Samsung has constantly strived to find a stellar design for all its products and, since the release of their Samsung Galaxy S6 flagship smartphone in 2014, the company seems to have taken a special interest in the development of more and more appealing premium devices. In this particular category of IT products, the most cutthroat segment is that of high end tablets, as only a few prestigious companies have the ability to create trend-setting devices. This is an area of continuous experimentation and great competition, as each manufacturer tries to find the recipe for the ultimate product. For this purpose, the South Korean electronics giant continues its design push and offers us an exquisite, ultra-light and highly powerful Android tablet, namely the Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 8.0 (SM-T710). Is it the new flagship of the Galaxy Tab series? Read this review to find out:
Unboxing the Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 8.0 (SM-T710)
Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 8.0 comes in a compact, bright white cardboard box, that has the Samsung logo on its top side and the device's main features printed on the bottom and sides. Also, on the sides of the package you will find the manufacturer's safety seals.
The lid comes off quite easily and underneath it you will find the tablet sitting on an inner cardboard tray, on top of everything else. The tablet itself is placed inside a protective polyethylene sleeve, which is great for the device, but not so good for the environment.
Inside, together with your new tablet, you will find all the accessories that come with it: the microUSB charging and data transfer cable , the power charger (with adaptive fast charging capabilities), the micro-SD card eject pin, the headphones (and extra ear buds), the warranty and a Quick Start Guide.
Samsung offers 3 color flavors for its Galaxy Tab S2 8.0: white, black and gold. As you might have noticed from the pictures above, the model we tested is the white variant - a great choice, especially since it is less prone to smudges.
The Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 (SM-T710) has an interesting 8.0 inch QXGA Super AMOLED display with a resolution of 2048x1536 and a pixel density of 320 ppi. The screen is, of course, protected by Corning Gorilla Glass .
The tablet runs on a octa-core chipset that combines four 64-bit 1.9 Ghz Cortex A57 cores with four 1.3 Ghz Cortex A53 cores in a big.LITTLE configuration, namely the Samsung Exynos 5433. This awesome chipset comes equipped with an integrated Mali T628MP6 GPU, that runs at 700 MHz and supports OpenGL ES 3.0. You will also get 3GB of LPDDR3 RAM memory. In the storage department, it has 32GB of internal storage space, out of which you will be able to use about 25 GB. It is possible to augment the storage space with the help of a microSD card of up to 128GB. The tablet is powered by a non-removable 4000mAh lithium-ion battery.
The flashless main camera has 8 megapixels, autofocus and HDR capabilities, while the front facing camera has a resolution of only 2.1 megapixels.
In terms of connectivity, we can tell you that the Galaxy Tab S2 (SM-T710) includes a microUSB 2.0 port, a Bluetooth 4.1 chip and wireless networking using both the 802.11 a/b/g/n standards and the modern 802.11ac standard. You will be able to connect to both 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz Wi-Fi networks.
The Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 8.0 has a height of 199 mm (7.82 inches), a width of 135 mm (5.31 inches) and a thickness of only 5.6 mm (0.22 inches). These body dimensions come together with a weight of 265 grams (9.35 ounces).
These are the general hardware specifications of the Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 8.0 (SM-T710), but if you want to find out more detailed information, check this page: Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 8.0" 32GB (Wi-Fi).
The Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 8.0 is a high-end tablet that builds on the success of the first Tab S series, with a clear set of hardware improvements. It features an impressive octa-core processor (Exynos 5433), 3GB of DDR3 RAM and a vibrant 2048x1536 Super Amoled display.
Using the Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 8.0 (SM-T710)
The Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 8.0 is one of the light est and thinnest tablets available on the market today. The tablet has an elegant design that features metal sides, a matte-finish plastic back and Gorilla Glass on top of its screen. These features accentuate the high-end look and clearly demonstrate that you are handling a premium device. If you are worried about the plastic rear, we can tell you that it is quite sturdy thanks to a rubberised finish, that helps it stay clear of any scratches or chipping.
