot for expanded storage i love the fact that this tablet is available in different colors and i chose mystic blue which i think looks really nice the edges don’t seem to pick up
fingerprints at all but the map back actually does seem to show them quite a bit it’s not a huge deal for me because i’m not responsible enough to use a tablet without protection so i always have the back of the book hover keyboard on i have some mixed feelings about this keyboard so if you’re thinking of picking one up definitely watch that section next let’s talk about biometric authentication which is another strength of the tab s7 plus and is an area where it has an advantage over the face id on the ipad pro and the new touch id on the ipad air 4.
Rather than having to choose the s7 plus comes with both options so the front-facing camera can unlock the device in both landscape and portrait mode and a single tap on the display activates the in-screen fingerprint sensor both have been extremely responsive and accurate which contributed to a very enjoyable user experience because when i was wearing a mask i could use the fingerprint sensor and when i was at home i could use face id so it was very rare that i had to type my password in now you can’t talk about the tab s7 plus without mentioning the display the 2020 ipad pro was the best display i’ve ever used on a tablet until this one the tab s7 plus has an absolutely brilliant 12.4 inch amoled fully laminated display with a resolution of 2800 by 1752.
A laminated display means that the display layer the touch layer and the cover glass are laminated into a single piece of display and glass this makes the screen thinner there’s no air gap and the image looks like it’s painted right on the screen we’re getting 120 hertz adaptive refresh rate for fluid and responsive ui excellent s pen functionality which i’ll get to in a minute hdr 10 plus support for movies and video fantastic color and excellent contrast i have nothing but good things to say about this display it’s the best display i’ve ever used on a tablet and you really need to see it in real life to appreciate the quality ultimately this is exactly what i expected a company like samsung to produce for their flagship tablet in addition to the fantastic image quality amoled also contributes to lower energy consumption which brings us to battery life the tab s7 plus has a 1090 milliamp hour battery and it comes with a 15 watt adaptive fast charger this was definitely a disappointment for me because the s7 plus can accept up to 45 watts so i was hoping to get an adapter that would maximize charging speeds because i’m always charging multiple devices
for different videos i already have higher output chargers but if you don’t you’ll need to factor that into the total cost if the fastest charging speeds are important to you as far as real-life use the tab s7 plus performed very well i was getting somewhere around 14 to 15 hours doing general use which is better than what i’m getting with my ipad pro and of course using the keyboard drains the battery faster because it’s drawing power from the device speaking of using the keyboard i want to talk about multitasking and decks and then we’ll cover storage the accessories and some things that i really didn’t like about the tab s7 plus the snapdragon 865 plus chip from qualcomm with six gigabytes of ram had this device flying and i didn’t experience any type of lag or slowdowns when i was using multiple apps multitasking was definitely an area where the tab s7 plus excels especially when using dex index actually lets you use the tablet with more of a laptop ui and when coupled with a keyboard and a mouse which was super easy to pair it was much closer to actually using a laptop than any of my ipads you can have multiple windows open you
can resize them quickly switch between different apps and you’re getting more of a desktop and taskbar interface to work with you can snap apps to half the screen resize them to take as much real estate as you want and even have floating windows so as far as the operating system goes it’s really quite good the problem is when it comes to the apps themselves some of the apps work perfectly but a lot of them have issues anywhere from not being able to go full screen to having some elements of the app randomly switch to portrait mode even though you’re in landscape mode then finally some apps wouldn’t work in landscape mode at all the next problem is that the browser is still a mobile browser so websites often serve you the mobile version which isn’t great like youtube for example opens the stretched out mobile version which is much less user friendly than the full desktop version i get on my ipad pro i can use the app of course but then once again i’m limited to the mobile version the twitter app stretches full screen which just looks funny and is weird to use but the twitter website seems to work just like it would on a desktop so i end up using that instead another area of frustration was spell check which sounds kind of silly but first it wasn’t enabled by default and second even when i enabled it only worked some of the time for example samsung’s own samsung notes app doesn’t include spell check and even after
downloading several apps like grammarly i still wasn’t able to make it work in samsung notes at all or very well in evernote this is something that i’ve almost taken for granted for years now and i was surprised that it created some friction another issue was that in some instances spellcheck worked when i was using the in display keyboard but not when i was using the book hover keyboard and that was confirmed by a call to samsung support i’m not going to keep going app by app but it seems like there’s some work to be done here some apps worked fine but a lot of them didn’t and we need developers to step up their game because the operating system is ready for it my files was fairly similar to files on my ipad pro maybe a little bit better but not nearly as easy as windows or mac os now using a mouse and a keyboard definitely helped especially when it came to file management and that brings me to the accessories as i mentioned in the beginning if i’m looking at this level of tablet i want it to do more than just serve content to me and that’s where accessories like the book cover keyboard and the s pen are an absolute must the great thing about samsung is that they include the s pen with the price of the tablet which helps improve the value the 128 tab s7 plus is 750 bucks which already includes the s pen by comparison 128 gigs 2020 ipad pro is a thousand dollars and the second generation apple pencil is another 130 bucks so that’s 380 dollars more than the cost of
