Korean electronics giant Samsung has rightfully been criticized for tossing devices willy-nilly into the market to see what sticks, but the latest in its Galaxy Tab series could wind up being the company's best iPad deterrent to date.
On Thursday night, Samsung Electronics unleashed the Galaxy Tab S, a device the company called its "thinnest and lightest tablet to date," with a clear focus on making the display one of the best ever available on mobile hardware.
To determine if they've succeeded, we took the Tab S for a spin alongside Apple's heaviest hitter to date, the Editor's Choice winning iPad Air - and discovered that Cupertino may have a prize-winning fight on their hands come next month.
Screen
There's no denying Apple's Retina Display continues to impress, packing a resolution of 2048 x 1536 pixels into a svelte 9.7-inch diagonal, LED-backlit IPS display for a pixel-dense 264 ppi.
For sheer pixels alone, Samsung has Apple beat by just a hair, cramming a slightly higher WQXGA resolution of 2560 x 1600 into the 10.5-inch, Super AMOLED display of the Galaxy Tab S (an 8.4-inch model is also available). Reminding us that consumers have cited the display as "the most important element of a tablet," the result are brighter whites, richer colors and deeper blacks.
With the Galaxy Tab S, Samsung achieves a far more impressive level of detail than we've seen from previous tablets, featuring a crisp, clear display that offers better color saturation with more than 90 percent Adobe RGB color coverage, a contrast ratio of 100,000:1 and a display that automatically optimizes color range, saturation and sharpness based on the user's surroundings.
Design
Although Samsung may have won the first round thanks to a gorgeous display, the overall design of the Galaxy Tab S doesn't quite live up to Apple's traditional elegant design, which is clearly on display with the iPad Air.
Featuring a cinematic 16:10 aspect ratio compared to the print-friendly 4:3 screen of the iPad Air, the Galaxy Tab S is impressively slimmer at 6.5mm compared to Apple's 7.5mm frame, while the Wi-Fi only model comes in at the same weight class by nearly matching the latest iPad (469g) at 465g.
The result is a tablet that feels better and more balanced in the hand, although the folks in Seoul still can't quite match Cupertino when it comes to overall design chops, so we're handing this round over to Apple.
Processor
Apple continues to play coy when it comes to processor speed on mobile devices, but anyone who's spent even a few minutes with an iPad Air can attest to the fact that its newly 64-bit A7 chip is a powerhouse.
By comparison, Samsung isn't the least bit shy about chatting up the blisteringly fast, quad-core 1.9GHz Exynos 5 Octa processor at the heart of the Galaxy Tab S - although in some regions, that muscle might be substituted for a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 clocked at 2.3GHz instead.
But specs don't tell the full story here: iPad Air is decidedly slicker while in use, although we'll call this one a tie since the Tab S we managed to spend some hands-on time with is likely running software that may not yet take full advantage of the hardware.
Battery
Like processor speed, Apple doesn't try to play the numbers game when it comes to how much juice the iPad Air holds, instead focusing on that magic "up to 10 hours" figure for surfing the web, watching video or listening to music over a Wi-Fi connection.
Samsung has worked hard to beat Apple's personal best with a hearty 7900mAh slab of battery the consumer electronics company claims will keep the Galaxy Tab S playing 1080p HD videos playing for up to 11 hours, thanks to what they claim is a new "ultra-power saving mode."
Some of that power saving certainly comes from the Super AMOLED technology powering the Tab S display, which require no backlight while making content look great, indoors or outdoors. Until we spend some more time with it, however, we're going to call a tie on this category, since few tablet vendors have managed to match Apple on this front.
Cameras
Like it or not, more and more consumers are using tablets to shoot photos and videos, and manufacturers are rising to the challenge with increasingly better hardware as a result.
iPad Air comes with an impressive 5MP iSight backside-illuminated rear camera capable of 1080p HD video recording, along with a 1.2MP front-facing FaceTime HD camera limited to 720p HD video recording. But forget the specs, because the resulting images and video look pretty great.
Samsung attempts to up the Galaxy Tab S ante by packing an 8MP camera onto the rear of the tablet, along with a LED flash, which is about as rare as a Sasquatch sighting when it comes to tablets; a front-facing 2.1MP camera is likewise capable of what Sammy calls "full HD" video (but we'll be the judge of that soon enough).
Judging from our hands-on time with both devices, the Galaxy Tab S camera feels pretty much on par with iPad Air, although it does have the advantage of a wider range of features for tablet shutterbugs.
Features
We already know what the iPad Air is capable of: FaceTime, iMessage, free iWork and iLife apps, a pair of speakers, the diminutive Lightning port and AirPlay support for beaming content out to an Apple TV. (Not to mention the insane number of apps available from the App Store.) Awesome, right?
The dizzying list of "Galaxy Gifts" included with the Galaxy Tab S numbers nearly 30, ranging from previous partnerships like Dropbox (50GB free for two years) to new offerings such as three months of free Marvel Unlimited digital comic books, Netflix HD playback in select markets (a Galaxy first) and Samsung's own magazine service, Paper Garden; exclusive "My Library" content is also available from Google Play.
But as it turns out, that's only the tip of the iceberg: The Galaxy Tab S includes a built-in fingerprint scanner, multiuser mode for sharing the device with up to eight others, enhanced parental controls in Kids Mode, Quick Connect for rapid-fire discovery of nearby devices, multitasking multi-window mode and the ability to forward phone calls on either Wi-Fi or cellular connections via SideSync.
Last but certainly not least, the Galaxy Tab S is being offered in both Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi and LTE models, but internal storage options max out at either 16GB or 32GB; thankfully, up to 128GB is available via micro-SD card, or you could just plunk down for an iPad Air, which maxes out at 128GB but skips the expandable storage.
Whew! For sheer quantity, we'd say Samsung scored a knockout on this round, but how many of these features actually wind up being usable we'll defer to a full review.
Verdict
It's too early to hand over the heavyweight belt to the 10.5-inch Samsung Galaxy Tab S, which will land in selected markets in July in Titanium Bronze or Dazzling White flavors - seriously, those are the official color names, compared to Apple's Space Grey or White hues for the iPad Air.
The decision is likely to come down to your personal platform preference: Samsung will ship the Galaxy Tab S with Android 4.4 KitKat, while the iPad Air is starting to look a bit creaky running iOS 7.1.1, a situation that should be remedied come this fall when iOS 8 hits the streets.
- What goes great with a Tab S? How about our Samsung Galaxy S5 review!
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