Galaxy Tab S2: A lighter tablet with the right aspect ratio, high price

Last night I made my way to the rooftop of a New York City hotel to pick up Samsung's new Galaxy Tab S2, the sequel to last year's reasonably well-regarded Galaxy Tab S. The new tablets, which come with 9.7-inch and 8.0-inch varieties that share most of the same specs, build upon their predecessors in most of the right ways—they're a little faster, they trade a movie-friendly 16:10 aspect ratio for a reading-and-productivity-friendly 4:3 aspect ratio, and the old swipe-based fingerprint reader has been tossed out in favor of one you can simply press.

The downside is that the tablets start at $400 and $500 for the 8-inch and 9.7-inch models respectively—not completely outlandish for a tablet, but much more than you have to pay if all you're looking for is a basic Web, Netflix, and e-book slab. If you're looking for a high-end Android tablet and you're willing to pay for the privilege of owning one, though, they're still worth your consideration.

Look and feel, screen and specs

If it's hard to talk about the Tab S2 without mentioning the iPad, it's because Apple's tablet is still the pace car for this flagging subsection of the consumer electronics business. Superficially, both Tab S2s share a lot of similarities with the iPad Air 2 and Mini 3: all have the same 2048×1536 display resolution. The new fingerprint reader works more like TouchID than in the previous tablets. And Samsung has shifted the buttons around so that the tablet is in portrait mode when it's right-side-up.

Visually, Samsung's tablet doesn't look much like an iPad. We've appreciated Samsung's design direction over the last year or so, and the Tab S2 is free of most of the company's past sins—no fake leather stitching or textures, no insubstantial slippery plastic, no excessive bending or flexing. It's got a chamfered metal rim, but the back is an understated soft-touch plastic that looks and feels nice, even though it picks up smudges pretty easily. The bezels on the left and right sides of the screen are around the same size but you'll need to be more careful around them, since for whatever reason Android tablets continue to lack the thumb rejection that Apple's tablets have.

Its real selling point is that it's deceptively light—about 372g for our 9.7-inch Wi-Fi version, compared to 437g for the iPad Air 2 and 425g for the Nexus 9. The AMOLED display panel also makes a difference, but as usual the display technology can be a blessing and a curse. It's got vivid color and deep blacks that are pleasing to the eye, but whites can have a greenish or purplish hue to them, especially when viewed at any angle other than head-on.

In our testing Samsung's fingerprint sensor worked well, but only when you place your thumbs or fingers over the button in the exact orientation you used when you registered them. TouchID is good at recognizing fingerprints even when you've got your finger at an odd angle, but Samsung's was more finicky unless it was straight up and down over the button. It's still an improvement over the old swipe-based sensor, though.

The tablet's internal specs are respectable but not top-shelf. Your $400 or $500 gets you 32GB of internal storage (and support via microSD for up to 128GB more), a nice step up from the 16GB that Apple gives you for the same price, and you get 3GB of RAM, which will prove useful for multitasking. But the Exynos 5433 SoC isn't as nice as the top-end Exynos 7420 that has delivered such impressive performance in the Galaxy S6, Note 5, and those phones' variants, even if it is a big step up from the Exynos 5420 in the original Galaxy Tab S.

The 5433 combines four 64-bit 1.8GHz Cortex A57 cores with four 1.3GHz Cortex A53 cores in a big.LITTLE configuration—the big cores are there for performance and the little ones are there to save power. Both are improvements over the Cortex A15 and A7 cores in the original Tab S, as is the Mali-T760 GPU.

These are all the same basic components that Samsung is using in the Exynos 7420, but the 5433 uses fewer GPU cores, slightly lower clock speeds, and slower LPDDR3 RAM instead of LPDDR4 RAM. It's built on a 20nm manufacturing process rather than the 7420's 14nm manufacturing process, so it isn't quite as power efficient. That's not a huge problem in tablets with larger batteries, but the same big battery paired with the 14nm processor could have delivered even better results.

866Mbps 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.1, and GPS round out the wireless connectivity—the only big thing that's missing is NFC. A flashless 8MP camera on the back is about as good as tablet cameras need to be, while a 2.1MP camera on the front will suffice for video chats and selfies.

Software

The Tab S2s both ship with Android 5.0.2, which is a little disappointing since Android 5.1 came out almost six months ago and ships on the recently released Galaxy Note 5. Samsung representatives couldn't tell us when or whether an Android 5.1 update would be available, to say nothing of an update to Marshmallow after it's released in the fall. At least one Android update is a pretty safe bet with Samsung's flagship tablets, but timing is a mystery. While most users won't notice or care, it should be noted that the Tab S2 uses 32-bit Android despite including a 64-bit SoC and a version of Android that supports 64-bit hardware.

The software is skinned with the latest version of Samsung's TouchWiz theme, which isn't quite as ostentatious as older versions, even though it clashes with Google's Material Design. Unfortunately, the Samsung theme store we liked so much on the S6 and other phones isn't (yet?) compatible with the Tab S2.

As usual, Samsung includes some apps that duplicate Google's defaults (the browser, most notably) and a few others that replace Google's entirely—the Calendar, Camera, Memo, and various media store apps are all examples. Google's equivalents can be downloaded from Google Play if you'd like to use them, but Samsung's can't be removed.

Samsung is still making some useful additions to Google's stock version of Android, though. The Split View mode, activated by long-pressing on the capacitive multitasking button, is actually pretty usable and already works with many Android apps, something iOS 9's version of the same feature won't do until developers have updated their apps. And Samsung's "Side Sync" software may prove useful if you want to mirror your tablet's screen on your computer and share files between them.

Samsung is also including the mobile versions of Microsoft's Office apps—they don't support Split View, but having good, widely compatible productivity apps out of the box is a good move on both Samsung's and Microsoft's parts.

Most of the longstanding complaints about Android apps on tablets still apply, with a few exceptions. Whether you're using third-party apps or Google's own, excessive padding and whitespace abound, and much of the time you'll be making do with blown-up phone apps rather than tablet-optimized versions. Such is life with an Android tablet.

Models and pricing

The Wi-Fi versions of the Tab S2 cost $400 and $500 for the 8.0- and 9.7-inch versions, respectively. This is the only version of the 8.0-inch tablet being offered. There's a 9.7-inch version of the tablet with LTE that you can buy for $600, and there's a Best Buy-exclusive 9.7-inch Wi-Fi version with 64GB of internal storage that's also available for $600. The LTE versions work on Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and US Cellular. And all versions of the tablet will be available on September 3.

At this point most Android tablets still feel like they're designed for niches. Nvidia's Shield targets gamers, while Amazon's Fire tablets are for people who mostly want to purchase things from Amazon. The Nexus 9 comes close to being a good general-purpose tablet, and it has the benefit of fast-ish Android updates, but its cost, build quality, and performance doesn't hit the same sweet spot that older Nexus tablets did.

Samsung's Tab S2 lineup isn't going to take the world by storm either, especially not when they cost what an iPad does. But they're competent high-end contenders in a field that is mostly populated with budget tablets.

Listing image by Andrew Cunningham