In pursuit of lighter computing device, I set out to look for 2in1 tablets that can also function as a laptop. Galaxy Tab Pro S in my first encounter with this new class of device that are quickly gaining popularity.
Aesthetics
Using the same design language as Galaxy S7 with the same awesome thin profile, Tab Pro S is sexy and oozing with the premium feel. The side is brushed aluminium, the front is gorilla glass while the back is make of plastic, which is a very obvious and petty budget cut. Luckily, you will most likely be using the tablet with the included keyboard that has a fake leather as exterior, which will cover the back of the tablet magnetically.
The back camera has a small squarish bump that is also used to align the keyboard case with the tablet, which can be rather inaccurate at times due to its size, leading to the case slightly tilted to either sides. The keyboard would then need to be attach to the keyboard magnetic strip with pins every time you like to use it, however its alignment is dependent on the case alignment when attaching it to the back to the tablet's camera, leading to the magnetic strip not attaching fully and slight bending at the corner. A slight push for realignment would fix that and is a minor annoyance in general.
If you like to use the tablet as a tablet, you will most likely prefer to remove the keyboard case since folding the case 360" expose the keyboard to your hands. Not only will you fear of breaking the delicate keys, it is really uncomfortable to hold. Compound with the quirk regarding the alignment of the case makes it a chore to switch between laptop and tablet mode.
The keyboard also function as a case and stand for the tablet, with 2 position available to tilt your screen. Definitely not as intuitive as Microsoft and HP hinge design for their Windows 10 tablet, but still passable for day to day use. While the cover protects the tablet from external elements, flexing on the keyboard portion causes it to imprint stains and even scratches on the tablet (after 3 months of use).
This tablet makes for a light weight companion when dual used as a laptop. The charger is similar to the Galaxy phone chargers in dimension and weight. When traveling with the tablet, including the keyboard, charger and Microsoft designer Bluetooth, the entire package is actually below 1kg!
Verdict: 7/10
Human Interface
The screen is touch sensitive and supports all the gesture that you come to expect from a similar Windows laptop or tablet.
There are 3 physical buttons built on the tablet: power, start and volume. The power and volume is at the top left of the tablet (while connected to the keyboard) while the start button is placed at the left. You will probably not use the physical start button in any conceivable scenario due to its location.
The keyboard is usable but not awesome. The keys are too closely positioned, leading to less than ideal travel space. When pressing the keys, they also felt very shallow and has a very dull click and feedback.
The track pad is much worse, with undefined left and right button, that get your desire input wrong most of the time. The tracking is passable but with the erratic button behavior, it is unusable and therefore should always paired with a mouse.
Tab Pro S supports pen input but is not included in the package.
Verdict: 5/10
Connectivity
In terms of network connectivity, you will have everything covered, including built in LTE. This is a great plus for me as a business traveler with a sim card fully paid for by the company. Instead of wasting your phone's power to tether, you have internet connectivity the moment you boot into Windows. This convenience is something you will not compromise once you experience it.
In addition, the tablet can also be used to tether to your other devices. However, I notice that when Tab Pro S is used as a hotspot, the internet connection will become unstable with frequents and noticeable drops in connections.
Ports connectivity wise, its abysmal. You get a usb c and a analog audio out. On top of that, the usb c is used as charging port for the tablet as well. Without a usb c hub, that would mean you have ZERO usb ports available during charging. Due to its use as charging, you will be hard pressed to find a 3rd party usb hub that support pass through charging, meaning you have to cough out that obscene amount of money to purchase Samsung usb hub.
Verdict: 6/10
Screen
Featuring a gorgeous AMOLED screen, this is what sets it apart from the competition. In fact, its the only Windows 10 tablet featuring this technology. This makes the tablet very well suited for media consumption like videos, games and even web browsing, but not so much when it comes to serious stuff like word processing, spread sheet or programming. In fact, AMOLED suffers much higher power consumption when displaying white pixels, which predominantly the color being displayed on business applications.
As with all AMOLED screen, the contrast is phenomenal with true black and vibrant colors. The brightness and the viewing angle is more than sufficient. You will find the basic profile for the AMOLED color setting in the galaxy settings very well calibrated with accurate colors.
One thing to note is that AMOLED is more prone to burn ins and its vibrant color will deteriorate with use. Having used the tablet for 2 months as my mobile workhorse, I have yet to observe any of the above manifesting on my screen.
Verdict: 8/10
Battery Life
Advertised at 10.5 hours, you will more realistically see 4 to 5 hours of battery life, and that is without using it as a hotspot. That is not even sufficient to get through a average work day without hunting for a power point. I would gladly sacrifice a few mm of thickness for a larger capacity battery.
