How good is the Samsung Galaxy Tab A 10.5?

The Samsung Galaxy Tab A 10.5 will impress multimedia enthusiasts, says Khalid Anzar.

Samsung is among the few companies that continue to focus on tablets to fill the gap between smartphones and laptops.

But with notebooks and Chromebooks redefining the computing space, and smartphones getting bigger by the day, tablets now seem reduced to ancillary entertainment gadgets.

And the new Galaxy tab is one of many.

It has a mammoth 10.5-inch screen with thick bezels around the frame, which in a tab is a good thing because you need space to rest your thumb.

The screen (1920 x 1200) is bright and has ample contrast.

The shift in colours when looked at from angles, however, is a disadvantage when watching videos in a group.

The lack of S-Pen support also diminishes the overall utility.

The tablet's weight -- over 500 grams -- makes it difficult to operate with one hand, and a tiny bulging camera module on the back makes it uneven on flat surfaces.

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 450 system-on-chip is less than a powerhouse. But the tablet runs smoothly and shows no lags in normal use.

However, things turn sticky when power-intensive or graphic-intensive games like Asphalt 9 and PUBG are loaded.

But considering the tablet makes no promise of gaming capabilities, let's just say it performs multimedia tasks well.

Speaking of which, the quad speakers (two on the bottom and two on the top) powered by Dolby Atmos give a good spatial output for a surround sound experience.

The Android Oreo operating system is bundled with several Samsung apps, including the Smart Things app, which allows the tab to be connected to other smart devices.

The tab is portable with a SIM card slot for 4G LTE support, along with Wi-Fi.

The Galaxy tab's camera doubles up as a viewfinder to identify landmarks, texts, objects, etc, for online search using Bixby Vision, but the experience is nowhere close to Google Lens -- especially in the Indian context.

Priced at Rs 32,000, the Samsung Galaxy Tab A 10.5 is a tablet meant strictly for multimedia enthusiasts.

It is powered by a 7,000 mAh battery, which keeps the device going for almost a day with mixed use -- videos, music and Internet browsing.

Just don't expect it to do more.