Samsung’s new display measures 10.5 inches, compared to the Galaxy Tab A7’s 10.4-inch panel. It has slightly rounded corners and a 16:10 aspect ratio, making it suitable for media streaming. The body of the tablet is made of metal, with the power button and volume rocker housed in a thin plastic strip. It is available in three colors: gray, silver, and pink gold. The Galaxy Tab A8 comes with 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage in its base configuration, the latter of which can be expanded with up to 1TB of additional capacity via a microSD slot. In the U.S., users can opt for up to 128GB of onboard storage, and in Europe and India, an LTE-enabled version is also available. Cameras tend to be less important on any tablet, and never should be. That is doubly true for inexpensive tablets. So we won’t waste too much time on the Samsung Galaxy Tab A8’s camera, except to say that it is not good at all. There is no flash and of course no super wide angle or telephoto backup. The pictures this single sensor takes are noisy, lack depth and dynamic range, and are often severely overexposed. To give a specific example of battery performance, streaming Netflix for an hour dropped the battery by 6% and playing a light game for 30 minutes dropped the battery by 3%. 30 minutes is an 8% drop, giving us yet another reason to avoid playing high-load video games on this platform.
