The Galaxy Tab 4 8.0 joins Samsung’s ever increasing Galaxy range of devices. This new tablet comes with slightly faster hardware and a refreshed design, compared to its predecessor, the Galaxy Tab 3 8.0 which we reviewed earlier. With 3G calling features and a better design, does the Galaxy Tab 4 8.0 makes for a worthwhile purchase? Let’s find out.
Design and Build
One common complaint about Samsung devices is they all look alike, with the only difference between them being the screen size and on-board hardware. Coming to the Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 8.0, it looks like a mash-up of the Galaxy S5 and Note 3, with some or the other elements borrowed from each device. While the front resembles the Galaxy S5, the back has a faux-leather back cover, like the Galaxy Note 3.
Unlike its predecessor, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 8.0 sports a unibody design with rounded corners. You have a chrome steel lining running along the four corners of the tablet. It is pretty thin and lightweight. The faux leather back panel though looks a bit cheap, especially when you know it’s not real leather; it does offer a perfect grip to hold the tablet.
On the right edge, you have the power / sleep button, a volume rocker, a microSD card and microSIM card slot. And as usual, you’ll find the microUSB port at the bottom and a 3.5mm audio jack on the top.
Features
On the features and hardware part, nothing much has changed when you compare it to the Galaxy Tab 3 8.0. The new tablet comes with the same 8-inch TFT capacitive touchscreen display running at 800 x 1280 pixel resolution. Under the hood, the dual-core processor is replaced with a quad-core one that’s clocked at 1.2GHz. There’s 16GB of on-board storage and 1.5GB of RAM. Thanks to the microSD card slot, you can further expand the storage capacity of the tablet up to 64GB.
Coming to the camera, we’re a bit disappointed. While the Tab 3 8.0 had a 5MP auto-focus module, Samsung has fitted a 3MP fixed-focus module on the Tab 4 8.0. The front-facing 1.3MP camera remains as is, and is meant for selfies and video calling. Other features such as Bluetooth 4.0, A-GPS and GLONASS, Wi-Fi 802.11n and Wi-Fi Direct. The tablet comes with a 4,450 mAh Li-Po non-removable battery that Samsung claims to offer a battery life of up to 11 hours.
Performance
Software and UI
The Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 8.0 comes loaded with Google’s latest OS, Android KitKat 4.4. You get Samsung’s customised TouchWiz UI running on top of the Android OS too. The new TouchWiz UI is slick, fast and has flat icons, like we’ve seen in the Galaxy S5 and Note 3. Thanks to the well optimised OS and TouchWiz UI, we didn’t notice any performance issues when using the tablet. The apps open very quickly, multi-tasking is easier and so the overall navigation between the homescreen and apps drawer.
Screen Quality and Touch
The screen equipped on the Tab 4 8.0 is pretty good. It’s crisp, vivid and bright enough to offer good readability under sunlight. The screen is protected by a layer of Gorilla Glass to keep scratches away. Colour reproduction of the screen is pretty good. The screen looks vibrant, but some colours look gaudy. Black levels are good whereas whites are bright. The touch is smooth, responsive and quite accurate. It supports three-finger gesture along with pinch-to-zoom.
Bundled Apps and Add-ons
The usual set of apps such as Samsung’s own voice assistant S-Voice, Dropbox with up to 50GB of online storage space for two years, S-Planner and Memo apps are bundled with the tablet. Other features such as Screen Mirroring, SmartStay and Multi-Window are present. There’s also a new power saver mode, which is very useful when your tablet starts running out of juice. The app extends the battery life of your tablet by restricting background data, lowering the brightness and limiting the CPU performance to save power.
Multimedia
On the media front, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 8.0 comes loaded with Samsung’s music player app and Google Play Music. Samsung has also loaded its own video player app. The music player app supports playback of popular media files.
The app UI is slick and intuitive, similar to the one seen on smartphones such as Galaxy S5, Note 3 and other Galaxy range of devices. The music player app also includes a graphical equalizer with plenty of presets. The quality on headphones and output on the speaker is pretty loud and clear.
The default video player supports playback of 1080p MP4 videos. We transferred some Full HD videos and movie clips, which the Galaxy Tab 4 8.0 was able to run smoothly without any hiccups. Besides play / pause and seek, the video player also gives you an option to play content on other devices using DLNA. We tried both, screen mirroring and streaming music using DLNA to a compatible TV, which the device was able to handle effortlessly.
Camera and Gaming
While the camera on Galaxy Tab 3 8.0 was pretty good, we were disappointed with the camera performance of the Galaxy Tab 4 8.0. The lack of auto-focus results in somewhat blurry pictures. Also, the camera fails to capture accurate colours. While the video recording and playback is smooth, the video lacks details. Gaming experience on the tablet is pretty good. Casual games such as Temple Run, Subway Surfers and Temple Run 2 run without any hiccups. However, despite being priced on an expensive side, the tablet only supports three finger gestures. While playing Fruit Ninja, the tablet’s touchscreen could only register three fingers, whereas other tablets register five to ten fingers.
Benchmarks
To test the performance of the tablet, we ran a few benchmarks on it. The scores look decent, with not much of a performance boost compared to its predecessor. The overall performance of the device is pretty good, especially because of the smooth and lag-free experience it offers.
Verdict
The Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 8.0 is priced in the Rs. 24,000 range for the 16GB Wi-Fi + 3G variant. Impressive screen quality, silky smooth performance and good multimedia capabilities are some of the things that we like about the tablet. However, there are tablets from other vendors with similar hardware priced in at around the same range. Ideally, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 8.0 could have been a good choice if it was priced slightly lower.
