Samsung has officially announced the new Galaxy Tab S6, a high-end Android tablet that’s designed for both productivity work and entertainment needs.
It will be available starting on September 6th for $649, which gets you 128GB of storage and 6GB of RAM. A version with 256GB of storage and 8GB of RAM will cost $729. Samsung says an LTE version of the Tab S6 will be available later in the year.
The Tab S6, like its predecessor, has a thin and light design that manages to still feel premium. The tablet measures just 5.7mm deep, compared to the S4’s already-slim 7.1mm and houses a 10.1-inch Super AMOLED display that looked bright and crisp during our hands-on. I also really liked the new color options — rose blush and cloud blue that are attractive and eye-catching yet still look classy.
Despite packing a Snapdragon 855 chipset, the Tab S6 doesn’t use an ultrasonic in-display fingerprint reader that most phones with that CPU use. Samsung explained that this is due to the size of the screen, and said the speed between the two systems shouldn’t be noticeable.
The S Pen stylus has similar remote-control features as the S Pen that comes with the Galaxy Note 9 smartphone, including the ability to advance PowerPoint slides or trigger the camera shutter remotely. There are also new gestures for scrolling through media and other functions while holding the pen. It’s likely that these gestures will also be available on the new Note 10 smartphone when it’s announced next week.
Samsung has redesigned the keyboard attachment to include a small trackpad. The keyboard, which can be purchased for an additional $179, connects to the tablet through a set of pogo pins on the left edge of the Tab S6. It can be detached separately from its back cover, which also acts as a kickstand to prop the tablet up.
In terms of size and features, the Tab S6 compares closer to Apple’s most recent iPad Air than the more expensive iPad Pro. But the Air starts at a lower price and has a much more developed operating system and app ecosystem than the Tab S6. As with most of Samsung’s high-end tablet efforts for the past few years, it’s hard to see why anyone would choose the Tab S6 over Apple’s options.
