Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus – Review
Samsung must persuade buyers to buy its Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus rather than the rash of new tablets appearing by offering more features, a better design, or simply a better price. So which does the Tab 7.0 Plus do? It’s chunkier than the Galaxy Tab 10.1 – it’s probably approaching the minimum thickness in which to jam its component parts. As time goes on, well-performing slates will get a bit smaller, as with the 5-inchers beginning to appear. A bit like Intel cramming ever more transistors on a chip. Anyhow, the Galaxy 7 Plus is currently the slimmest tablet we’ve reviewed . For the most part it follows its 10-inch big brother’s appearance, but is slightly more ergonomically contoured for a sleeker look and feel. The fingerprint-prone glossy rear makes way for a dark gray matt surface, but overall appearance follows that of the Galaxy Tab 8.9 and the c. As with all 7-inch slates, it fits comfortably in one hand.
The Galaxy Tab 7 Plus includes a power button, volume rocker, infrared sensor, headphone jack, pinhole mic and double speakers. Samsung have put a 2MP cam on the front and around the back there’s an LED flash 3MP camera.
Port-wise the lack of at HDMI interface means you’ll have to purchase at adaptor to play HD video from your tablet on a full-sized display.
Samsung has too good a reputation to include outdated or half-baked operating systems, so the Tab 7 Plus ships with Android Honeycomb 3.2, which was the latest OS version at launch. Samsung as ever has overlaid its TouchWiz UI atop the standard Android UI. TouchWiz offers various proprietary apps such as AllShare, Media Hub, and Social Hub. Then there’s Samsung’s own app store, Samsung Apps, in addition to full access to the Android Market. Image capture is by no means professional but the 3MP rear-facing camera bests most other 7-inchers in the photographic department.
Instead of the usual Tegra 2 dual-core CPU found in most premium tablets the 7 Plus sports a dual-core Samsung Exynos 4210 processor, backed by 1GB RAM and with either 16GB or 32GB storage for all your docs, vids, snaps and apps. For getting online the Tab 7 Plus offers WiFi-n and Bluetooth 3.0.
Despite its petite dimensions, it doesn’t lack any tablet gizmos – ambient light sensor, gyroscope, accelerometer, digital compass, GPS – they’re all here. The 7-inch 1024 x 600 pixel display uses Samsung’s Plane-Line Switching technology and delivers crisp text and menus, even if brightness is sub-par, which for Samsung is unacceptable. However the deepest blacks we’ve ever seen on a tablet mean that even with brightness levels around half the category average, overall the contrast ratio is the best in the tablet category with an astonishing 1258:1 contrast ratio. It’s a tactical masterstroke!
General OS navigating and browsing is snappy, though not without occasional freezing or even crashes with multiple apps on the go. 720p video plays faultlessly although 1080p, contrary to Samsung’s claims, was problematical.
In benchmarks it gave the Huawei Mediapad/T-Mobile Springboard an absolute whipping. Battery life gave us 8 hrs 9 mins of video looping – a brilliant showing.
The Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus 16GB sells for $400, or $500 for the 32GB version, and it’s a pretty good deal for anyone determined to take the 7-inch route. However, in view of the video playback hitches, and a few other hiccups in basic use, you’d be well advised to hold off until the Toshiba Thrive 7 arrives. By the way, Toshiba is preparing some whacky new tablet concepts. Can’t wait for the upcoming CES 2012 to bring us more exciting tablets.
Phonearena has this Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus review video:
Related posts:
- Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9 – Review
- Review: Samsung galaxy Tab 10.1V
- Samsung Galaxy Note out today
- Touchwiz UX – update for the Samsung Galaxy 10.1
- Samsung Galaxy S Tabs 4.0 and 5.0 launch
Sign up to the Gadgetmix Newsletter (free) for news and reviews mailed directly to your mailbox CLICK HERE
