Samsung Galaxy Tab A8 Wi-Fi 64GB (2022)

I have been very happy with my Tab A8 it has lasted well and it was well worth the price I paid for it – I purchased two of these about 2 years ago (for me and my wife) and we have both been using them regularly ever since. So far it has been a very reliable pad and despite a tiny bit of slowdown over successive upgrades it still functions extremely well and the battery lasts a reasonable amount of time. By way of comparison a Lenovo M10 2nd Gen… Read more ·  1

(similar spec) I purchased at the same time for the kids (very slightly cheaper) is now nearly unusable and will need to be replaced this year, whereas my Galaxy Tab A8 is still going strong hopefully for many more years to come.

I mainly use this pad for browsing the web and watching streaming services. For this purpose it is still absolutely perfect for my needs and the lack of significant battery degradation means that I can still trust that it will last through long flights on a single charge. Combined with that and its price are why I have set the rating to excellent. Note: As this device is now two years old it has undoubtedly been superseded by newer models, but the fact it is still going strong after 2 years (and still getting updates) where others have failed means I will probably gravitate towards a Samsung for my next pad when the time eventually comes. (My original pad a Galaxy Tab A lasted 7 years until I upgraded to this one.

What I like about it --------------------- - Battery life: It can still easily stream HD Netflix for over 6 hours at maximum brightness via Wi-Fi. Note: By watching at lesser brightness this time can be significantly extended. - Battery longevity: There has only been a slight drop in battery range. I tested it today for over 6 hours and it was still running when I left the house but it was on 2% at 6hours rather than 5% when it was new and that could have been because difference in brightness of what I was streaming. - External Storage: I have a 256gb uSD card in there now which I picked up for about $28 from Officeworks. Why pay $$$ for extra internal storage when you don't have to! With 256gb I can basically download as much as I need to onto local storage for Netflix, YouTube, Disney+, etc to last for the longest of flights! I think the micro sd slot allows cards up to 1tb!!! - Headphone socket: There is a standard audio jack socket at the bottom when everyone else is removing them! Thanks Samsung :-) - Price: It was well priced at the time as a mid range device with a somewhat premium feel. - Stability: This pad is way more stable than the Lenovo M10 I brought at the same time. - Screen: While slightly dimmer than the Lenovo M10 the quality of video playback is much more vibrant and looked noticeably better in my opinion. - Processor: The gives it enough power to run all the apps I would ever want to run. That said I don't play games so I have no idea on that front. It seems to be ample for a mid level pad at the time of purchase. - Memory: I have not run into memory issues it seems to have sufficient to run the apps I want to run. - Updates: Still coming after 2 years. Just installed one this morning.

Issues ------- - Samsung (and third party) Bloatware: Cannot be fully removed and often resets preferences after updates. - Display brightness: It is slightly dimmer than other similar devices on the market including the Lenovo M10. Note: All of the similarly priced devices on the market struggle outdoors in bright sunlight. - Slowdown: While it is still running fine (and much faster than the Lenovo), like all Android devices the slowdown over even a short period of time is noticeable. - Display angle: The brightness drops off very quickly unless you are dead centre but display is still visible from near side on) - Front Camera Limitations: Subpar for anything beyond video calls, with awkward placement (on long edge). - Back Camera Quality: Poor light balance, colour, autofocus, and contrast. Not suitable for important photos. - Standby Power Drain: The pad does not last very long when in standby with the lid closed. - Display Off Issues: Sometimes fails to engage with the case closed, leading to unexpected battery drain. - Pen: My ancient (bottom of the range) Samsung Galaxy Tab A had a built in stylus. It was great! Why not include one with the current generation of Galaxy Tabs!?

I looove this tablet!!! – I love drawing digitally on apps such as Ibis paint X I also love playing online games such as roblox and minecraft works so smoothly on this tablet and some of the most popular social media platforms eg. Tiktok, Snapchat and Instagram work amazingly on this device, The only downside is a lot of digital drawing pens are not compatible with this tablet but overall this tablet works amazingly. Show details ·  1

Great for kids – This is a well priced tablet for young children, however the positioning of the earphone jack is a bit silly. Its right on the corner and if you drop your tab on a corner which as a child you are bound to do, it will dent the hole meaning you cant use the headohone jack anymore. But the great thing is you can buy a headphone adapter and use the… Read more

usb-c jack instead. Overall a great tab for children. Just make sure you buy a screen protector and cover for the tab to ensure the glass doesnt crack.

A Superb Budget Option – EDIT April 2023 Being LATEST: OPTUS SPORT ISSUE NOW SEEMS RESOLVED. Edit for Optus Sport only: Extensively contacted Samsung and Optus. This App alone does not like live EPL at least on this tablet. Works fine on all my other devices and this device works fine for ALL other streams (e.g. channel 9 live HD sport included). My conclusion (think… Read more ·  8

Samsung alluded must be) is that Optus sport is just not optimised for this device. Be careful if you are buying this for Optus sport.

