First Impressions: Samsung Galaxy Tab S8 Plus
Hands on with an undeniably premium tablet
First Impressions
The newest Plus-size tablet from Samsung offers an immersive screen and impressive specifications, so is it the one to opt for over the Tab S8 Ultra?
Availability
- UKRRP: £849
- EuropeRRP: €999
Introduction
This time there are three different devices in Samsung’s Galaxy Tab range, with the Tab S8 Plus taking the middle rank rather than being the top dog, by virtue of the Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra’s arrival.
Nonetheless, for many customers this large but not excessive form factor could be ideal for all the tasks you normally undertake on your tablet, where the Ultra might be unwieldy.
The Galaxy Tab S8 will retail for a starting price of £849, which is quite a significant increase over the £649 price of the standard Tab S8. For that difference you do get a significantly larger screen, but you’re still limited to just Wi-Fi connectivity (rather than 5G, which costs an extra £50), and you’ll get 8GB of RAM with 128GB of storage space.
There’s also a variant with 8GB of RAM and 256GB storage which costs £899 and £1049 for the Wi-Fi Only and 5G models respectively. This latter price actually slightly overtakes that of the Tab S8 Ultra base model, which has a starting price of £999.
Design and Screen
- Robust, premium design
- Immersive screen
The Galaxy Tab S8 Plus is an undeniably premium tablet, and it feels it too with a smooth metallic shell and a large, sharp screen.
The AMOLED screen measures 12.4 inches diagonally across, which is plenty big enough for a tablet without being too cumbersome. Its screen resolution is 2800 x 1752 pixels, so it is nicely crisp and detailed too, and when sketching on the screen with an S-Pen it was responsive and accurate. Boasting a maximum refresh rate of 120Hz, the display is very smooth when you’re scrolling through various in-app menus or social media feeds.
When using this large tablet, I never felt that I needed more screen space, let alone a device as enormous as the Tab S8 Ultra; while this will naturally be a matter of personal taste among customers, this seems to be of a generous enough size to appeal to a large audience.
Camera
- Dual ultrawide cameras on the rear
- Single front-facing ultrawide camera
While the rear camera set-up should be just as good as any other that you’ll find on a Samsung tablet, the front-facing set-up has only one lens compared to the two boasted by the Tab S8 Ultra, though the silver lining is that the Tab S8 Plus doesn’t have an invasive in-screen notch.
The snappers on here are likely to do justice to your video calls, or suffice for those few times that your take pictures with your tablet rather than your smartphone, but we’ll need a bit longer with it in our hands in order to give you the full rundown of its photographic performance.
Performance and Battery
- High-performing processor
- Large battery capacity
The Galaxy Tab S8 runs on a 4nm 64-bit octa-core processor, and so we’d expect very powerful performance from this device seeing as it is latest-generation silicon. You might have to pay a bit extra for 5G connectivity, but many consumers will find that the convenience of having mobile data on your tablet will be worth the initial outlay.
The battery has a 10,090mAh capacity that’s likely to suffice for your daily needs, even bearing in mind that it’s got to power the large and demanding display. However, we’ll only know its true capability after judging its performance in running a range of typical activities before we can give a real pronouncement on its performance.
Early Impressions
We’ll need more hands-on time with the Tab S8 Plus to be able to deliver our full verdict on whether or not it is the ideal tablet for you. However, based on our experience so far, the superb screen is likely to satisfy most customers; whether the camera system and the battery life hold up to scrutiny will be discovered after more thorough testing.
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We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
