Tablets are not exactly flying off the shelves these days. With phones being so big and laptops getting thinner and going ‘hybrid’ the outright need for a tablet has reduced. If anything, cheaper smaller tablets sell in some markets where a laptop seems too pricey.

But there’s a certain luxury to owning a tablet and sitting back to practically drink in content — books, movies, magazines, newspapers, websites — to your heart’s content. Stick a keyboard on it and you’re in business, specially if you like to do a smattering of work when you travel.

Samsung’s 9.7 inch Tab S3, recently released for Rs 47,990 in India, takes the functionality of a tablet further with a stylus, the famous S-Pen that first appeared with the Galaxy Note series. Its most serious rival is the 9.7-inch iPad Pro which will soon give way to the 10.5-inch model which also works with keyboard and ‘Apple Pencil’.

But first, I couldn't help comparing the Tab S3 to its predecessor. I’ve owned the Tab S2 since it launched in 2015 and use it on an everyday basis It works so well and with so little deterioration — nothing that a reset won’t fix — that I find I have little excuse to move on to the Tab S3, other than the stylus, of course.

Sleek and elegant

The Tab S3 has now got itself a glass back. Very pretty I’m sure, but perhaps not such a great idea as it makes the device so much more vulnerable. I have dropped its predecessor several times and it survived but I’m sure the not-bad plastic back helped, as did the case I use it with. And yes, the tablet will have to have a case if you want to hold it like a book, use it with a keyboard and generally protect it. Cases make a tablet much heavier, which is why I think that plastic was a better material. Besides, I don’t think one needs to show off the back of a tablet in quite the same way as one does with a phone.

Brilliant display

The front of the Tab S3 is quite another story. The 1536 x 2048 pixels display is gorgeous. It calls to you to look at it and is the reason I couldn’t resist the earlier Tab S2 either. Samsung’s Super AMOLED here is at its vivid best and colours are deep and brilliant. It makes consuming content all the more pleasurable. It supports HDR content if you can find any.

Best in class stylus

When the S-Pen meets the brilliant display of the S3 all you have to do is press the little button on it to write, even on the dark sleeping screen, if you want to take a quick note. Otherwise, it triggers off an “Air Command” menu which includes a note taking app. That’s when the fun begins. You can use the stylus to enter text, hand write, paint, draw or even take a voice note while writing. You can do much of this with the Apple Pencil too but here’s one advantage the Tab S3 has: Samsung’s keyboard has a handwriting mode that instantly converts your handwriting to text. This gives it a level of functionality that spreads across the entire system, in or out of the note app, for whenever you get the urge to write by hand. It’s also very good with figuring out what you’ve written being tolerant of poorly written words as well. Suggested text takes care of the rest of the accuracy. The S-Pen even makes a pen pencil and brush sounds when used. It also feels quite a lot like writing on paper and isn’t overly slippery smooth.

The S-Pen does a number of other things like select stuff like a mouse, hover over items to give information etc but it then disables some other features such as magnification until you turn them back on. It also translates selected text. Sadly, there’s nowhere to clip on the stylus and you risk losing it whereupon you would surely rue the day you were careless with it.

All the specs

The Tab S3 has an acceptable set of specs. There’s the Snapdragon 820 with 4GB RAM which one can’t help wishing was more, Ditto with internal storage which is 32GB and could have been more generous, though you can use a memory card. It doesn’t support Bluetooth 5.0. The tab runs on Android 7.0 and though there’s bound to be an upgrade or two, don’t hold your breath as I haven’t found Samsung quick off the mark with that. The battery is a 6,000mAh and I expected it to be a bit better though it gets you through most of the day. If you use it for work, you’ll need to make sure you have a charger around and luckily it doesn’t take too long to charge. The cameras are a 13MP and 5MP and are adequate.

As ever though, Samsung’s TouchWiz interface sits a bit heavy on this device. I found I had to deal with apps (including Samsung’s own Notes app) coming to a dead standstill and giving me a not responding message. This improved after a reset but I still see the occasional crash. Surprisingly this doesn’t happen on my overloaded Tab S2 and may perhaps be just the review unit I received though I have seen one or two other reviews mentioning some lag.

Rival to the iPad Pro

For anyone willing to stretch their budget Apple’s iPad Pro 10.5 inches is about to be available. Reviewers are enthralled with it as it fits in more screen space into the same form factor and is more powerful than standard PCs. While we can go spec to spec between the two tablets, what really matters is all that makes them useful. Both need expensive optional keyboards. Both have a very capable stylus that can do very precise work. I find Samsung’s S-Pen more enjoyable to write with and Apple’s Pencil more fun to draw or paint with. The Pencil doesn’t have system wide integration and won’t give any pop-up information or do much besides being a stylus. Where Apple has the advantage is in its App Store because there are incredible and powerful applications that are not matched by anything available on Android. For the S-Pen, Samsung has some specific applications but then some from the Play Store don’t scale to the size of the tablet elegantly. Where Samsung has an advantage is that its virtual keyboard is easy to use and converts writing to text across the system. With an iPad Pro, you would have to find an app that does this and accept that it won’t be baked into he whole system. Choices also have to be made based on which ecosystem you are more comfortable with and of course your budget.

Pros: Stunning screen, slim elegant, comfortable and capable stylus with on-screen keyboard supporting handwriting to text conversion

Cons: No place to clip stylus, RAM and storage could have been more, some hang and crash instances, battery life could be better

Related Topics
comment COMMENT NOW