The difference between a Samsung tablet and an iPad was substantial, only a few years ago, but that gap has been brought down significantly, in the latest generation of Samsung tablets.
Named as the Galaxy Tab S 8.4 and Samsung Galaxy Tab S 10.5, these devices are well ahead of the previous generations and also closer to being the perfect alternative for the iPad. One of the primary reasons for the success of the iPad was the impressive build quality along with a stable operating system – aspects that are present in these two Samsung tablets.
Display
Samsung products have been offering more resolution than their competitors in their segments and this trend continues in the Galaxy Tab S 8.4 and Samsung Galaxy Tab S 10.5 as well. Both products provide 1600 x 2560 pixels as their resolution and it is only in the pixel density department where they can be separated. The Galaxy Tab S 8.4 offers more pixels per inch because of its smaller 8.4 inch display, whereas the Galaxy Tab S 10.5 is down in this regard due to its 10.5 inch display. However, the difference is largely marginal and it is often difficult to differentiate the two screens in terms of detail.
Processor
Samsung has clearly worked on improving the performance of its tablet range. This is seen from the two different options for the processors within these tablets. Depending upon the region of sale, the Galaxy Tab S 8.4 and Samsung Galaxy Tab S 10.5 can be purchased with either snapdragon or Exynos processors. The snapdragon processor is a quad core unit whereas the Exynos unit has eight cores and will perform marginally better in terms of multicore benchmark scores.
Speed
The response times of the Samsung tablets have been improved tremendously by opting for more RAM and using the latest version of Android. Google has substantially improved the recent iterations of Android that it is almost as stable as iOS. Further, both these tablets come with 3 GB of RAM which is more than enough to run the Android applications and the resource hungry TouchWiz user interface. These tablets currently come with the 4.4 versions of Android, but given the powerful specifications it is not surprising to see them get the 5.0 updates soon. In such a scenario, their performance will improve even further, with Android focusing heavily on stability in the lollipop update.
Camera
Gone are the days when cameras were not really considered ideal for tablet PCs, due to the low resolution. The Galaxy Tab S 8.4 and Samsung Galaxy Tab S 10.5 both come equipped with eight megapixel cameras that have a range of features just as the Samsung smartphones. The lack of 4K video recording is likely to be the only big feature missing on these two. The 16 GB version of the Galaxy Tab S 8.4 is priced at $290 while the Galaxy Tab S 10.5 with the same amount of memory comes at $380.
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