Samsung has refreshed its affordable Galaxy Tab A tablet with slightly better performance, a bit larger screen, more storage and multitasking features to help you work or study from home. The Samsung Galaxy Tab A8 10.5 (2021) switches over to a 10.5” LCD with 1,920 x 1,200 px resolution. That’s a 16:10 aspect ratio, which means the display has slightly more vertical room compared to the 10.4” 15:9 display of the Tab A7. As before, there are four Dolby Atmos-enabled speakers for an immersive audio experience.
The new Tab A8 slate comes with
entertainment built-in – Samsung TV Plus offers streaming of 200+ free channels
(live and on-demand, available in select markets), also you get 2 months of
YouTube Premium for free. But it can be a work tablet too, with split-screen
multitasking and floating windows. Also, it supports Drag & Split from One
UI 3.1.1 that rolled out to 2020 Galaxy flagships earlier this year. This does
mean that the tablet is launching with Android 11, though.
According to Samsung, the new chipset
offers 10% higher CPU performance, the GPU is also 10% faster. But the company
doesn’t name the chipset. Unofficial info suggests that it is a Unisoc Tiger
T618, a 12 nm chipset with two Cortex-A75 cores and six A55 cores, plus a Mali
G52 MP2 GPU. This replaces the Snapdragon 662 chip of the Tab A7 (11 nm, four
Cortex-A73 and four A53 based cores, Adreno 610). As with the previous model,
the base model comes with 3GB of RAM and 32GB storage. This year there’s a new
memory configuration, 4/128 GB, sitting above the 4/64 GB option. The microSD
slot means that you can save some money if you don’t need fast storage.
If you need to take part of a video call,
there is a 5MP camera on the front (with a fixed focus lens), plus an 8MP
camera on the rear (autofocus) for photos and videos. There will be two
versions of the Galaxy Tab A8 – one with Wi-Fi only and one with LTE if you
need connectivity on the go. Both have Wi-Fi 5 (ac) and Bluetooth 5. Wired
connectivity includes a 3.5 mm headphone jack and a USB-C 2.0 port (so no DeX
support, that’s only for S-series devices).
The tablet is powered by a 7,040mAh
battery. It supports 15W fast charging, but in the retail package you will only
get a 7.5W charger. The Samsung Galaxy Tab A8 (2021) will be available in
Europe later this month. According to Samsung's branch in The Netherlands, the
tablet will start at € 230 (basically the same as last year). The US and other
regions will get it in January. It will be available in Gray, Silver and the
new Pink Gold color.