Below is my average use case:
85% battery life extender
50-60% screen brightness
LTE on
Outlook always running
Chrome with average of 10 tabs
Microsoft Office suite mostly running
Occasion use of RDP to access my cloud resources
Lots of unnecessary services disabled
Applications ribbon and background changed to black whenever possible
I dont see the above as demanding usage and my mileage of previous ultrabooks have been within 80% of advertised battery life by the manufacturer. Samsung is plain dishonest when advertising this tablet battery life. I am really curious what kind of test they used to achieve 10 hours battery life and have serious doubt on its authenticity or reflection to any reasonable form of real life usage.
Since the battery life extender was implemented to counter side effects of quick charging, Samsung should give us the option to either turn off quick charging or set the battery capacity limit to 85%. They could even take it a little further and allow us to customize the % of max charge as well.
Earlier versions of the BIOS also have battery draining issue observed even when the tablet is shutdown. The situation have improved significantly in the new BIOS update P13HAB.
Verdict: 3/10
Performance
Tab Pro S use m3 CPU that is low power and passively cooled, so do not expect it to take any performance crown. Coupled with 4GB RAM and 128 GB SSD, will leave you wishing they offered higher performance variants.
The m3 CPU comes with Intel integrated 515 and the only game it can play from my library is hearthstone. That being said, it cruises through web browsing, 1080 video playback and most office suite really well. Processing large spread sheet and compilation of your programs will require some patience. But with most of my workload increasingly migrated to the cloud, much of the processing intensive items are no longer being run locally. Coupled with the convenience of the built in LTE, I surprisingly find Tab Pro S set up is actually sufficient for me.
However, I would greatly appreciate if there is 8GB RAM and 256GB SSD variants available.
Verdict: 6/10
Operating System
It runs Windows 10 Pro! Nuff said!
All your favorite Win32 applications are compatible and available from day 1, excluding performance limitations of course.
Samsung did a great job by adding no bloatware to the OS, with minimal inclusion of its tools, skinning and settings.
An issue I encountered with their software suite is the additional galaxy settings. Settings like the battery extender would mysteriously change on its own and I have yet to identify the cause yet.
Something to note is that after upgrading the driver through Samsung Update causes strange flashing issue randomly. A DDU (http://www.wagnardsoft.com/) clean up and reinstall solves the issue. To Samsung defense, this is actually a manufacturer issue. Even AMD Relive driver clean install still leaves behind scraps of previous installation that causes issues (like Radeon additional settings not launching), requiring DDU to perform a thorough clean up before proceeding.
Windows 10 has still some way to go when used in tablet mode and without keyboard/mouse, but with the iterative update approach Microsoft is taking, we will get there eventually.
Would give 10/10 if it comes with Windows 10 Enterprise due to some policy setting unavailable with the Pro edition.
Verdict: 9/10
Value
Released at 1699SGD, this tablet is extremely overpriced for the specifications. The package certainly doesn't reek of that asking price either, with a cost cutting plastic back, cheap and finicky keyboard, lack of pen or USB hub included. At that price, Surface Pro 4 is undeniably a better tablet to go for than Tab Pro S, although Surface Pro 4 does have its own set of issues.
I purchased mine at 999SGD recently, making it an acceptable proposition which i took up. At that price, it has many competitors using the same m3 CPU configuration, but their built are inferior to Samsung and their screen is lackluster. Do take note that the price drop is likely due to the release of an upcoming tablet that should contain Intel's recently released Kaby Lake.
Verdict:
4/10 (original MSRP)
8/10 (Author's purchased price)
Overall
Did it fully replaced my ultrabook for my travels? Yes.
However, huge compromise were made. I opted not to buy the ridiculously priced usb hub, so I gave up using removable drives or wired projection during presentation. As a mechanical keyboard user on my workstation, I gave up the already uncomfortable keyboards on the ultrabook for an even worse keyboard when switching to this tablet as well.
What this tablet did was accelerated my push to both public and private cloud for my computing needs. Need to compile programs or the large amount of data that couldn't fit the meager 128GB storage? Connect to my workstation via RDP. Need to spin up VMs for testing? Theres Azure for that. And frankly speaking, this is the future we will both arrive in eventually anyway.
Do I wish for more? Absolutely. More ports, higher specifications for CPU, RAM, storage and battery would be the low hanging fruit Samsung can pursue for its next product.
Is it perfect? No, but it certainly is usable.
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