The rounded corners of the tablet combined with the flat and straight edges succeed in offering a big enough surface to rest your fingers on the sides when using it. It is not the easiest thing to handle with one hand but, nevertheless, it will fit firmly in your grasp and the soft, velvety coating of the rear will make it quite comfortable. To make things even better, the lightweight design of the Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 makes it great for usage over extended periods of time like when you are reading or playing games. As such, in any of these situations never did our hands and wrists get tired or sore.
As you can see from the image below, the top bezel features the 2.1 MP front facing camera towards the right. Then, towards the center, you will find the light sensor, which uses the ambient light level to adjust screen brightness and contrast.
On the right side of the tablet, typical for Samsung devices, you will find three buttons: the power button and the volume rocker. We really liked their metallic finish and the fact that they are sturdy and highly responsive.
The right edge also houses the microSD card slot. To insert a microSD card, you will have to use a small pin to eject the tray. You could use a thick needle or a paper clip, but, luckily for us Samsung ships a micro-SD card tray eject pin that makes it really easy for users to insert or remove a card.
The bottom edge accommodates a micro-USB connector which will allow you to easily transfer content between the Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 and a computer and, of course, to charge it. Next to it you will find the 3.5 mm audio jack for your headphones. Also in this area, neatly placed towards the lower corners of the tablet you will find two medium-sized speakers. These little fellas pack quite a powerful punch as they succeeded in being louder then our laptops. They also offer a well calibrated sound that is clear, solid, three-dimensional.
Since we are talking about sound, we should also mention a thing or two about the headphones shipped with the Galaxy Tab S2 8.0. At a first glance, you will see a pair of regular looking earbuds with rubber tips but, if you take a closer look, they might surprise you. The earbuds themselves have a sturdy body made of solid plastic with a metallic finish towards the tip that gives them a premium feel. The standard tips might not be perfectly shaped for your ears a little, but Samsung foresaw this possible problem and shipped two extra sets of tips of different sizes that will make these earbuds much more comfortable to wear. The sound quality was impressive and they managed to successfully tackle anything we threw at them (from music to games) in a clear and crisp manner. Also, you will get a handy volume rocker on an inline remote.
On the bottom bezel, you will find the two capacitive buttons that allow you to easily access and use any Android-powered device: Back and Recent Apps. These physical buttons worked flawlessly and their backlights are quite nice. In the center, between the above-mentioned buttons, you will discover Samsung's signature Home button. This front-facing physical button also offers a custom fingerprint scanner, that enables users to unlock the tablet or approve specific actions if they prove their identity with the help of their fingertips.
The back cover of the Galaxy Tab S2 contains two metal circles, that you can use to attach Samsung's keyboard cover. Unfortunately, we did not receive this keyboard cover with the tablet and, as such, we can only speculate about its characteristics. Still, we found it important to note that a first party keyboard case exists for this device if you were wondering about this particular detail. As for the rest of the back area, it is a fairly smooth piece of hard plastic apart from the slightly extruding camera stack.
In terms of ergonomics, we can tell you that Samsung took great care in the even distribution of the weight across the tablet. This feature together with the thin edges and the lightweight design give this device a great grip and a comfortable hold. As we stated earlier, you will not feel fatigued after holding it for long periods of time, thus encouraging you to use it more and more. It is effortless to hold it with one hand on the bus, or propped up in bed.
The Galaxy Tab S2 (SM-T710) comes with an 8 inch Super AMOLED display, that has an HD resolution 2048x1536 and a pixel density of 320 ppi. Samsung's constant use of the Super AMOLED technology is related to the fact that these screens are able to display deeper and richer blacks by electrically charging pixels to generate colors. This means that blacks are created by halting the charge of pixels. All in all, for regular users, these improved blacks help in increasing the screen's overall performance and in making colors vibrant and rich. Also, Samsung changed the aspect ratio of this screen in comparison with the first Galaxy Tab S generation, from a 16:9 to a 4:3. This user-generated change means that it is great for reading books and magazines, but when it comes to watching movies and videos you will find that two big black bars will appear at the top and bottom of the screen.
