Samsung DID IT! In-Depth Samsung Tab S7 Plus Review By TechTablets

Hi everyone so yeah, it's been a week now with the tab, s7 plus and without a doubt- and I even said in my unboxing and hands-on video- that this to me is android's best tablet and yeah there's not a lot of competition. I originally thought that it's not a huge step up from say the tab s6, but when you're using it is actually is. But here we have, of course, larger 12.4-inch screen, 120 hertz option perfect. Absolutely amazing. Of course, AMOLED panel brightness is about 650 nits that I'm measuring on the top absolute setting in a bright environment, and it really is nice. Is it a huge step up from this in terms of fluidity with 120 hertz and a touch sampling rate? That's better.

It is actually more responsive and overall I find when I'm just using the on-screen keyboard with this one. It is actually better than the previous gen model. So when you look take a look at the build, I made a mistake in my unboxing uh. I said it was like 6.4 millimeters, the thickness, it's actually five point, eight, nine or so that I'm getting here, and it is very, very thin and about 573 grams. According to my scales, I've measured a couple of times and what we have is middle on.

The back. You've got AKG tuned at the state there, and the room and space there for where magnetically the stylus is attached to charge itself there, if you're going to be using its Bluetooth features with the built-in button. Now the other thing too about this stylus is, I really wish now we've got the larger tablet. Samsung actually put it inside the tablet, so we have to click in the missile. Silo style of storage would have been great there.

Now. The buttons on the top here, on the left hand, side very good, nice feel to them and the frame around the outside really nice premium, and it feels fragile too. If you drop this, you know it's going to probably crack the screen, so you're going to be really careful with it, as you would expensive tech too, so AKG speakers either side, there's two of them. So four in total: yes, they do sound better to my ears than the tab, s6, and it could be down to software tweaking, but I think maybe they've got just a little more space in here and slightly larger speakers even but yeah. Here's the sound point and example compared to this guy as well the tab s6 actually on second thought: I've been listening to them a lot and I do actually think they sound pretty much identical so probably just using the same AKG hardware, but this is now a sample of them both at 100 volume.

So you can hear from that. These are just wow amazing speakers and I used to own an iPad Pro uh, both the 12.9 and the 11-inch models, and these speakers to my ears are definitely better than what you're getting with the apples now camera on the rear cameras. Should I say, ultra-wide camera, 5 megapixels: do we need it? Probably not you probably won't use it, but hey it's there and a 13 megapixel main camera now for a tablet. These are actually very good cameras and the best thing about the cameras. For me is the fact that we also have dual mics on here, but very high quality microphones, high quality, sound, so great for Zoom calls whatever you're going to be using your WhatsApp calls if you've got the sim version and skype and whatnot perfect front facing camera is 8 megapixels, and here is a quick sample of that front facing camera.

So the video sample here is a straight drag and drop into the timeline of my video editor. The audio you are listening to is excellent, recorded, of course, on the tablet. Now I have intentionally turned off all of my powerful studio lights. So what you're looking at is a normal kind of level of lighting within this room right here. So in this kind of conditions not being really bright, you do see a tiny bit of grain, but I think this is just probably the best you can actually get in terms of a tablet.

Webcam, the front-facing camera at least is very good I'll. Give you a quick sample of the rear camera, which is also excellent for a tablet. So, there's probably a bit of wind noise coming through, but this camera quality 4k max with the rear camera. The 13 megapixel sensor is excellent. This is better than some phones out there, and I know that with a tablet, most people will probably not actually be shooting video, but we have this option and perfect quality.

Now you cannot shoot with the ultra-wide camera video at all. I think it's just not capable that sensor and lens it's only good for photos. I mean that is actually perfect quality. That's better than any laptop that I have reviewed in the channel. I think for the last five years, or so they normally have terrible quality, but this is 1080p max with the front facing camera, so it is perfect now, especially in these times when we need actually webcams a lot more because everything's online, as you know, and down the bottom.

