Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 8.0 Full Review
Introduction
The middle child in the Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 series, the Galaxy Tab 3 8.0 forges its own distinct path in the tablet universe. But it's not just a clone of the Galaxy Note 8.0, Samsung's 8-inch, stylus-driven slate. Rather, this model's differently tweaked design reflects how quickly tablet technology has evolved in just the four months since the Note 8.0's launch.
Priced at $299.99, the Galaxy Tab 3 8.0 offers a display one inch larger than that of the $199.99 Tab 3 7.0, while being noticeably smaller and lighter than the $399.99 Galaxy Tab 3 10.1.
This model joins the growing realm of 8-inch tablets, a market that includes Apple's iPad Mini at 7.9 inches. Such tablets offer a satisfying compromise among screen size, weight, and price. However, while it would be easy to assume this model would closely resemble the Galaxy Note 8.0, Samsung has made several design tweaks. The Tab 3 has the same height as the Note 8.0, but is noticeably narrower, by more than half an inch. In that regard, it more closely resembles the iPad Mini. Like that tablet, the Tab 3 8.0 has narrower bezels running along the length.
While its physical design makes the Tab 3 8.0 feel light and well-balanced in hand, that narrower bezel ends up being an albatross. But we're glad to see Samsung bring a third display option back to its lineup; the Galaxy Tab 2 series had just 7-inch and 10.1-inch varieties, whereas the first-generation Tab series had an 8.9-inch model as its tweener option.
Better still is that the Tab 3 8.0 avoids the performance oddities we saw with its larger cousin, the Tab 3 10.1. That model uses Intel's Atom processor, whereas the Tab 3 8.0 uses Samsung's own Exynos processor. That chip powered the Tab 3 8.0 to good results in our performance tests. The slate didn't set any benchmarks on fire, but it wasn't the slowest of its competitive set of 7- and 8-inch Android tablets, either. Of note: Its battery eked out nearly an hour more than the Galaxy Note 8.0, and its browser performed better than the Note 8.0 on HTML5.
With its $299.99 price tag, the Tab 3 8.0 comes in at the higher end of the current generation of small tablets. It is pricier than the 7-inch tablets, including Samsung's own 7-inch Tab 3 and Google's updated, $229 Nexus 7. But it's less expensive than the iPad Mini at $329, and $100 less than Samsung's Galaxy Note 8.0 with its stylus.
This model joins the growing realm of 8-inch tablets, a market that includes Apple's iPad Mini at 7.9 inches. Such tablets offer a satisfying compromise among screen size, weight, and price. However, while it would be easy to assume this model would closely resemble the Galaxy Note 8.0, Samsung has made several design tweaks. The Tab 3 has the same height as the Note 8.0, but is noticeably narrower, by more than half an inch. In that regard, it more closely resembles the iPad Mini. Like that tablet, the Tab 3 8.0 has narrower bezels running along the length.
While its physical design makes the Tab 3 8.0 feel light and well-balanced in hand, that narrower bezel ends up being an albatross. But we're glad to see Samsung bring a third display option back to its lineup; the Galaxy Tab 2 series had just 7-inch and 10.1-inch varieties, whereas the first-generation Tab series had an 8.9-inch model as its tweener option.
Design
With the Galaxy Tab 3 8.0, Samsung pushes the design ahead a notch ahead from its Note 8.0 cousin. The Tab 3 8.0 shaves 0.07 pound off the weight of the Note 8.0; at 0.69 pound, it matches the weight of Apple's iPad Mini.
The Tab 3 is also noticeably narrower than the Note 8, by a full half-inch. Its 8.3x4.9x0.3-inch dimensions make it taller and narrower than the Apple Mini, by 0.4 inch in either direction. These ever-shrinking physical specs are generally a good thing for portability: They mean you can more easily toss a tablet like the Galaxy Tab 3 8.0 in your bag and forget it's there, or hold the tablet in one hand while reading a good book.
To put an exclamation point on the Tab 3 8.0's design finesse, let's compare it to the ultimate budget model, the $129 Hisense Sero 7 Pro. That slate is 0.1 pound heavier, 0.2 inch thicker, and 0.1 inch wider than the Tab 3 8.0—in spite of having a smaller 7-inch display.
The Tab 3 8.0's case has a similar, smooth plastic design to the Galaxy Note 8.0. The model we tested had a white back; gently curved, silver plastic edges; and a white front bezel (albeit with a cross-hatch pattern, as opposed to the Note 8.0's smooth design). The plastics have the same feel as on Samsung's phones, which is to say it feels sturdy, but also as if the materials are inexpensive. The tablet also comes in brown.
From the front, top, and bottom, the Tab 3 8.0 looks very similar to the Note 8.0. The buttons and inputs are all in virtually the same places, oriented around the portrait position. The headphone jack is at the upper right corner, along the top edge; the power and volume buttons along the right edge, along with the infrared sensor so you can use the tablet as a universal remote control with your home entertainment components. At the bottom edge sit two speakers, flanking the micro-USB port for data and charging. The Samsung logo and front-facing camera are centered above the display in portrait mode.