The 4000 mAh battery allowed for an autonomy of 2 or 3 days under normal use scenarios or 8 to 10 hours in heavy duty usage. However, the battery stamina is strongly related to your personal habits and, as such, it differs a lot from user to user. All in all, battery life is good for this tablet, but not outstanding when compared to other similar premium devices.
The Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 8.0 is an impressively svelte device, that is well balanced and lightweight. Build quality is great thanks to the tough Gorilla Glass front, metallic sides, and a really solid plastic rear. The Super AMOLED screen offers natural and accurate colors, that make images and movies look sharp and vibrant. The new 4:3 aspect ratio makes this tablet really shine when reading or surfing the web. The Galaxy S2 8.0 combines a well-designed body with one of the best screens found on a tablet today.
The Galaxy Tab S2 (SM-T710) is shipped with Android 5.0.2 Lollipop, but Samsung states that this tablet will be able to upgrade to the newest and latest version of Lollipop, v. 5.1.1. It is also expected to receive Android 6.0 Marshmallow in the second quarter of 2016. Samsung uses its own user interface for Android, so you will receive the Galaxy Tab S2 with the well-known Samsung TouchWiz UI. This is basically a skin applied on top of the default operating system that often brings legitimate improvements to some of the problems in Android.
TouchWiz has become extremely recognizable by this point as it is standard on all of Samsung's devices. The high level of the user interface and its aesthetics on the Galaxy Tab S2 bring it on par with the Galaxy S6 or the Galaxy Note 5. This highly customized user interface manages to be less obtrusive than it used to be and offers users a greatly improved responsiveness with no lag time at all.
In terms of interesting features, we have to mention that TouchWiz brings a series of navigation functions that will enhance your experience with the Galaxy Tab S2: multitasking and pop-out apps. First of all, the multi-window feature allows you to display any two apps side by side on the screen. It is a particularly useful feature that makes it easier for you to do two things at once on the tablet. For example, you can use it to open a website on one side and take notes on the other side with the help of a text editing app. By default, each of the two apps takes up one half of the screen, but it is possible to slide the dividing line to give one of the applications more or less space. Unfortunately, Samsung is working within limitations on what they can alter, as these features do not exist within Android itself. This means that, in terms of window management, TouchWiz has some limitations and not all apps will look good in split screen view. Still, we loved the fact that Samsung attempted to provide users with a multitasking implementation on Android devices.
As for the option to pop out apps and view them in a window, we think that it is a matter of personal taste. To us, it seemed quite awkward to shrink one app in order to view another at the same time, especially on an 8-inch display. It is much faster, from our point of view, to switch between apps rather that have one sit over the top of another. We have yet to find a good use for this feature in normal usage.
The fingerprint scanner offered on this particular model has a slightly different way of operating, as instead of swiping your fingertip on the Home button, you simply place it on top of it. It also allows you to save up to four different fingerprints, which means that it is easier to use than in earlier versions and its accuracy has greatly improved.
When it comes to bundled apps on the Galaxy Tab S2, Samsung has made some changes in comparison to those offered on a Galaxy S6, for example. This entails that apps have been slightly modified in order to improve their usability on a larger display. This is a first in the Android developer's world, that demonstrates Samsung's care in offering the best user experience on their devices.
You will find that Galaxy Tab S2 (SM-T710) comes with a great selection of tablet apps. Besides the stock apps, typical for any Android powered device (Hangouts, Maps or the Play Apps), you will be able to find Samsung's own browser, music player, video app and gallery. There is one proprietary app that we found to be extremely useful: the Smart Manager app. It offers easy access to the monitorization and optimization of the tablet's battery level, RAM usage, storage capacity, and security level.