Finally, with the hardware, that's the connector there for our attachable keyboard, which of course sadly, as mentioned, I don't have now the performance of this one. It's stating the obvious really here, but the 120 hertz snapdragon, 865 plus, and my version has six gigabytes of ram and ufs3 storage. It is very, very quick- and I cannot do this tablet- justice capturing it, of course, now at 4k and 30 frames per second, it's probably going to look laggy, but it is not laggy whatsoever, and I've never seen it stutter or bogged down even pushing it hard running a couple of says, very demanding emulators in the background. There's a video in my channel by the way, if you want to see some of these emulators their performance, uh swiping down for the titles and things that pops in very, very quick and really gesture triggering and everything has never been an issue for me. I don't have to go back and repeat that process.

It's the touch. Response of this screen is just fantastic, and that is another area where it's a big step up over the tab. S6 for me, so Lightroom someone did ask me just to check out Lightroom and how does it perform it's going to perform the best ever on any android tablet. I believe it's very, very good, and I'm just taking one of my photos here that Samsung tends to over saturate with how they take their photos. They always seem to have saturation like plus five boosts.

It boosts the reds, the colors, and that is all possible, of course, with this particular application, you can go in there and just find tweak everything to get that good and performance yep, very good. Even when you're running like a very large 24, megapixel file, or you're running 108 megapixel file, editing in this, the performance is really going to be. The best that you can get around now auto seems to be way too saturated there. That's just to briefly look at that one. So I had a few that wanted to see this.

You wanted me to compare this very briefly here. The stylus now, of course, changed and new. With the tab, s7 plus versus the tab. S6, you can see the size, the difference there. It is slightly longer, and it's more like a proper pencil, really the build of this one.

It doesn't seem so flat. Well, it's only flat on one side here and that, of course, if you wanted to store it away at the top here, there's a magnet, and it's quite strong, and it's going to keep it there in place, but it still is very, very easy to knock off and lose so. The new stylus does have now the nine millimeters, and it's really on par with apple's pencil in terms of performance. I've used apple's pencil before and this feels very, very similar. I like the rubber tip on it.

It gives a nice feel the same rubber tip really as what we've seen on the previous start. This is so input lag and just the general speed of it. Sorry, if I'm actually in the sketch mode here there we go, is very, very similar, and I'm not really seeing that much of a difference between them. But it's when you really start to use them. You actually do see that this one is just so quick, it's basically as soon as it touches the screen.

You can see that difference there and just how fast. That is that it's never actually going to lag behind. There's zero pretty much zero visible lag that I can detect or see with this one now I know a lot of you asked to see a little of handwriting there's also this feature here as well too, that someone did ask me to show you voice recordings, so you can add and attach to your. This is using the Samsung notes application by the way it's recording now in the background. So if you've got a lecture going on you're jotting down you're taking notes- and you can actually record all of that going on in the background now that horrible banding that's coming through on the screen- I do apologize for that.

It's just on camera, it's to do with a pulse width modulation, so I just quickly right here, uh, that's my terrible writing too. By the way, so palm rejection is very good, and it's just so fast excellent. So you can jot down all your different notes there, and you've got the recording going on the background now, because this has very high quality microphones. The audio quality I find is excellent too so listen to this and attach to your this is using the Samsung notes application by the way it's recording now the background. So if you've got it, so that is great, it's handy and of course you can detect all sorts of things you can attach a drawing.

So I decided I'm just going to quickly draw here a very poor. Looking Bart Simpson, I don't know why. Simpson it just came to the top of my head, but there we go. You can just do a very quick sketch and that can then be saved added. You can insert that you can resize that there's really a lot of things you can do with that.

So you've got your notes here. The audio message you can attach other images. You decide. Okay, I want one of my photos, so you're able to select that from the gallery. So, okay.

I want, for example, this right here, so that is going to be then inserted into it. And of course, if that's too big you put it wherever you want, you still got your notes. There you're able to move around so the stylus. It knows it's in use and the touch rejection is not there, but you can swap over to touch mode. If you want, you can also use the keyboard and type here as well and really quite a handy application good to have so what about other applications we can use with the stylus? There are so many that I could go on about, and I am not actually a big stylus user myself.

