Blog

In this article, I give you my Samsung Galaxy Tab A7 review with specs included. This is Samsung’s affordable tablet for 2020 which is a 10.4-inch tablet, so don’t get confused by the a7 name there. It comes with 32 GB of storage and with 64 GB of storage.

At first glance, it’s a lot like the Galaxy Tab S6 Lite but minus the S-pen support, same screen size, same screen (as far as I can tell), a lot of other things that are similar too but is everything?

So, Samsung makes a lot of premium tablets these days. I’ve already reviewed the Samsung Galaxy Tab S7 line, which is their most expensive Tab, and that has not just S-pen support but optional 4G LTE, higher resolution displays (OLED), all that fancy stuff.

It costs way more than this one so this is more your entry-level, something you’re getting for your kids, maybe in grade school, to do their homework on or keep them entertained, and all that sort of thing. You’re not going to break the bank with it but it’s a name brand and pretty good quality, you get the idea there.

10.4-inch LCD display TFT, no OLED at this price range. And, the resolution is a little odd at 2000 by 1200 but it’s the same as the S6 Lite, that is fine I suppose.

We have a Snapdragon 662 CPU, which is a mid-range CPU, versus an Exynos CPU in the S6 Lite, which I’ll keep comparing because they’re not that far apart in price but they’re both kind of mid-range CPUs and the performance isn’t that different.

While the Exynos does a little bit better on CPU tasks the Snapdragon does better on GPU tests but we’re not talking a wild difference here.

Three gigs of RAM and your choice of 32 or 64 gigs of storage, if you opt for that S6 Lite, probably because you want the S-pen for example, that one is 64 GB so it goes against the A7 64 GB model here in terms of storage capacity. It does have a micro SD card slot, though, so you can expand storage.

The tablet runs Android 10 with One UI 2.5, if you’re familiar with Samsung products it will look very familiar to you with all their usual embellishments of the operating system which actually are pretty tasteful, well done, so I don’t have any complaints about that. There is quick access to your settings when you do the drop-down and all that sort of stuff.

Now, you’ve got two cameras here, I don’t think you’re going to be buying a tablet mainly for its cameras but just in case we have an 8 megapixel on the back and 5 megapixels on the front. Again, very similar to the Tab S6 Lite. In good light outdoors or well-lit indoors they’re decent enough.

And you’ve got up to 1080p video recording on that rear camera. But, indoors as you can see from the picture the cat in the kitchen and not even nighttime and you know you don’t want to use this for nighttime photography that is for sure.

From what I can tell Samsung doesn’t state this but it seems to me that the back is plastic on this. It weighs just a hair over a pound so that’s about typical for a 10-inch tablet and they’re all gonna weigh about that.

It’s pretty slim though a little over seven millimeters so that’s nice for the price you’re not going to get a chunky monkey or something like that.

So how does it feel experientially to use okay I mean we can do benchmarks until the cows come home but in real-world use doing everyday things it feels okay I notice I’m feeling a little sluggish here and there now I am used to using Samsung’s flagship phones as a comparison point there.

Most of the time it feels just fine this is not like the world’s zippiest tablet but it’s adequate if you’re going to be using this for homeschooling stuff or streaming youtube or Netflix or whatever it is that you want it’s fine.

If you’re going to play games it’s good if you’re going to play something like sim city it’s absolutely fine if you’re going to play more demanding graphically intensive games like say asphalt 9 then I did notice the frame rates were not real smooth. It’s still really very playable but you’ll notice the frame rates are not well as good as they possibly could be but then again this is a 229 to 279 dollar tablet.

Battery life on this is pretty good 7040 milliamp battery supports Qualcomm quick charge comes with a typical Samsung charger with a USB-A receptacle and a cord that plugs into the USB-C port on the tablet. By the way, this does have a headphone jack yeah that.

So tablets we don’t tend to use them as intensely as we use our phones but I would say for most people this is going to be charge it a couple of times a week sort of tablet in terms of playing games and that’s going to be the most demanding thing you do you’ll go at least four hours playing a game on this before you’re going to think about recharging. For lighter use, you’ll probably go two days or so without worrying about charging.

Speaking of games and multimedia things, this has quad stereo speakers they’re not AKG branded like they are on the s6 light and on the Tab S7 but pretty loud and pretty full in fact surprisingly so. So for multimedia purposes, it’s quite good then.

So again, just to recap with the S6 Lite because it is the 70 more expensive tablets close enough in the price of you might be considering them the difference there really is mostly going to be the s pen. You’re looking at about the same display you’re looking at about the same battery capacity and the S6 Lite is available with optional 4g LTE for those of you who need them. It does have one more gig of ram which can help a little bit with the perceived smoothness of performance especially if you’re multitasking between apps.

So that’s the Samsung Galaxy Tab A7. For 229 starting price is a pretty nice tablet. I mean, it’s a brand that you can trust the build quality on this is good. The speakers are great the display is decent enough on it even off-angle viewing is okay given the price point. Performance again is fine for most everyday productivity tests homeschooling, streaming video, and all that sort of stuff, so there you have it.