Other great additions to the Tab S2 apps are the Microsoft Office suite and OneDrive online storage services. The fact that they are preinstalled on this tablet implies that Samsung thinks that you should be able to use the Galaxy Tab S2 for productivity. This is a clear attempt to market the SM-T710 as a business ready device and to make a real push for the enterprise market.
The two cameras available on the Galaxy Tab S2 seem to really help in improving the overall user experience. The front and rear facing cameras have an aperture of f/2.2 and f/1.9. It seems that Samsung has significantly widened the rear facing camera's aperture which in combination with the 8.0 megapixels sensor will offer sharper and more detailed images. Improvements to image processing and ISP (image signal processor) movements have a great impact on both cameras and, by tablet standards, you will be pleasantly surprised.
The rear camera will offer you a wide range of shooting modes and effects, including panoramic, HDR or virtual shot (which can take a 360-degree photo). Photos taken in normal lighting conditions and at the full resolution (3264x2448) look really nice and have accurate colours. In terms of low-light performance, well, quality is not as good and you will immediately notice an increase in graininess. Still, you might be able to improve low-light photography with the help of the Pro mode that makes it possible for you to manually control the camera's white balance, contrast and ISO settings , but, ultimately, with no flash available the end-results will not be very good.
The front facing camera is a great tool for video conferencing, but you will also be able to take a series of quite decent selfies. The "beauty" option available in the camera app will help you smooth out any possible issues with the images but, for a more natural look, we recommend you turn it off.
In terms of video performance, Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 will be able to record video at maximum of 1440p/30fps, but we recommend using the 1080p/30fps recording mode as anything above it removes video stabilization. Video quality is, thus, good and consistent.
In terms of software, Samsung's TouchWiz on the Galaxy Tab S2 is fast and efficient, looks great and offers a range of interesting features such as multitasking. You will get a lot more than you would from a stock Android, as Samsung enriches your experience with the help of a simplified list of bundled apps. Working with the user interface is fluent and smooth and everything is easy to find and use. Camera experience is quite good in both photo and video modes and will offer you good results, but only in good lighting conditions.
Performance in benchmarks
Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 (SM-T710) looks like a serious contender in the premium tablets market and, as such, should offer a strong performance. To check its hardware capabilities we ran a series of standard benchmarks tests. As you are accustomed, here at Digital Citizen, we first test the CPU performance with Vellamo, a benchmark app developed by Qualcomm.
The first test we ran for this review is called Vellamo Multicore and it is a benchmark that aims to measure the CPU performance when running multiple tasks simultaneously. After it finished checking our Samsung Galaxy Tab S2, this application rated the tablet at 2225 points. It is an above-average score that places the Tab S2 just above the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 and higher than an Asus Zenpad S (Z580CA). Still, this tablet seems to be fairly far behind other players from its particular market segment, such as the Apple iPad Air 2 or the Google Nexus 9.
Then, as there are many apps that do not know how to use more that one processor core, we also want to measure how well this tablet handles single core tasks. As such, we used the Vellamo Metal test and our Galaxy Tab S2 managed to obtain 1881 points. This is a score that places this particular tablet in the top area of the list, but still not very close to its immediate competitors.
The result from this second preset, which manages to better show us just how the processor performs in real world situations, further demonstrates that Samsung's Galaxy Tab S2 is a serious contender in the Android tablet market and a great choice in the premium mini tablets section.
Moving on from these typical CPU tests, we are going to assess this device's capabilities in terms of gaming performance. To measure how good the GPU included in the Tab S2 is we used two of the benchmarks offered by GFXBench GL Benchmark: the Manhattan and the T-Rex tests. As always, we only take into consideration the Offscreen versions, because they run at a fixed resolution of 1080p, regardless of the native resolution of a device.
