Apple and Samsung hold the top two spots of the tablet market share. Sadly Samsung is slowly losing its market share to Apple and Huawei. In order to hold its spot, Samsung recently released the Samsung Galaxy Tab S4 with lots of productivity options.

Right now in the market, the best tablets for productivity are iPad pro, Surface Pro and their affordable versions iPad 2018 and Surface Go. Samsung Tab S4 is designed directly to compete with the iPad Pro lineup with almost the same price tag. Does it worth the money for productivity usage? That’s what are we are going to see in this post.

Samsung Galaxy Tab S4 Specs & Release Date

When it comes to hardware, Samsung is one of the best OEM out there in the market. With their stunning display technology, they always give us a jaw-dropping video experience. A quick spec of the Samsung Galaxy Tab S4 is given below.

10.5 inch Super AMOLED display (2560×1600) with 287 PPI

Internal memory options 64GB($650) and 256GB ($750)

Expandable memory upto to 400 GB

AKG tuned Quad Speaker with Dolby Atmos

7300 mah battery with up to 16 hours of battery life

4GB RAM

Snapdragon 835 processor

13-megapixel front and rear camera

The Samsung Galaxy Tab S4 shipping starts from August 10th. As you can see pricing is quite aggressive 64GB model costs $650 and the 256GB model costs $750. If you need a Samsung’s Dex supported keyboard you have to pay an extra $150 or you can use your existing bluetooth mouse and keyboard without worries.

Multimedia Usage

If you are using your tablets mainly for consuming multimedia contents, then the Tab S4 is the best option. The brilliant Super AMOLED display will give you an immersive experience. Though there are four speakers with Dolby support, it is still not as great as in the iPad Pro.

Don’t take me wrong, the display quality is so good and the sound quality does’nt match it, which makes the experience incomplete. With the 4GB RAM and Snapdragon 835 processor, you can still play graphic intensive games. The Tab S4 now supports the smart home feature of Samsung, you can control smart home devices right from your tablet.

Professional Usage

All the major improvements in the Samsung Galaxy Tab S4 are for the productivity tasks. Now the Tab S4 supports Samsung’s DEX feature out of the box, the one you have seen in the Samsung S9 and S9 plus. The DEX helps you to use your Tab almost like a computer, you can edit documents, spreadsheets and other basic office related file works.

Tab S4 is almost close to giving you the 2 in 1 Purpose tab experience like the Surface Pro, but it doesn’t. Samsung claims you can run up to 20 applications at the same time. With 4GB of RAM, you will start to feel the lag when you hit the 15 application mark. We all know how RAM hungry the TouchWiz interface is and you can expect the same here as well. Window resizing feature, files drag and drop features makes your productivity a lot more easier.

The S Pen is now a standard accessory with Tab S4. You get all the same Note 8 S Pen features in this tablet as well. You can create a live message, take screenshots, write a memo, draw images and it also supports Screen off memo feature. Samsung’s keyboard cover is pretty decent but the pice feels a bit higher. For $150 price the Samsung Keyboard is not that great when compared to the $100 Surface Keyboard cover. You get a premium material with trackpad option for the $100 price tag in the Surface Keyboard cover.

The Cons of Samsung Galaxy Tab S4

If you are buying the Tab S4 mainly for the productivity, then you can better skip this one. The main advantage of the Tab S4 is its software, which is also the greatest disadvantage of the device. As you can see, the device software has been completely redesigned from the core and is heavily customized. Out of the box the device is running on Android 8.1 and the chances of getting the future update are very tough.

In the case of iPad Pro and Surface Pro, both the software and hardware is controlled by the manufacturers. Samsung here clearly has control over the hardware alone. 4GB of RAM is ok for an iPad because Apple takes control over the processor, the entire chipset, and the operating system. Even in the Surface Go review, I have suggested users to go for the 8GB version for professional usage. If Samsung had given us a 6GB variant, then sure Tab S4 is the best option for productivity next to Surface tablets.

Another thing we have to think about productivity is the app support. When it comes to tablet supported applications, the iPad is the clear winner. There are thousands of apps to help you in the App Store. Windows is moving towards one operating system for all device, when you turn off the S-mode in Surface tablets you can use third-party applications as well. Tab S4 on the other hand, all the Samsung applications are optimized for the tablet and for other applications in the Play Store you have to keep your fingers crossed.

If you are using the tablets for media consumptions and occasional productivity tasks, Tab S4 is the best option. Right now there are no other Android tablets with so many productivity options, which makes Tab S4 a unique one in the market. Oh ya, almost forget, there are some interesting news about iPad Pro 2018, will be covering it in my next post, subscribe to stay updated.