the tab s7 plus including the pen also eliminates the whole idea of do i really need one and it actually opens the door for every user to find ways to improve their user experience with this device the s pen pairs and charges and the magnetic strip on the back and i want to mention that you do need to have it pointed at the camera in order to get it to securely hold and i know that there are mixed feelings about the placement of the pen but i actually really like it because it’s protected by the back of the book cover keyboard which i’ll get to in a minute if you’re using the pen and need to put it down you can also temporarily attach it to the top of the device for quick access i wouldn’t transport it that way or you’ll run into the same issues that i run into with my ipad air 4 and ipad pro where the pencil will easily fall off even when using the magic keyboard because it’s exposed and this pen has a completely different feel than the apple pencil when in use now rather than a rigid contact point it feels softer almost like writing on a real notebook where it would give a little bit with pressure i happen to really like the writing experience and i’m sure that’s a personal preference so i’m curious what you guys think if you’ve tried either for note-taking drawing or any other use please let me know what you think in the comments section the s-pen is extremely
responsive with super low latency and has the added benefits of air actions which i’ll cover in another video now let’s get to the book cover keyboard which has some grade and some not so great features starting with the good the exterior looks and feels pretty nice and it protects the device quite well even though the bottom rear corners are exposed the hinge on the back is very solid and i’ve had no issues with it staying in the place and supporting the device at any height i love the fact that there is a bump out for the s pen so that it remains protected during transport and there is a small fold out that provides easy access without having to remove the case i also love how easy it is to separate the keyboard from the back so that when i want to use the tab s7 plus as a tablet the back is still protected and i can still put the s pen away this is a major advantage over apple’s magic keyboard for how i use this tablet i also love the full row of function keys which let me control a lot of the functionality that i normally have to swipe down for again something that’s missing from the magic keyboard alright so now to the not so good the size of the keyboard and the trackpad are good but the build quality is not great the keyboard is almost flimsy and nowhere near as solid as the magic keyboard the keys themselves are okay but aren’t the most
comfortable to type on they feel like they require too much pressure to use and can lead to fatigue the trackpad is another weakness of the book covered keyboard it’s not super responsive or accurate requires a lot of pressure to activate and is only clickable on the lower half unless you’re adding a ton of pressure luckily you can activate tap to click which improves the functionality but this is still not what i would consider a premium trackpad moving on to the audio and camera systems this was another mixed bag the speakers are very good for a tablet they are plenty loud and the sound is full and rich when i’m watching movies listening to music playing games or doing video calls the microphone is another story altogether and it’s not very good but it’s definitely serviceable for video calls the camera system is another area where this tablet is lacking but it may not be a big issue depending on your use case for one i don’t ever use the cameras on my tablets even the ones that have good cameras because i’m not going to hold up this huge tablet to take a picture when i always have my phone with me the only real use for me with tablets is when i’m doing video calls and that comes down to how good do you really need it to be so here’s a sample all right so this should give you a pretty good idea of both what the camera looks like and what the
microphone is going to pick up i’m in a pretty well treated room sort of it’s quiet and i have good lighting up so that’s helping the image quality but again this will give you an idea of how i’m framed with the camera being centered and what this is going to sound like i really like that the camera is positioned at the center of the long edge of the tab s7 plus so that when you’re on a video call for work you’re not positioned off to the side like you are with the ipads the front facing camera is an 8 megapixel camera on the back we have a 13 megapixel main camera and a 5 megapixel ultra wide again these cameras won’t blow you away with their quality but figure out how you actually plan on using them now i want to talk about the price storage options and overall value right now the tab s7 plus with 128 gigs of storage is 732 256 gigs is 736 and 512 gigs is 840 bucks comparing this to the ipad pro upgrades you can go to 512 gigs for about an extra hundred bucks versus the three hundred dollars that apple charges the ipad pro does have a higher maximum capacity overall at one terabyte if you’ve got 1500 bucks i chose to go with 128 gig model because the tab s7 plus allows you to use a micro sd card to expand storage i got a 512 gig sandisk extreme ultra which cost me about 70 bucks and i think it was an excellent value for what i need remember that i have links in the description to all the products that i talked about i’ve got more galaxy tab s7 plus and s7 videos coming soon don’t forget to click on my face right here to subscribe and check out one of these videos next you know what i always say buy it nice or buy it twice good luck and see you soon
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