Samsung's Galaxy Tab 4 tablets come fresh from the oven, and the Galaxy Tab 4 7.0 is the smallest and cheapest in this year's trio. It features a 7-inch display, a quad-core CPU, a gig and a half of RAM, and it runs Android KitKat topped off Samsung's latest tablet UI – all at the reasonable price point of $199. This tablet sounds like it has lots of potential, but does it fare so well in reality? Let's find out.
Design
An uninspired look, but the build quality is flawless.
The Galaxy Tab 4 7.0 is boring to look at, but this isn't of much importance. Once again, plastic is Samsung's material of choice. However, the Tab 4 looks and feels very sturdy. It is a sleek, solid, well-built tablet. There are no creaks, shallow spots, or misaligned elements to distract from the Tab 4's simple, functional look. The tablet has a unibody design with a metal binding around the outer edges that holds the construction tightly together. The only weak spot is the slightly wobbly Home button, but this is nit-picking.
Measuring 7.36 x 4.25 x 0.35 inches (186.9 x 107.9 x 9 mm) at a weight of 9.74 oz (276 g), it is a whole inch narrower than the Kindle Fire HDX 7, and decidedly smaller than the Nexus 7 (2013). It is also slightly smaller than its predecessor, the Galaxy Tab 3 7.0. The Tab 3 and Tab 4 do share common design traits, but instead of overly smooth plastic, the Tab 4's back features a rugged texture, providing a better grip.
In terms of ergonomics, the Galaxy Tab 4 is quite comfortable to hold in one hand. Holding it in Portrait orientation with two hands is a possibility as well, although there is little real estate for your thumbs to rest on. That's the trade-off for the slim bezels.
Display
A pleasant view, but it doesn't "pop" like a Samsung display.
Although the resolution of 1280 x 800 is middling, and the pixel density of 216 ppi doesn't sound impressive, the Tab 4's display looks just fine in practice. Small text (including Asian characters) and little details remain readable. There's no visible pixelation, although there's a hint of fuzziness to icons and images with lots of fine detail.
In terms of color reproduction, the Galaxy Tab 4 7.0 fares well, but not without flaws. The display's color temperature (7055 Kelvins) is close to the reference 6500K, but the colors aren't true – in fact, they are rather undersaturated (especially red). Hence, the display doesn't "pop" like you would expect from a Samsung panel - it actually comes across as subdued.
Still, the display we have on Samsung's new 7-incher is pleasant to look at, unless you happen to be under direct sunlight. That's the moment when the overly reflective glass becomes a true hindrance, and the panel's maximum brightness of 374 nits is not enough to alleviate the problem. Thankfully, the screen's viewing angles are great, and the image is always consistent.
The numbers below represent the amount of deviation in the respective property,observed when a display is viewed from a 45-degree angle as opposed to direct viewing.
The CIE 1931 xy color gamut chart represents the set(area)of colors that a display can reproduce,with the sRGB colorspace(the highlighted triangle)serving as reference.The chart also provides a visual representation of a display's color accuracy. The small squares across the boundaries of the triangle are the reference points for the various colors, while the small dots are the actual measurements. Ideally, each dot should be positioned on top of its respective square. The 'x:CIE31' and 'y:CIE31' values in the table below the chart indicate the position of each measurement on the chart. 'Y' shows the luminance (in nits) of each measured color, while 'Target Y' is the desired luminance level for that color. Finally, 'ΔE 2000' is the Delta E value of the measured color. Delta E values of below 2 are ideal.
The Color accuracy chart gives an idea of how close a display's measured colors are to their referential values. The first line holds the measured (actual) colors, while the second line holds the reference (target) colors. The closer the actual colors are to the target ones, the better.
The Grayscale accuracy chart shows whether a display has a correct white balance(balance between red,green and blue)across different levels of grey(from dark to bright).The closer the Actual colors are to the Target ones,the better.
We have to commend Samsung for its tablet UI - it nailed it. The first time we saw this new look was in the Galaxy Tab Pro 12.2. We're sure happy to see Samsung bring it over to its new range of tabs, because this UI just works. It provides an uncluttered experience that feels friendlier than stock Android, but still respects Google's vision.
We have to note that Samsung acted smart and didn't try to turn a tablet that's obviously meant for light, mundane tasks into something more than it should be. Thus, you don't get any fancy gesture controls or highly ambitious apps, but the little you get in terms of proprietary enhancements is quality over quantity. The default apps - Contacts, My Files, S Planner, Memo, Browser, E-mail, Music, Video, Alarm, S Voice, are polished and feel like they belong to the experience. Whether you'll opt for them, Google's stock apps, or 3-rd party solutions is entirely up to you. Just like it should be.
Processor and memory
The Tab 4 can get downright sluggish and unresponsive at times.