So let's have a quick look at adobe sketch it's a very similar kind of setup as the notes as well. It does support all the different pressure levels and this one I find to be very, very quick here. So the harder I press, the more that's coming through. So I'm. What am I drawing here? I don't know it looks like another Bart Simpson or maybe this is a homer, a very poor.

Looking homer, okay, caveman homer there he is and very good input lag. Everything seems to be very, very quick. Of course. I've got absolutely no skill here, um, but I don't know what's going on here, camo on him, you get the idea that it's very, very quick. The input lag on this really fast, and it feels just like well not the same feeling as pen on paper, but it's just that lag there.

It's almost like you're writing on a piece of paper that it is very, very good now, a very large PDF file. Someone asked me to also check this one. This is quite a few hundred megabytes and the performance of this is great and does look really, really good on the screen. So for you rebooks, your PDF files, I think everyone's going to be very happy with performance. Now this one's.

Actually, I haven't downloaded it. It is completely online. So if it's running off the internal storage, it would be then quite a bit faster. That's why you're seeing this loading kind of lag here. My internet connection here is nothing fantastic.

I am basically stuck on 4g, but very, very good. When you want to have a look at that text. In close, you can use it. Of course, portrait mode comes through nice, but it will quickly check one e-book as well, so these e-books do look perfect on screen, and it's probably overkilled to use a teller just for simply e-books, especially with this potential that this particular tablet has. But you've got that option now.

If, of course, you don't want to have the white screen here, you can turn on the blue filter mode. We also have the black and white reading kind of modes and everything like that, depending on what application you're using, and this performance is flawless here, very, very quick. So let me jump into probably what is the worst thing, the included charger here they are clearly doing. I don't know tactics from other brands, so the included 15 watt charger is extremely slow for me. In my tablet.

It will take about four hours to fully charge. This tablet the 10 060 William hour battery over four hours. If you charge from about five percent, so here you can see it took 36 minutes to go to 10 to 22 and that for 12 gain is very, very slow. I was also looking and seeing what fast charging will do now. I do have a charger here that supports the superfast charging.

It's going to take about three hours, then to fully charge it for me almost three hours just under, and maybe there is a problem with my unit. I need to buy probably the official charger. That's exactly what Samsung wants us to do so charge time for me has just been horrendously slow and the big issue and why I posted that last video, which was a bit of a rant I know, is it won't actually gain charge if you're doing something demanding. So just wait. That's actually awful.

Okay come on think about it, you're editing, a video, or you're uh. I don't know you're doing some work stuff, but you realize you've got 10 battery. You plug it in 20 minutes later. If it is demanding work, you're doing and depending on your screen brightness, you will gain nothing. You will gain like two percent battery or nothing or even lose it.

If you're gaming, it will not actually gain charge, so Samsung they've got us. They've got us for the additional cash we're going to have to buy the 45 watt fast charger, and that, of course, is the way around that so going from 16 to 100 took 225 minutes again. I think this is unacceptable, but a lot of people in that video are siding with Samsung, and they say that's perfectly fine for it to take four hours to fully charge. I disagree but hey you know anyway. They're going to buy the fast charging.

Well, so am I so battery life? It's not wonderful! I expected these 120 hertz. You can get around eight hours of screen on time with medium use. If you decide to game non-stop, you're, looking at four to five hours, depending on your screen brightness, you can completely burn through that battery and then, as I mentioned, if you plug it in with the included charger, it won't actually gain charge when gaming it will still be losing. Now. If you set the screen to 60 hertz, you then gain an additional in my experience about two hours: more runtime, bringing it up to a baby, maybe about nine hours for you 10 hours, if you're just like streaming, watching Netflix or something at a lower brightness.

So it's okay! It's not amazing! Now, for some reason, GPS doesn't work. Well, I don't know what's going on here. Maybe we need a firmware update, but it will see a lot of satellites. It will lock onto a few of them. There is a hardware compass, but I can't seem to get any better accuracy at the moment than eight meters and yes, I tried, I did a reboot of the tablet.