In fact, from the outside, you'd only notice three physical differences between the Tab 3 8.0 and the Note 8.0, beyond the obvious aforementioned difference in dimensions. The physical home button, centered in portrait mode beneath the display, is slightly more raised on the Tab 3 8.0 than it is on the Note 8.0. This makes the button marginally simpler to locate by touch. The MicroSD card slot is closer to the bottom of the left edge than the top, as it is on the Note 8.0; and, its door is designed into the silver plastic edging, as opposed to the Note 8.0's design into the bottom of the tablet, beneath the edging. This door is perhaps the only design flaw we found, as we found it unexpectedly challenging to set the door's stubborn plastic back in place after inserting a card.
It's worth noting that, like the 10.1-inch Tab 3, the Tab 3 8.0 has a similar problem with the touch targets for the capacitive menu and back buttons that flank the home button. As with the 10.1-inch tablet, we could touch a half-inch above and below the button and still activate the function. This is not the case on the Note 8.0, incidentally; on that tablet, only tapping the button itself will actually activate it. What surprised us, though, was that in spite of the inaccurate touch targets, we didn't have nearly as many accidental activations on the 8.0 as on the 10.1 unit. We suspect this is simply because of the tablet's smaller size: It was easier to hold, with the buttons in a different place than on the 10.1-inch tablet.
Of course, the front bezel is also visibly narrower than on the Note 8.0, a change that reflects the narrower dimensions. While the Tab 3 8.0 looks stylish and feels good in one hand, we actually found the narrower bezel a hindrance to one-handed tablet handling, as our hands often struggled to find a safe position that didn't activate the touch screen inadvertently.
The Tab 3 is also noticeably narrower than the Note 8, by a full half-inch. Its 8.3x4.9x0.3-inch dimensions make it taller and narrower than the Apple Mini, by 0.4 inch in either direction. These ever-shrinking physical specs are generally a good thing for portability: They mean you can more easily toss a tablet like the Galaxy Tab 3 8.0 in your bag and forget it's there, or hold the tablet in one hand while reading a good book.Features
The Galaxy Tab 3's 8-inch display packs 1,280x800 resolution, the same resolution as on the Galaxy Note 8.0. That exceeds the resolution of the iPad Mini (1,024x768) and packs in a respectable 189 pixels per inch to the Apple's 169 ppi. The delta makes a visible difference: Text on the Tab 3 8.0 was sharper than on the iPad Mini, though not as crisp as on same-resolution 7-inch tablets, which have 216 ppi. And the new Nexus 7, with its 1,920x1,200 resolution, is in another stratosphere entirely at 323 ppi. While we always prefer higher pixels, the Tab 3 8.0 is what we'd call acceptably sharp, though it can't compare to the clarity of the Nexus 7.
The display itself was good, and produced accurate colors. But in a side-by-side comparison with the Galaxy Note 8.0, we saw some interesting differences. The Note 8.0's display is slightly brighter, something that was particularly evident in an app like Gmail, where we saw whiter whites and slightly darker text. In a test image, we saw near-identical color reproduction, but more natural skin tones and finer detail in the Note 8.0 versus the Tab 3. We don't know whether this is due to any differences in the displays themselves or to software variances (the Note 8.0 uses Android 4.1.2 while the Tab 3 uses 4.2.2).
Like the 10.1-inch Tab 3, the 8-inch model has the updated image gallery, with aesthetically pleasing and sharper image thumbnails that vary in size. We didn't see the same sluggish behavior as on the 10.1, but we did notice that high-resolution images had to take a moment to render sharply on screen.
The Galaxy Tab 3 8.0 has just 16GB of memory, with 11.3GB free, about the same as on the 10.1-inch Tab 3. The MicroSDHC card slot can accept up to 64GB cards, at least.
As with all Samsung tablets, the Tab 3 runs Samsung's TouchWiz UX software. This variant is similar to the Tab 3 10.1-inch's: It has some but not all of the features we've been introduced to in Samsung's Galaxy S4 smartphone and the Galaxy Note 8.0 tablet. For example, the tablet has Smart Stay, which sends your tablet to sleep when you're not looking at it (we had mixed results with this, and preferred to disable the feature since the sensors often couldn't detect our eyes); but it doesn't have Smart Pause or Smart Scroll, both found on the S4. TouchWiz UX does continue to provide a menu with shortcuts to frequently used actions, a touch we've long appreciated on Samsung tablets; you can reorder these shortcuts, but not add to them.
Samsung provides a selection of pre-installed software, including Dropbox, Story Album (for auto-generating albums from your images), S Translator (a speech-to-text tool that requires you to set up a free Samsung account), Peel Remote (for use as a remote control), Polaris Office, and Samsung Watch On for finding TV shows.