Unfortunately, this major department is the one where Samsung's new 7-incher comes short. In theory, the Tab 4 7.0 has a better than average set of specs - a quad-core Marvell PXA1088 CPU and 1.5GB of RAM is nothing to frown at. In terms of memory, our version has 8GB of storage, and about half of it is occupied by Samsung's belongings. Fair enough but, to our surprise, the Tab 4.0 is not only far from athletic, but it can get downright sluggish and unresponsive at times. There's a slight stutter in the menus and drawers which is always present, and the sluggishness can become overwhelming as the RAM memory gets filled up.
Furthermore, this version of Samsung's UI doesn't animate its icons when you tap on them. Thus, when you poke an icon to launch some app, and the tablet not only fails to obey, but it doesn't give out any visible indication that it actually registered your touch, it feels jarring.
Sadly, the benchmark results confirmed our suspicions that Samsung either has some optimizing left to do, or the Tab 4 7.0 is destined to remain an under-achiever. In each of our tests we saw the tablet unable to compete with the Nexus 7 (2013) - a tablet that makes do with a generation-old chipset (the Snapdragon S4 Pro) while having many more pixels to push.
As the Tab 4 7.0's sluggishness is evident both in practical usage and in synthetic benchmarks, we have to say that we are left disappointed by its performance.
Browsing performance is the same so-so ordeal as general usage.
The version which we have for review is the Wi-Fi only one, thus there's nothing special about the tablet in terms of connectivity. Its browsing performance is the same so-so ordeal as its general usage. Browsing is perfectly functional, of-course - web pages display correctly and scroll reasonably quickly, but as a whole, the tablet feels slow. At least Samsung's in-built Browser and E-Mail clients are a decent alternative to Chrome and Gmail, provided you actually need one.
It's worth mentioning that you will be treated to 20GB of free Dropbox storage by buying the tablet. Both Dropbox and Samsung's own Samsung Account system are integrated deep within the system, and allow for features such as automatic backups.
Camera
A 3MP main camera that performs better than expected, and a 1.3MP front cam which suffices for chatting.
Some of you will be pleased that Samsung has included some special camera modes, such as Beauty Face and Sound and Shot. Besides that, there aren't many other options - there are auto-timer, exposure, and social sharing.
The 3MP fixed-focus main camera on the Galaxy Tab 4 7.0 turned out to be surprisingly good, despite all its limits. Perhaps it was the nice, sunny weather that did the trick, but the photos we took outside are satisfactory. Detail gets resolved well and the colors are reasonably sharp. The indoor samples have a smeary look to them, but the puny 3-megapixel cam still performs better than expected. Meanwhile, the 1.3MP front-facing camera is good news for video chatting.
The main camera also records 720p videos in .mp4 format, and they look pretty stellar - and shaky, of course.
Multimedia
A fine tablet for entertainment.
The in-built Gallery app has some nice differentiating features, such as the ability to edit and send your photos as postcards with your writing on them. There's also Samsung's Buddy Photo Share, first seen in the Galaxy S3. Meanwhile, Samsung's Video Player doesn't stand out with anything too special, but the Music app is definitely one of the better stock music players around.The Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 7.0 plays the most popular video formats out of the box. Music sounds passable through the tablet's lone speaker, and as for video, 1080p clips encoded in DivX (.avi), H.264 (.mp4), MPEG-4(.mp4), and Xvid (.avi) run as expected.
Samsung's 7-incher lasted an excellent 8 hours and 42 minutes in our battery test. This means that the tab will endure a full 8 hour shift of normal usage, and will have enough juice in the tank to use on your way home.
We measure battery life by running a custom web-script,designed to replicate the power consumption of typical real-life usage.All devices that go through the test have their displays set at 200-nit brightness.
With an accessible price of $199, the Galaxy Tab 4 7.0 would have made for an excellent purchase if its performance didn't leave so much to be desired. It would be a far, wide stretch to disregard the tab as unusable, but it fails to deliver the buttery-smooth performance users expect from a 2014 Samsung device. Although the Tab 4 7.0 is remarkably well built, comfortable to hold, and with a sublime user interface, it simply isn't as seamless and pleasant to use like its biggest competitor, the Nexus 7 (2013). Additionally, for just $30 more, the Kindle Fire HDX offers much better performance, a high-resolution display, but trades Google's familiar services for those of Amazon's. However, the Tab 4 is a worthy upgrade from last year's Galaxy Tab 3 in each aspect.
If general sluggishness and mediocre gaming performance aren't deal-breakers for you, this 7-inch tab is great in all other regards. And who knows, perhaps Samsung will deliver an update to make it perform more admirably. After all, the Marvell PXA1088 with 1.5GB of RAM should pack enough power to turn any well-optimized 7-inch tablet into a smooth ride.
Luis D. has a multitude of news, features and review articles written for PhoneArena. He adeptly demystifies complex technology topics, such as the development of advanced materials for bendable device displays and the evolution of chipset manufacturing.
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