I won't go as far as a factory reset yet because I don't intend to use GPS on this, but I find it to be a little disappointing, wide vine level, one cert. So this is good Netflix and full HD, and it does support your HDR 10, HDR, 10 plus, and you can see it is listed there and supporting those high refresh rates. So they've got the DRM suit here sorted out for all of your streaming content wireless performance, excellent, really fast! I mean really fast. Look at this almost 900 megabits per second is the maximum throughput. If you're close to your router connected up to wireless uh, six standards or Wi-Fi six and an average, I've got about 845.

Now, if you're a little away from this particular tablet and depending on how you're holding it no there's no issue with some sort of antenna gate wireless problems, not with my unit, it will drop okay, so it gets to about 228 megabits per second in the spot. I always test and other devices. For example my Redmi k30 pro zoom. It can get over 350 megabits per second. So it's not superfast when you're quite a distance from your router.

Does it have wireless problems? Definitely not I'm really happy with the performance of it. Geek bench 5 score. So this is excellent, and here we have an tutu so very good score and yes, it's a huge bump up compared to the snapdragon 855. We have in the tab, s6 here's my tab, xs6 around the test, and you can see it gets under 400 000, and we're well over 500 550 000 points here. You can see that massive jump in the GPU, that's where it really excels.

GPU performance, a huge increase of almost 100 000 points there according to an tutu 8.4.3 and the internal storage. So this is very, very quick here: ufs3, storage, good random reads and right: sequential as well there. Now, if you do happen to buy the 256 gigabyte model or the 512 do expect to actually have much quicker in terms of write, speeds for random reads and writes there and what about bloatware? Yes, it does come actually with a bit of bloat. Some people will say that no office and outlook and OneDrive is not bloat, but it's pre-installed. So whatever is pre-installed that I don't think I need, I would classify as bloat, but I know I'm different here and the Samsung apps, but every manufacturer is doing that.

It's not too bad with bloatware. There are others out there that are worse, Samsung's, picks as well, and occasionally in notifications. You get something coming up recommending apps, which is a little annoying there as well, but overall, it's not too bad. It does come pre-installed with Netflix amazing screen to use with Netflix, of course, and Spotify, and a few others. What I classify as bloatware apps are here: okay, so captain obvious here, gaming performance is the best you will find on an android tablet period.

All the titles I have tested are running so smooth and perfect immersive. Because of these speakers and the larger screen, I find the gaming experience to be so enjoyable. So titles like real racing three, this one is going to run at the 120 frames per second matching 120 hertz, refresh rate. Why is this? Because it has an uncapped frame limit on it. Various other games like Mortal Kombat as well.

This one runs at frames per second, so you need to find the games that do support this grim. Valor is another one out there that does, and it's also critical ops as well, which I'm not showing in this video. So if you move over to more demanding games but are limited still at 60 frames per second like Call of Duty on the highest possible settings, it is a great experience, even though yes, at 60 frames per second. It does look great, very good, graphics and just so immersive, so it is, as mentioned, just the best gaming experience on an android tablet. Right now, now, if you're really into your emulators, I did post a separate, dedicated video on emulation performance on the tab.

S7 plus here so make sure you do check that out, because it does run various different old consoles, with very good performance and smooth playable frame rates. Now the good thing about this type c port is, it does support video out, and you can run Samsung decks, and also it does work wirelessly as well. So you don't have to use the cable but great to see that it's USB 3.1 here. So the video support very fast data transfers as well. Well, let's have a look at their desktop mode as well that Samsung offers with this tablet.

So, with the desktop mode here you can run various different applications, all in separate little windows. So right here, I've got chrome, and you can see maybe a little of stutter coming through here and that's because I've actually got Mortal Kombat here running, and I have PlayStation 2 emulation running in the background as well that gladiator game and just scrolling up and down here. You can see that yeah, not quite as fast and fluid here. Now the good thing about this is it really does increase your productivity. Now, each of these windows, you can resize to your own needs there.

