Samsung Galaxy Tab review

Samsung's eagerly anticipated Android tablet is finally here, but it doesn't live up to all the hype. Read our in-depth review to find out why.

IT Pro Verdict

We wanted to like the Samsung Galaxy Tab, hoping it would have all the strengths of the Pad, but none of its weaknesses. We loved its slender, lightweight and attractive design. The microSD card slot is undeniably useful. The bundled apps, although rough around the edges, allow you to get real work done. Unfortunately, the sluggishness of the touchscreen interface, as well as some badly designed features such as copy and paste, can make the Tab infuriatingly frustrating to use, especially when compared to the iPad. It’s all the more frustrating given the Tab’s powerful 1GHz processor and ample RAM. You may be nonetheless still be tempted by the Tab’s slender and lightweight build, but we can’t recommend it wholeheartedly - especially as it’s no cheaper than the 16GB 3G iPad. We’d recommend waiting for a software update, perhaps the upcoming Android 3.0 Gingerbread operating system due next year, to fix the Tab’s software issues before buying. If you must have a tablet now, the iPad is still better, despite its own flaws.

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Battery life was impressive. The Tab lasted just under seven hours when playing a H264 video file repeatedly which matches Samsung's claims. When playing the same video, but re-encoded into Flash format, it lasted six and a half hours. This compares very favourably with the iPad which lasted longer in the H264 test at around 11 hours but which also has the benefit of a bigger battery.

As expected for a modern Android device, the Tab supports multitouch gestures. In most apps, the interface feels very responsive, not far behind the iPad in terms of accuracy and speed. Unfortunately we were disappointed and unimpressed with the responsiveness of the interface when using certain other apps, especially the preinstalled web browser.

Scrolling through, panning around and zooming in and out of web pages often felt juddery and sluggish, especially if Flash content was present on the webpage. Adjusting the browser's preferences so Flash content only loads when you tap on it helped improved responsiveness, but it's still not as smooth and slick as the iPad's almost flawlessly responsive touchscreen interface.

Nonetheless the Flash support is useful as it allows the Tab to access websites, videos and online games that are off limits to the iPad, although we did sometimes see lip-sync problems and stuttering playback on some streaming video websites, such as 4oD. Flash playback is made possible by Android 2.2, the only version of Google's mobile operating system so far to support it. The presence of Android 2.2 also means that the Tab supports important business features, such as connecting to an Exchange server, without the need for extra software.

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