In the Manhattan Offscreen test, Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 managed to render 934.4 frames. This result entails that this tablet sits in the upper area of the list and that its performance is better than what you'd get from the first Samsung Galaxy Tab S, a first generation iPad Air or the more recent Dell Venue 10 7000 (Model 7040).
The result of the next test, T-Rex Offscreen, does not differ much from the first one in the GFXBench GL Benchmark, as the Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 (SM-T710) managed to render 2137 frames. This means the Tab S2 is a highly competitive product that offers good GPU performance. It rests well above the first Galaxy Tab S generation and on par with the Samsung Galaxy Note 4, Apple iPhone 6 or Microsoft Surface 3.
After testing the CPU and gaming performance of the Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 (SM-T710), it seemed necessary for us to run a test that shows how this tablet handles more mundane tasks, like browsing the web. For this benchmark, we returned to Vellamo and ran the Browser test. This test is carried out by this application in order to measure the performance of a device when it needs to display a webpage that consists of HTML5, CSS3 or Javascript. The Galaxy Tab S2 managed to obtain a fairly consistent score of 3634 points on the Chrome browser. This means that the performance of Galaxy Tab S2, in terms of web browsing, places this tablet above important contenders from both the smartphone and the tablet markets, such as Samsung Galaxy S6, ASUS Zenfone 2 or Samsung Galaxy Note 4.
In the end, we tested the only piece of hardware that was still not fully understood, meaning the battery. In simple terms, we can tell you that we managed to use this tablet for more than a day with lightweight usage. Still we wanted to be more accurate in our verdict, so we fully charged the tablet's battery and then ran PCMark's Work battery life. Much to our surprise, the 4000mAh lithium-ion battery of the Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 (SM-T710) managed to keep the device running for an impressive 9 hours and 18 minutes. This is a score far greater than that of any other Android tablet and demonstrates that the Tab S2 is capable of a great battery life in a well-balanced workload.
All the benchmarks we ran, confirm that the Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 (SM-T710) has solid specs for a high-end product. If we were to compare it to its competitors from the premium area, we can see that the Galaxy Tab S2 scores a little lower in terms of CPU and GPU performance. However, if you include the tablet's retail price in this discussion these results are perfectly fine and the SM-T710 becomes quite competitive. As such, we were very pleased with the performance offered by this tablet in our day to day usage and the highly variate tasks we threw at it.
Product rating4/5
Verdict
The Galaxy Tab S2 (SM-T710) confirms Samsung's mastery in the field of small-form-factor tablets with a very thin and lightweight design that delivers a high level of portability and comfort. Even though it is mostly made out of plastic, only the edges being metallic, the tablet offers a good build quality with a sturdy back cover and metal side buttons. The Super AMOLED display is amazing, offering a high level of accuracy and the best black level and contrast ratio you can find on an Android tablet. Also, the Galaxy Tab S2 features an adaptive display which is able to adjust its gamma, saturation, sharpness and color temperature based on the running app and the ambient light. In terms of performance, the Samsung Exynos 5433 octa-core processor, 3GB of RAM and the integrated Mali T628MP6 GPU will offer a solid performance both in the day to day activities (like web browsing) or in heavy duty usage (games or ample text editing).
The TouchWiz interface has almost no lag, no stutter and absolutely no problems with instant screen changes. You will be able to do some multitasking with this tablet, but not all apps will look good in split screen view. The main camera is one of the best ones on the market thanks to multiple improvements in the image processing area. The tablet also features biometric security with the help of a fingerprint sensor installed in the Home button that has highly improved in comparison to last year's model.
We really enjoyed using the Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 (SM-T710), which is, without a doubt, one of the best Android tablets available on the market today. It offers top-end performance, a beautiful display and stellar battery life in a small-form-factor design. We believe it is a device that will be very useful to technology enthusiasts that need a good combination of raw power and a high level of portability. If you can get passed its price tag, this is a tablet that will really be worth your while.
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