So if I want YouTube to be a little bigger, I can bring it up and if you want to size it down, then that is all possible to do and, for example, be watching a movie right here, being chrome searching and I could also bring up then my emails. At the same time, you can run a lot and with the eight gigabytes of ram version, which is the 256 gigabytes of storage or 512. You can probably do this a little smoother because with this at least Samsung's desktop mode here I can end up almost filling up the ram, depending on how much I end up loading in, so it's very easy to use, and you do get used to it. The best thing about it, too is it can actually be used. Wirelessly connected up to a TV, you don't have to use a HDMI cable.

Now it does support the video out feature. It looks better via video out wirelessly, transmitting the desktop experience their decks. It's called does have a little of lag for me, at least when using that, so you still got your menu controls down here. You can multitask quite easily bring up your recent apps, and then you can bring up, of course, all your different applications there and open them all up in separate windows and the more apps. I start to open up the more that this starts to become noticeably a little laggy, which is understandable.

This is demanding, and if I open even more games, you can see it's starting to get a little lagging choppy here. Now. That's understandable, but normally you wouldn't be running so much like I'm doing. This is just a test to show you that you can bog even the snapdragon 865 plus down a little okay. So this is a tablet for me at least that really does grab you.

It just makes you not want to put it down because it is so immersive, especially even just doing something simple like watching a movie Netflix such a lovely screen, and to have that those deep blacks, of course, and those amazing speakers very immersive, the same for gaming, if you game a lot of android tablets- and you want just a larger experience for you- android games, you're, very big into say, PUBG, Call of Duty and then the games that do actually support the 120 hertz. This thing is absolutely brilliant for gaming on, and it's not heavy. It's light, it's thin, as I pointed out in the beginning. It's just crazy thing: fragile, yes, expensive! Yes, the definite cons for me on this particular model are yes, maybe just nitpicking kind of things to some people, but for me, it's being the included charger should be the 45 watt charges to begin with we're paying a lot of money for this, and we get six gigabytes of ram. I think the base model should have eight again.

That's maybe been a little nitpick there you get what you pay for yes, but the charger thing is a bit of a problem for me, because once I realized that when I was charging from five percent to 100 this thing taking four hours, I don't think that's acceptable, but hey a lot of people were defending Samsung and my comments and messages on Twitter. They were saying especially in that video. I posted me not being happy about the charge time that it was not a problem by the fast charger. Exactly I'm going to have to do that and that's exactly what Samsung wants us to do. They want us to get the fast charger.

They want more money out of us from the accessories as well keyboard, expensive. Even the book cover case, it's just a case with the stand. It costs 90 euros here in Europe in Spain, that's pretty expensive, but yes, it's an official accessory. It will have a very good build quality, it'll be great, so the keyboard later on. I will cover that, and that brings me then to also the big other con battery life, not really amazing, if you game five hours, uh light to medium kind of use, seven hours, eight hours, if you keep the brightness down now, if you keep the brightness at about fifty sixty percent you're pushing around 250 300 nits of brightness, then you're looking about six hours, it's not really that good at 120 hertz.

I kind of expected this 120 hertz we're talking double the standard, refresh rate versus the old model with the 60. It does have an impact now allowing the brightness sorry, the screen, refresh rate down to 60, doesn't really give us that much more in terms of battery life, I'm seeing approximately two hours more on screen time, which yes is a significant amount, but really, I would have expected just a little more. I was hoping that this might be a 10-hour tablet, and it could possibly be a 10-hour tablet if you're just watching and streaming say, Netflix or movies from the onboard storage at a low brightness, then at 60 hertz yeah you'll probably be able to squeeze mountain 10 hours out of it, but it's just in use real world use.10 hours, nah not gonna, be able to get it out of this, so fantastic job Samsung. I would love to see in the next model some more improvements like battery life. I'd love to see the stylus go into the actual design, I think is the next thing as well with that stylus and the other thing too is well bass.

Ram model, 8 gigabytes would be great, and I include the fast charger in the box. I mean come on it's. I know it's not a big thing. Furthermore, I know I'm making a big fuss out of nothing over it. Furthermore, I just think a lot of people will be quite disappointed when they plug it in, and they're using it and realize they're just getting two percent charge in 30 minutes of use, not good, so you've got to kind of turn it off and not use it to charge it with the included charger.

Source : TechTablets