Samsung Galaxy Tab A8 128gb Wifi

Best Prices Today: Samsung Galaxy Tab A8

Samsung is pretty much the undisputed king of an admittedly rather patchy Android tablet scene right now, with a range of solid slates available for all budgets.

At the opposite stop of the calibration to the ludicrously OTT Samsung Milky way Tab S8 Ultra, in that location’south the Samsung Galaxy Tab A8. Featuring a swish design, i or two stand up-out bells and whistles, and an immensely highly-seasoned starting toll of £219/United states$229.

It’due south a tempting option if your bank remainder won’t stretch to anything like iPad or Samsung Galaxy Tab S8 territory. Our review sample was kindly provided by Box.

Pattern & Build

• 6.9mm
• 508g
• 3 colours

Past far the nearly impressive thing about the Samsung Galaxy Tab A8 is how well it’s built. If yous were to have handed this tablet to me in a powered down land, with no accompanying data, I would accept assumed information technology was a mid-range tablet selling for at to the lowest degree double the price.

This is a full-sized tablet with a flat-edged all the same slender 6.9mm body and relatively minimal bezels around the screen. It’s about as tall equally an iPad in portrait view, but nowhere near as wide and a weight of 508g is nigh par for the form for a 10in slate such as this.

My sample model comes in a very professional-looking Graphite (think dark metallic grey), but it also comes in Silver and Pink Gold.

It’s not merely the mode the Samsung Galaxy Tab A8 looks that’southward impressive though. It feels reassuringly solid in the hand, with a body that’s primarily made of metal.

There’s a plastic strip along the border that houses the ability and volume keys, also as presumably enabling network advice (at that place are both Wi-Fi and LTE models available).

Talking of buttons, ane of the biggest omissions here is a fingerprint reader. Yous’ll take to rely on a clunky passcode entry system or an insecure and flaky facial recognition system if yous desire to lock your tablet. Neither is particularly nifty.

Screen & Speakers

• 10.5in LCD
• Total HD
• Quad speakers with Dolby Atmos

The Samsung Galaxy Tab A8 packs in a 10.5in display with a 1920×1080 resolution – the very definition of Full Hard disk drive or 1080p.

It’s sufficiently sharp for a upkeep tablet this size, but in going with a TFT LCD panel, it’s non particularly vibrant or colour-accurate. IPS LCD panels produce amend colours and viewing angles.

Sure enough, a gamut coverage of 82% sRGB, 60% Adobe RGB, and 63% DCI P3 really aren’t not bad and an average Delta E of 4.39 is way off the very all-time. Just to make that last point articulate, the closer to 1 the better, and even a semi-decent display volition go to effectually 2.

A peak brightness of 327 nits is ok but nil special. You certainly won’t enjoy using the tablet outdoors in even relatively vivid conditions.

Elsewhere, a bones 60Hz refresh rate means that it’s non especially fluid either. But so, Apple is still sticking with 60Hz for all of its non-Pro iPads, and then far from expected in such a cheap tablet.

Information technology’s the quality of that pic output that’s the real weak point here, particularly given that Samsung is really positioning this tablet as an affordable media thespian. Indeed, it’southward gone above and across in equipping the Tab A8 with a quad speaker set-up and Dolby Atmos support.

Sure enough, audio is loud and clear, whether watching a motion-picture show on the preinstalled Netflix app or TV and podcast content on the similarly preinstalled Samsung Free app.

It’south just a shame that Netflix content doesn’t expect very expert, with flat colours and no HDR back up.

Specs & Performance

• Unisoc Tiger T618 processor
• 3/4GB RAM
• Up to 128GB storage

The Samsung Galaxy Tab A8 runs on a Unisoc Tiger T618 processor, together with either 3GB or 4GB RAM. This isn’t the virtually familiar chip on the market and you might look Samsung to employ one of its own Exynos chips but it runs reasonably well for a budget tablet.

In benchmark terms, a Geekbench 5 multi-core score of 1250 pitches it just in a higher place the Nokia T20 and nearly level with the Galaxy Tab S6 Light. In GPU terms, information technology consistently scores 1 frame or two higher than the Nokia T20, too equally the older Galaxy Tab S6 Calorie-free and Galaxy Tab S5e.

Bank check the scores below compared to rivals as well as the more than expensive Xiaomi Pad five to highlight the extra performance available if yous did spend more.

That’s not to say that things are silky smooth in general navigation, with the occasional break or stutter when moving around between apps and even home screens and menus. It’south far from unusable, but I was never in any dubiousness that I was using a cheap tablet so some patience is needed at times.

When information technology comes to more intensive tasks like games, information technology’ll run Slay the Spire just fine, except for a telltale lengthy suspension simply before your character dies. Indeed, the Samsung Milky way Tab A8 is a better fashion to play such second fare (as well as the likes of Kingdom Blitz) than any £1,000 flagship phone.

Don’t expect the tablet to perform every bit well with 3D games, withal. I was unable to run my usual Genshin Bear on stress test, as there merely wasn’t enough storage space left over from an initial 32GB once Samsung and Google had taken their considerable system slice.

At that place’south a strong case for going the 64GB road, though there is the potential for up to 1TB of microSD expansion. In the US, you tin can as well buy the Tab A8 in a 128GB capacity if you recall you demand information technology.

