The new Galaxy Tab S5e I was impressed with at MWC19 in February is finally out and I haven’t been able to put mine down since delivery. This tablet is the best I’ve seen in a while, it’s super thin at 5.5mm and light only weighing 396 grams. The build is very good, it has high-quality alloy body, nice rounded edge finish and it has these tiny 8mm wide bezels all around.
Due to the slim build the tablet gives the impression it could easily be bent and I don’t doubt it, I’m sure with a bit of force I could bend it quite easily. So it will need to have a hard case if you plan on just throwing it into a bag with some large textbooks or something.
I’m working on a write-up of my review of sorts but below is my review video on this impressive little tablet now shipping in Europe. This one I bought from Samsung Spain, sadly not a free review unit. North American units will start shipping on the 26th of this month so not long.
01:38 – Design & build
05:49 – Finger/face unlock
07:38 – Screen & outdoors
09:14 – UI, Benchmarks & ROM
12:36 – eBooks & audio
13:57 – Games (PUBG, SGL, Blades)
15:43 – Cameras
16:22 – DeX desktop mode
16:43 – Battery life
17:09 – Kids safe mode
17:22 – Recap Pros & Cons
Galaxy Tab S5e key Specs:
- 10.5″ 2560 x 1600 SAMOLED 600+ nits
- 4GB/6GB RAM & 64GB or 128GB eMMC 5.1
- 4 x AKG speakers
- 5.5mm thin, 396 grams light
- Android 9.0 with One UI 1.1
- Samsung DeX via an external display on the internal display
- Snapgradon 670 SoC
- 8MP front camera with 1080p video
- A 12MP rear AF camera with 4k 30fps video
- $399 USD or 419 euros
- hardware keyboard book cover support.
- NO S-Pen support (Wait for Tab S5 for that)
- NO 3.5mm jack, what a stupid thing to do!
Still, if you don’t mind missing out on the S-Pen and 3.5mm jack It’s a terrific tablet I’m finding it hard to put down.
After all the laggy Helio X27 tablet’s I’ve reviewed it makes sense. For around $110 USD more than the Alldocube X with the same screen, it makes more sense to me to get this tablet with software updates, support, local warranty, amazing speakers, better build, Samsung DeX, HDMI out the list goes on!
Battery life on the Galaxy S5e is very good. My typical mixed-use battery drain test took me to 2 days to kill the battery, over 11 hours screen on time is possible and with light use, I think even 13 hours would be possible with a lower screen brightness and light apps. The battery life is definitely a huge plus of this tablet. The 7040mAh battery is a decent size considering just how small this tablet is, did it come at the loss of the 3.5mm headphone jack? I hope not, or will the Tab S5 have not only S-Pen support, faster chipset but a headphone jack too?
Oh and by the way, GPS finally did work for me and it also has hardware compass support. Not sure what happened but when I first tested it nothing worked with GPS and yes location was enabled.