Hands on: Hands on: Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 review - TechRadar

The Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 takes the series’ idea that a non-Apple tablet can serve as a laptop-replacing professional machine and brings it closer than ever to reality. Thanks to a few key refinements, it seriously contends with the latest iPad Pro 11 at a slightly lower cost.

Some of these refinements are obvious, like slimming down the body and integrating the S Pen stylus to clip onto, and recharge from, the Galaxy Tab S6.

Others are less so, like giving the tablet-as-desktop feature DeX a shortcut on the optional, revamped Book Cover keyboard. It might not be a generational leap that justifies hopping from the previous Samsung Galaxy Tab S4 to the new Galaxy Tab S6 nomenclature, but it's progress.

As a result, the tablet is more appealing than ever - and with the most powerful mobile chipset yet, a strong alternative to the iPad Pro with its lower price tag and included stylus. Like many leading Samsung devices, these can often be found even cheaper during deals seasons, elevating its value over Apple's rarely-discounted tablets.

Whether it's worth the money is almost down to personal preference, as the starting price is a good chunk of the way toward picking up a discrete 2-in-1 or laptop.

Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 price and availability

The Samsung GalaxyTab S6 release date for the Wi-Fi only variant is, September 6, and it will be available online and in stores starting at $649 (around £530, AU$940) for the base 6GB RAM/128GB of storage model.

Galaxy Tab S6 pre-orders begin at Samsung.com on August 23, while an LTE edition will be available later in the year at an undisclosed price.

You can pick up the tablet in Mountain Gray, Cloud Blue, and Rose Blush colors. If you pre-order or pick up a Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 before September 22, you can get the refreshed Book Cover Keyboard for 50% off.

Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 design

Let’s get the actual Samsung Galaxy Tab S6's design tweaks out of the way first, because all the good refinements have been to everything that isn’t the tablet.

The Tab S6 looks much the same as its predecessor, the Tab S4, but it’s been slimmed from 7.1mm thick down to 5.7mm, putting it just under the iPad Pro 11’s 5.9mm thickness. At 420g, it’s also lighter than the Tab S4 (480g) and iPad Pro 11 (468g).

Otherwise, the tablet is much like its predecessor, with somewhat thick bezels surrounding the 10.5-inch screen, quad Dolby Atmos-tuned speakers, and a single front-facing camera. (To be fair, Samsung did trim 5mm from the width and length while keeping screen size consistent.)

The big change? A second 5MP rear-facing camera for ultrawide angles which achieves the same 123-degree field-of-view as the lenses packed into the Samsung Galaxy S10 phone series. That’s located on the rear in a circular camera bump - and past that rests the S Pen.

Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 S Pen and keyboard cover

Unlike the Tab S4, which kept its S Pen in a holster attached to its version of the Book Cover Keyboard, the Tab S6 has a divot on one long edge of the backside where its stylus nestles and magnetically stays put.

Like the latest iPad Pros, the Tab S6 recharges its S Pen when it’s locked in place, and refills completely in 90 minutes.

Yes, the S Pen can be easily jostled out of its magnetic place, so we couldn’t see just stashing your Tab S6 as-is in a bag - you kind of need a case. Each first-party case (both the simple Book Cover and the Book Cover Keyboard) fold over the S Pen and lock it in place. Kind of makes them essential if you plan on using the S Pen, well, ever.

The S Pen retains its button, which can be mapped to shortcuts (in our demo, it opened the camera app), with SDKs set to be added in the future for third-party apps to introduce their own functionality.

The big addition this time around: Air Gestures, which (while holding down the button) allow you to, in theory, quickly control via shortcuts. While this worked with simple directional jabs - say, flicking the S Pen left and right to switch photo modes - the more complex gestures (like circular twirling to zoom in and out) were tough to pull off.

Given we saw a Tab S6 with early software, we’ll give Samsung the benefit of the doubt that this could get better...but as-is, they’re not too useful.

The Book Cover Keyboard has also been revamped - most notably by splitting it in two. Folks were encumbered if they didn’t have enough space to deploy the full keyboard, according to a Samsung rep, so they split it in two: now you can yank off the bottom half if you just want the stand, which sticks securely to the back via press-hard suction adhesive strips.

The keyboard half is worlds better than its predecessor: it’s extended to include a decent trackpad (and surrounding wrist rests) with a less-cramped key spread. And, of course, it’s got new shortcuts that make things a bit easier, like switching to DeX.

All told, the new Book Cover feels like it would be just fine for casual to moderate typing, and arguably a necessity for anyone attempting to seriously work with their tablet.

Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 display

The Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 inherited its 10.5-inch (2,560x1,600) Super AMOLED touchscreen from its predecessor, and it doesn’t look like much has changed: it’s the same bright, usable screen, though with about 2.5mm less bezel on each side.

The Tab S6 does get one new thing: an in-screen fingerprint sensor, much like the rest of Samsung’s device slate in 2019.

This should relieve anyone annoyed by the Tab S4’s reliance on facial recognition to log in and authenticate, and a nice little bragging point over the iPad Pro.

Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 camera

We didn’t have much chance to use the cameras, but they don’t seem to be much changed from the Tab S4, with a returning 8MP front-facing camera and 13MP main rear shooter.

The new 5MP ultrawide lens is the big news here, and like we saw on the Samsung Galaxy S10 phones, it pulls back to fit more context into your shots.

How much that will matter is up for debate - it’s unclear how many Tab S6 owners will actually use it to take photos. But at a hands-on roundtable, Samsung made clear they still cater to those who duly whip out their tablet to take shots.

Samsung Tab S6 performance and battery

We didn’t think the Tab S4 particularly suffered from running a year-old Snapdragon 835 processor, but the Tab S6 has upgraded anyway - it packs the new Snapdragon 855 chipset, which we’ve only seen in a handful of phones thus far this year.

The RAM has also been bumped up to either 6GB or 8GB options, with corresponding increases to 128GB storage or 256GB, respectively.

While this will make general browsing even smoother, we expect this to make the Galaxy Tab S6 run seamlessly during processor-intensive tasks.

We didn’t see any slowdown when running DeX, for example, on a 24-inch monitor with Netflix playing on the tablet while we browsed around on the big screen. We’ll have to put the tablet through more rigorous testing for our full review to see if it crashed when running non-Samsung apps, as we experienced with the Tab S4.

The Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 has a smaller 7,040mAh battery than its predecessor (7,300mAh), though Samsung is still claiming a full day of battery on a charge.

Early verdict

The Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 is an upgrade over the Tab S4 in some key ways - not innovations that radically change the tablet industry, but quality-of-life improvements that make the device better for casual and professional use.

Whether it will unseat the iPad Pro as the best laptop replacement for professionals everywhere isn’t clear from here, especially with the more tablet-tailored features coming to iPadOS. DeX may be easier to access, but it’s still short of the windowed desktop experience that makes laptops and 2-in-1s simply more familiar for workflows.

What is clear: if you’re a Samsung diehard, or at least locked into the Android ecosystem, the Tab S6 is a solid and powerful tablet with specs to keep it running snappy for years.

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