I already have a laptop and a Samsung S10 phone. Both have lots of storage. I was looking for something that can easily sit beside my, "relaxing chair" and be good for basic web browsing and a few other simple downtime tasks:

Initial set up Already having a Samsung phone / Google Account this was painless and quick. They make it very easy to just press copy over what you want and off you go. A few bits and pieces to get things how I want exactly after that, but really all very easy and swift enough still.

Weight 508g, feeling robust. Fine for me but someone very elderly, by way of one example, may want to think about that.

Web Browsing This tablet is a good option. I much prefer the UI to any phone, which soon feels clunky past quick tasks. Combined with the extra real estate I am as happy whiling away 30 minutes on the tablet as any PC.

Looking at Photos / Videos This is not a flagship experience. The resolution is not the issue it's simply that the vibrancy/depth is not there to be had. It's plenty just to look quickly but side by side there is circa difference. All that said I find myself watching and enjoying if not trying to compare. It's very good really.

Taking Photo / Video As to be expected this is weak. Fine for a business document PDF or a quick video call with family, but simply weak overall.

Streaming Services (E.G Netflix / YT) Everything turned up to max (quality-wise) YT is fine. In fact, just for standard news / most content channels more would be a waste or at least a difference that matters so little it's not worth any extra. However, any available richness of larger productions is missing. HDR is not available. Saying all that a must-see show whilst away camping would still be plenty enjoyable enough. In the end, I found myself just enjoying a couple of things when not trying to compare.

Brightness Plenty of brightness is on offer generally inside my house, at any time of day, and it feels like it has oodles to spare.

Sound The onboard sound is fine for news content-type stuff. For anything more than that I would connect a speaker or headset on any of these mobile devices (budget or expensive). Aux is still available and BT connects fine. I have experienced zero lag with videos.

UI It's a Samsung device. Thankfully the days of endless bloat are gone. There is nothing to slow set-up or functionality that I have experienced.

Apps No heavy user, as such here, but most apps available from the Play/Galaxy stores seem tablet friendly. The odd one (below heavyweight WWW names) might want to only load in portrait, but that's OK. Even WhatsApp is happy to share my account with another mobile device, not just my PC. No worries on this front from me.

Battery New still, so should be good. It's way larger than the one in my phone and functions very well.

Keyboard I will just use the onboard keyboard for my simple use needs here. For starting at circa $50 you can buy cases with keyboards, but I might consider a protective screen cover if I ever did. I saw a review (not here) saying it had Gorilla glass 5 but I never saw that on the Samsung site looking very quickly. For my indoor usage, I see no need to add any protective screen cover although I did opt for a case.

My Protective Case (in pic) I went with a fairly generic one from Amazon. Do be careful it fits this model exactly if you get one and that's easy enough once you know to really check. The case latches shut via magnets and this serves to activate the auto on/off function. It all works very well and plenty out there sub $20 ish.

Stylus (in pic) I think 10 for $11 or so delivered. Very simple capacitive touch-suited ones that save fingerprint marks - enough for me. AFAIK the screen is only capacitive touch, so no fancy real S pens for this if that's an issue but I understand capacitive ones may be available that are more suited to note-taking (check if important).

IMO these are now well worth the asking price. Way more powerful devices exist but they cost way more, and I don't need more multitasking or gaming or video editing processing grunt here. Picture/video quality is a surprisingly slight compromise but as I said still easily good enough for anything must-watch if camping say, and photos are far from offensively poor viewing.

If I never had a flagship phone/nice TV/laptop I might look up the range, but having identified what I wanted it for I felt there was simply no good point in buying more.

The above covers just my usage case scenario - I hope it helps.

Simple to use – If you have an android Samsung mobile phone then the platform for using the SM-X200 tablet is the same so the navigation is easy. One thing I did notice was the weight of this tablet, its quite heavy. I use it with the addtional cover and stand combination. One thing thats a good idea is to expand the memory since it has quite a low internal… Read more ·  1

storage by comparison these days. I installed a 256 Gig expansion SD which was also a Samsung product. The storage set itself up without the need for formatting and arranged internal folders very quickly.

Next to my laptop the tablet is quite useful , easier and more fast to provide net access without booting up a PC. I dont rate the speakers as super high quality so better off interfacing a bluetooth headset. Screen quality very good.

Quite happy with it.

Great low/mid range tablet but the competition is strong and currently cheaper (Aug 22)! – The Galaxy Tab A8 is a great little tablet in the budget to mid-price range and on a CPU benchmark has nearly double the performance of its immediate competition, the Lenovo Tab M10 2nd Gen (Geekbench 5 scores below). Personally, I only really use my tablets for watching streamed movies, YouTube, surfing the web and the kids educational apps. If… Read more

you are planning to do something more than that, then it may be worth considering the Samsung, but when put side by side with the Lenovo for the mundane tasks I use it for they feel about even.