I was able to run the well-optimised League of Legends Wild Rift, which ran adequately on low settings. Old warhorse PUBG Mobile, meanwhile, loaded upwards with HD graphics (the third lowest of half-dozen) and a High frame rate, which isn’t bad. The performance in-game wasn’t besides cracking, though, peculiarly with those fuzzy textures blown up to 10.5in, only it was playable.

Cameras

• 8Mp rear camera
• 5Mp selfie camera

The camera doesn’t tend to be the focus of any tablet, and nor should information technology ever be. That goes doubly for cheap tablets. So, I won’t waste likewise much fourth dimension talking about the Samsung Galaxy Tab A8’due south photographic camera offer, except to say that it isn’t very good at all.

You lot’re getting just a single 8Mp rear camera hither, with no flash, and with no ultra-broad or telephoto dorsum-ups, of course. That solitary sensor takes shots that are full of noise, lacking depth and dynamic range and often woefully overexposed.

The 5Mp selfie camera proved borderline unusable on the morning of my test shots, seeming completely unable to handle the moderately bright atmospheric condition of the day. You can see the hideously blown-out results for yourself in the gallery. Nonetheless, information technology’ll serve its intended office equally a Zoom camera perfectly adequately.

Nine times out of ten, if y'all’re looking to take shots with any tablet, I’d advise you lot reassess your life choices. But if you lot insist on pointing and shooting with your 10in device, and then know that even a super-cheap smartphone will turn out better results than the Galaxy Tab A8.

Battery Life & Charging

• 7040mAh
• 15W charging
• 7.8W charger supplied

The Samsung Galaxy Tab A8 packs in a decent-sized 7040mAh bombardment, which will terminal you days of lite usage.

Step things up with lots of intense tasks and that figure will drop quite dramatically. In our standard PCMark World 3.0 battery life test, the Galaxy Tab A8 scored a middling 8 hours 49 minutes.

That’s a lot better than recent budget rival the Nokia T20 (6 hours 39 minutes), but simply beats its older blood brother, the Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 Calorie-free, on 8 hours and 35 minutes.

While it supports 15W charging, Samsung has but bundled its budget tablet with a 7.8W charger in the box. That’s more than than it does with even its most expensive smartphone, only given the size of that battery, information technology takes an absolute age to get to full.

In my testing, 30 minutes got it from 0 to 10%, while subsequently three hours and 15 minutes it hit fourscore%. Not that speedy charging is as large a deal with a tablet as it is with smartphone, of course, but still this is very slow when the Lenovo Yoga Tab eleven gets to 43% in 30 minutes.

Software

• Android 11
• Ane UI

Samsung’s latest budget tablet runs on the now out-of-date Android eleven Bone, with Samsung’due south ain One UI handling front of house duties.

Samsung’s software seems to be a real love it or detest it matter. Information technology’s non my particular cup of tea, thanks to its overly fussy nature, somewhat gauche menus, sluggish animations and abundance of home-brewed and third-party apps. Just I’m well aware enough of people view it as the quintessential take on Android, even more so than stock Android.

Whatever your view, it can’t exist denied that Ane UI has been reasonably well optimised for tablets. Using two apps simultaneously in carve up-screen works well in particular, despite the express hardware underlying it all.

The new Screen recorder function, accessed through the drag-down shortcut settings bill of fare, lets you lot record whatsoever’s on your brandish, together with commentary if you and then wish. This has potential benefits for the Galaxy Tab A8 as a teaching and learning tool.

There’s no South Pen compatibility hither, however, unlike with the Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 Lite. I understand that budgets were tight, merely information technology feels like a missed opportunity given the Galaxy Tab A8’due south likely audience.

Price & Availability

The Samsung Galaxy Tab A8 landed in the US and here in the U.k. on January 4, 2022.

Pricing starts from £219 for the 32GB Wi-Fi model. You tin can add together LTE to that for £259, or double your storage and upwards the RAM to 4GB for £249. The pinnacle model gives yous 64GB of storage, 4GB of RAM, and LTE for £289.

You tin can buy it only about anywhere including Samsung, Box, Amazon, John Lewis, Argos, Very, AO, Currys, Ebuyer and Laptops Direct.

Equally mentioned before, the US also has a 128GB model should you lot desire that much storage. Hither’s the price breakdown (RRPs) for all models via the Samsung store:

• 32GB Wi-Fi – £219/$229.99
• 64GB Wi-Fi – £249$279.99
• 128GB Wi-Fi – $329.99
• 32GB LTE – £259
• 64GB LTE – £289

In the States, y'all can purchase it from Samsung every bit well equally Amazon, BestBuy and even Dell.

In terms of an alternative, the Nokia T20 volition offer you an even cheaper full-sized Android experience from £180, and with cleaner software and a superior IPS screen to boot. Its performance isn’t very good at all, withal.

See more options in our charts of the best budget tablet, best android tablet and best overall tablet.

Verdict

The Samsung Galaxy Tab A8 is some other solid budget effort from the king of Android tablets. Its premium pattern and loud, articulate audio are unusually accomplished for a very affordable toll – if 32GB is enough storage for you that is.

Withal, the tablet’s TFT display is disappointingly apartment and washed out, compromising its potential as an affordable media actor. The lack of reliable biometric hallmark is another downer merely not essential and the Tab A8 has a surprisingly fantabulous audio system.

Functioning, while far from spectacular, is perfectly adequate for a tablet of this price, and battery life is very good. Information technology’ll take yous an historic period to become support to 100% from empty with the bundled charger, but that’s non such a pressing outcome in the tablet world.

Best Prices TodaySamsung Milky way Tab A8