The Tab 3 has a 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera, and a 5 megapixel rear camera, with no flash. Neither will capture images that will challenge those from today's average cell phone, but they will do the job to capture a memory in the absence of any other device. The rear camera was similar to the Note 8.0's, but the camera's interface is completely different. The Tab 3 8.0's interface resembles that of the Galaxy S4 Smartphone, complete with the S4's special modes, such as Panorama, Sports, and Sound & Shot (which adds audio to an image file).
Audio output on the Tab 3 8.0 is best described as adequate, albeit a bit thin and high-pitched. This effect was especially pronounced at max volume. We preferred the audio of the Note 8.0, which sounded more well-rounded to our ears. As is typical of portrait-mode, downward-firing speakers, we found it easy to accidentally muffle audio when holding the tablet with both hands in landscape mode.
The display itself was good, and produced accurate colors. But in a side-by-side comparison with the Galaxy Note 8.0, we saw some interesting differences. The Note 8.0's display is slightly brighter, something that was particularly evident in an app like Gmail, where we saw whiter whites and slightly darker text. In a test image, we saw near-identical color reproduction, but more natural skin tones and finer detail in the Note 8.0 versus the Tab 3. We don't know whether this is due to any differences in the displays themselves or to software variances (the Note 8.0 uses Android 4.1.2 while the Tab 3 uses 4.2.2).
Performance & Conclusion
The Galaxy Tab 3 8.0 uses Samsung's 1.5GHz Exynos 4 (4212) dual-core processor, and has the unusual complement of 1.5GB of RAM. We found this processor highly capable, even though it was dual-core vs. the 1.6GHz quad-core Exynos 4 (4412) processor in the Galaxy Note 8.0.
In day-to-day use, we had no issues during movie playback. The tablet was responsive and smooth, even when we had multiple apps open. Gameplay was good, too, but Riptide GP lacked the splash detail and graphics finesse found in the same segments on the quad-core Note 8.0.
On our suite of objective benchmarks, the tablet yielded average numbers. We compared the Tab 3 8.0 to a set of 7- and 8-inch Android tablets representing a range of processors: Samsung's Galaxy Note 8.0, the HP Slate 7 (1.5GHz Rockchip dual-core), the Hisense Sero 7 Pro (1.3GHz Nvidia Tegra 3 quad-core), the Google Nexus 7 (1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro), and the Asus MeMO Pad HD 7(1.2GHz Mediatek MT8125 quad-core).
Let's take the example of Linpack for Android. Here, the Tab 3 was merely average on both the single-threaded and multi-threaded tests, coming in behind the Nexus 7, the Memo Pad HD 7, and the Note 8.0 ... and even being outscored by the Sero 7 on the multithreaded test.
However, the story was very different on the 3D graphics benchmarks An3DBench and An3DBenchXL. Here, the Tab 3 8.0 came in second, behind only the Note 8.0.
On Futuremark's 3DMark Ice Storm and Ice Storm Extreme, the results were mixed. The Tab 3 8.0 came in third on Ice Storm, behind the Nexus 7 and Note 8.0. However, it came in second on Ice Storm Extreme, edging out the Note 8.0 on this graphics-intensive test, in spite of the Note 8.0 having what should be a better processor.
And on GFX Bench 2.7.2, the Tab 3 8.0 came in second on the Egypt HD Offscreen test, and third on the more challenging T-Rex Offscreen. Again, the leaders this tablet traded off with were the Google Nexus 7 and the Note 8.0, which underscores how competitive the Tab 3's performance is, especially on graphics.
The Galaxy Tab 3 8.0's boot time was quick. It was the third best of this group.
In browser-based tests, the Galaxy Tab 3 8.0 came in second behind the Google Nexus 7 on the SunSpider JavaScript 1.0 benchmark, and clobbered all comers on the Peacekeeper test.
Battery Life & Conclusion
The Galaxy Tab 3 8.0 lasted 8 hours and 49 minutes playing a 1080p video on continuous loop. That's a reasonable amount of time, and will at least last you through much of a day of use without requiring a trip to the power outlet. But it's not even close to the spectacular numbers put up by the MeMo Pad HD 7 (12 hours, 6 minutes) and the Nexus 7 (10 hours, 26 minutes).
The Galaxy Tab 3 8.0 is a solid tablet, and a strong choice if you're looking for a middle-of-the-road screen size that makes reasonable compromises to balance price and portability. In spite of our design nits, we recommend this tablet because—app ecosystems notwithstanding—the Tab 3 8.0 does offer more bang for fewer bucks than Apple's iPad Mini at the same screen size. Google's new Nexus 7 is less expensive and a better performer, with a better display; but that model sacrifices the expansion slot and lacks the IR port, both conveniences that distinguish the Tab 3.
If your choice comes down to the Tab 3 8.0 and the Galaxy Note 8.0, the decision comes down largely to price and whether you feel you'd use the latter's stylus. If you love the idea of using a stylus on your tablet, the Note 8.0 is worth the $100 premium (though we wish it was only a $50 premium instead). If the stylus isn't on your radar, though, save the bucks and go with the Tab 3.
Source: Compshopper
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