Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 test: master artist, amateur worker

Android tablets are alive. The iPad has escaped with the consumer tablet market, and Amazon's range of Fire tablets has recovered them. Even Google has finished trying to compete with the premium hardware for Android tablets.

But that does not stop Samsung. The Galaxy Tab S6 at $ 649.99 is the company's latest attempt at a device that can be used for both content consumption and productivity. And yes, it runs on Android.

The S6 tablet is an excellent tablet for consuming content. Its screen and its speakers are excellent. It is thin and light enough to hold during long viewing sessions. It even has enough battery life to last for at least three Marvel films. On the other hand, Samsung's attempts to turn the S6 tab into a productivity device have not succeeded, the software contains a number of annoying bugs, which are not enough to replace your laptop.

Samsung manufactures excellent equipment and, as the company's flagship tablet, the Tab S6 is no exception. It's a thin plate of metal and glass that weighs less than a pound. It is easy and comfortable to hold for long periods.

The star of the series is the 10.5-inch HDR OLED screen (HDR10 and HDR10 +, but not Dolby Vision). This screen is really a treat to watch: the colors are bright, the blacks are deep and the lighting is enough to be used outdoors. It's a great screen for watching movies or YouTube videos and has enough resolution to keep the text clean at a comfortable viewing distance. It's basically the same pixel density as the iPad Air or the iPad Pro.

The display is not perfect, however. Like the Galaxy S10, the Tab S6 has a built-in fingerprint scanner on the screen. Samsung uses an optical scanner here, as opposed to the ultrasound used in its phones. In addition to being slow and unreliable, the scanner simply does not work when the blue light filter turns on at night. Other manufacturers using similar optical scanners on their phones, such as OnePlus, are forcing the screen to turn off the blue light filter for a second to fingerprint analysis, but Samsung does not. did not activate this on the S6 tab.

The 16:10 format of the screen is ideal for watching videos and it is not very embarrassing to hold the tablet in portrait mode for playback. But it's quite cramped for productivity work when using the connected keyboard or web browsing in landscape mode. Although the screen has the same screen size as an iPad Air on paper, the differences in aspect ratio (the iPad uses a 4: 3 screen) make Samsung's screen considerably smaller in size. convenient.

Finally, there is a noticeable jelly effect when scrolling in portrait orientation, which is disappointing to see in such an expensive tablet. These defects may not be particularly important to you, but when you pay $ 650 for a tablet, you should expect everything to work without problems of this type, especially when the competition does not have such problems.

Four Dolby Atmos-compatible speakers are installed around the screen. They offer quality sound and even allow the iPad Pro, more expensive Apple, to make the most of it. Unfortunately, the S6 tab does not have a headphone jack, so you must use a Bluetooth headset or a USB-C key for private listening.

There are cameras at the front and back, including a two camera configuration at the back with a standard camera and an ultra-wide option. Strangely, there is no LED flash, which is handy when using a tablet to scan documents.

Inside the S6 tab is a Snapdragon 855 processor and 6GB or 8GB of RAM. It offers storage capacity of up to 256GB, as well as support for microSD cards for expansion. I use the basic storage model of 6 GB RAM / 128 GB and I have not encountered any performance issues, even in multitasking and frequently changing applications.

When it comes to battery life, the S6 tablet can last all day, even if I handle it with productivity apps and watch videos all day long. However, its latency is insufficient: more than once, I left the tablet for two days without using it, and she was dead when I recovered.

Samsung includes a S Pen Pen in the box with the S6 tab, very similar to the S Pen provided with the Galaxy Note smartphone range. It is a bit thicker and does not have a small storage silo as the phones offer, but it has the same features and capabilities as the phone version. To charge the stylus, attach it to the back of the tablet with the help of magnets. The charging will be done wirelessly, much like the iPad Pro does to charge the Apple pencil. As with the Pencil Pencil, it is very easy to drop the S-Pen from the back of the tablet, but if you have one of the optional Samsung cases or a keyboard, the stylus is held in place by a flap .