At time of writing (Aug 22) the Samsung is $377 and Lenovo is $247 in Officeworks. At $130 less I wouldn’t be able to recommend the Samsung for basic browsing and streaming over the Lenovo. Though If it was closer in price I would recommend the Samsung as some of the educational apps can be a bit laggy on the Lenovo and I am a little worried about how quickly things will start to slow down as Android updates start to stack up over the next few years.

I recently purchased both a Galaxy Tab A8 for myself and a Lenovo Tab M10 2nd Gen for the kids to play movies during travel and on our holiday. Both performed their travel entertainment function very well and lasted the full journey on one charge.

Note: I am comparing to 2nd Gen Lenovo which is REALLY important. I don't own the 1st Gen M10 but it gets really badly panned in ProductReview reviews!

Samsung Tab A8 out performs the Lenovo Tab M10 2nd Gen (in my opinion): - Much faster processor! It ran the benchmark in less than half the time of the Lenovo. The basic os seems smoother and some of the more laggy kids apps run noticeably better. - slightly bigger screen (10.5" vs 10.3") - ever so slightly better battery life. - Proximity detection for case lid turns off screen - In my personal opinion the screen image quality looks better (but slightly darker) Note: I haven't tried games on either tablet but I would imagine that the Samsung would be better based on CPU benchmark.

Things I liked ========= - Micro SD slot - allows for really cheap storage upgrade up to 1TB and not available on Apple and other more expensive options. This was extremely important to me as it allows local storage of Netflix, etc for flights. 128TB San Disk Ultra uSD card can be picked up from Amazon for about $20 which was way more than enough to locally store everything I downloaded for the holiday (which was just as well as the accommodation didn't have functioning Wi-Fi). - Headphone socket - 3.5 audio jack socket. But also work really well with Bluetooth headphones. - Bluetooth - Synced up really well with headphones with good range. - Battery Life - Playing stranger things full brightness I got just over 6 hours. Setting power saver on and screen to half brightness I was able to push that to over 10 hours! The Samsung appeared to last ever so slightly longer when using similar settings but only just. - Screen - Personally I prefer the screen over the Lenovo. (Note: Neither device comes anywhere near Apples offerings but then neither do the prices). It is bright enough to be used outside but watching a movie would not be ideal in direct sunlight. It works well in a bright room or under cloud/shade outside. The Samsung is ever so slightly dimmer than the Lenovo, but side by side with the Lenovo appears to do a better job at colour reproduction. At first glance the Samsung does look nicer but that may be due to the curved corners of the screen? - Processor - Much faster processor than the Lenovo. While not obvious when browsing the web or playing movies, it is noticeable in other applications and when navigating the home screen (vs the Lenovo). - Stability - I have not had any crashes so far on this pad. The Lenovo does occasionally crash for no apparent reason! - 3rd Party cases - Office works had plenty of accessories for the Samsung including cheaper/better 3rd party cases and screen protectors. (I had to source my Lenovo screen protectors from China via EBay!)

Room for improvement (IMHO) ==================== - Price - At the moment anyway it is hard to justify paying over 50% more for a device that is so similar in performance real-world for what I use it for (Web, video calls and streaming). - Cameras - Both front and back are pretty bad! They should not be used for anything more adventurous than video calling. They somehow manage to be worse than the awful cameras on the Lenovo! - Front Camera location - It is on the long side right where my hand like to be resulting in the proximity trigger turning off the screen. This is really annoying but may only affect me! - Speakers - The onboard speakers are exceptionally tinny even with Dolby Atmos turned on. They are noticeably worse than the Lenovo speakers (which are also not great) - Face recognition - Yeah! Don't even bother! Not sure if it is the camera or the processing but I could only get it working in near perfect lighting conditions. - Bloatware - I like Samsung products (I also have a Samsung Phone and an original Samsung Tab) but I don't like their additional apps e.g. Samsung Browser. While most of them can be bypassed they can't be uninstalled and have a habit of re-asserting themselves after software updates. - My original Samsung Tab A had a stylus. I really liked it. I miss it! This does not have one nor do any of the others by default.

Geekbench 5 scores: (My Samsung Tab A8 vs my kids Lenovo Tab M10 2nd Gen) ==================================================== Important: I just installed Geekbench on both devices and ran it once on each. I am not a profesional tester. These results have not been reviews or verified and should be taken as such. Single core score: 361 (Lenovo is 163) Multi core score: 1295 (Lenovo is 939) For my tests on both devices, full Geekbench results (both Samsung Tab A8 and Lenovo Tab M10 2nd Gen see: https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/compare/16722124?baseline=16722205