At a Glance: Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 Review

With its new Galaxy Tab S6, Samsung is aiming to compete with both Apple’s iPads and Microsoft’s Surface computers. Built like a high-end smartphone, this tablet is certainly versatile, but does it have what it takes to beat out these big competitors?

Design and Specs

The Galaxy Tab S6 comes equipped with a 10.5-inch super AMOLED display with a resolution of 2,560×1,660. This gives it a total of 287 PPI, which puts it roughly on par with Microsoft’s Surface Pro 6 and the latest Apple iPad Pro.

Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 855 SoC is the driving force in this tablet, giving it performance on par with the Samsung Galaxy S10. The base model tablet also comes with 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage space, which gets upgraded to 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage on the high-end model. All Galaxy Tab S6 tablets feature Wi-Fi, but select models will also have a built-in cellular antenna with LTE support.

The tablet comes with Samsung’s S Pen, which is useful for handwriting notes and editing images on the tablet. Samsung also sells a keyboard case for $179 that will enable you to use the tablet as a makeshift laptop. The tablet also has a special software mode that the company refers to as “DeX Mode” that attempts to imitate a more traditional notebook interface, but it appears to be problematic. Our sister site PCMag tested out one of these tablets and reported that the DeX Mode was buggy and unstable.

Conclusion

Samsung sells the Galaxy Tab S6 starting at $599, but it looks like a solution best avoided. Although it is less expensive than the iPad Pro and Microsoft’s Surface Pro 6, its bugs appear to make using the tablet an unpleasant experience. There are also several low-cost alternatives including Apple’s 2019 10.2-inch iPad, which sells for as low as $329.

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