Speaking of keyboards, the S6 tab does not come with one in the box. The optional keyboard cover for the S6 tab costs $ 179.99, allowing you to reach the all-inclusive price on an entry-level S6 tab with 128GB of storage up to $ 830 which are frequently available). The keyboard attaches to the tablet using magnets and a pogo connector – there is no Bluetooth coupling – and is actually separate from the back shell and the crutch that adheres to the tablet via a adhesive microsuction foam. This design allows you to help the tablet watch videos without the keyboard in front of you, which you can not do with the Apple Keyboard for iPad Pro. It's a boon on tiny plane board tables. Detaching the back cover of the tablet requires a little work, but it leaves no residue. Samsung told me that he did not expect people to pull back frequently from the case, and I tend to be d & # 's; 39, agree with this hypothesis.

It is surprisingly easy to adjust to typing, even if it is smaller than a standard keyboard. There are function keys at the top and the S6 tab supports a variety of keyboard shortcuts, although I wish they are more universally supported in the Android ecosystem. The keyboard does not have backlighting, which makes working in a sun plane cabin difficult, but most tablets like this do not have backlighting on their keyboards.

There is even a small touchpad under the keyboard to move to Samsung's DeX software mode (more on this in a moment), but it's small and frustrating to use. When I tap, the rejection of the palm is weak, causing the cursor to move erratically. It is also limited in what it can do, even in DeX mode. I can not select text with the touchpad in Word or use multi-finger gestures to switch between applications, for example. I ended up turning it off frequently (via a keyboard shortcut, conveniently).

It's also not easy to use the S6 tab and its keyboard on your lap. The keyboard does not connect rigidly to the tablet. It bends and moves only on a hard surface like a desk or table. The keyboard of the iPad is not better to use on your lap, but it is considerably more stable.

In terms of software, the S6 tab uses essentially the same software as Samsung's phones: Android 9 Pie with Samsung's OneUI interface at the top. If you have a recent Samsung phone, including Bixby, it has the same features that you may be familiar with. I have no problem with the software for basic needs in content consumption, like watching Netflix or Hulu or reading in the Amazon Kindle or Pocket application.

If you have a Samsung smartphone, you can answer calls and respond to messages from the S6 tab, although I would like to have an even deeper integration between Samsung's own devices. It is not possible to remotely start a mobile access point on my Galaxy Note 10 from the S6 tablet, but as I can do with an iPad and an iPhone.

To improve the productivity of the S6 tab, Samsung now allows you to run its DeX desktop software directly on the tablet. (You can launch DeX via a new keyboard shortcut, via a toggle in the quick settings menu, or launch it automatically when you pair the keyboard.) DeX on a tablet is basically the same as DeX on a big screen: Allows you to run desktop-style mobile app versions, with multiple windows and the ability to see multiple windows at once. Unfortunately, DeX still has many limitations and uncompleted features. Application windows do not remember their status when you switch from DeX mode to standard mode. So you have to recreate each time your layout of windows. Some applications, like LastPass, simply refuse to run in DeX mode.

Using DeX on such a small screen is also frustrating because of the amount of scrolling and switching between windows that is needed to multitask. Virtual desktops might help you, but DeX does not support them. There is also no window capture feature that I could find; Resizing the window requires typing on the screen and dragging it or using the tedious keypad touchpad. DeX on the Tab S6 is nice to use to pinch an e-mail while on the move, but it's not something I would like to use as a mainframe or for an extended duration.

Samsung's software contains other bugs that I find frustrating to deal with. The night mode, which switches the interface in the evening, constantly omits its settings. the brightness of the screen is gradually reduced to unreadable levels when I hold the tablet in landscape mode because my hand blocks the light sensor; the search in DeX does not work on the first keystroke, which requires typing "OOutlook" if I want to launch my mail application; and I will have to restart the tablet frequently for Wi-Fi to work.

In summary, the S6 tablet is a very good tablet for viewing videos, provided you do not block the light sensor with the palm of your hand. If all you want from a tablet is to lean back and watch a video on your couch, the Tab S6 is excellent for that.

The problem is that "good for watching videos" is pretty much the lowest bar for getting a tablet in 2019. The iPad was great for watching videos almost 10 years ago, and Fire HD 10 Amazon will do the work for about a third of users. cost of the S6 tab if that's all you need. You might get a slightly better display and better speakers with the Samsung tablet, but it's hard to justify spending two or three times more for these things.

To really justify its cost and its existence, the S6 tablet must be able to do more than become a simple video player. It must also be a productivity machine, which can be used to do real work. Despite all the efforts of Samsung, the tab S6 is not up to par.

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