Samsung Galaxy Tab A9 what you expect from a tablet

I’ve been using the iPad for some time, but a few days ago an opportunity came up that I seized.

Introduction

If you’re reading this blog, you might know that I’ve been using the iPad Air for some time. I even switched to the iPad Air 2020 at the time, partly because of the higher performance, but also because of the USB-C connection. And this is where a few problems may start, that the iPad, let alone the Pro models from Apple, are marketed as laptop replacements.

And the iPad Air has power, otherwise photo or video editing would not be possible on the device. But with its 10.9 inch screen diagonal, the iPad is already quite large. And with this size and weight, you can hardly hold it with one hand and read emails or watch videos comfortably, for example on the sofa.

And that’s where the desire for a smaller and more compact device, about the size of the iPad mini, always came up. The latter is simply too expensive.

Galaxy Tab A9

A few days ago there was an offer for the Galaxy Tab A9 for €140, so a price that doesn’t require much consideration. The Galaxy Tab is an Android tablet with an 8.7-inch screen diagonal, 4 GB RAM and 64 GB storage. There is apparently a model with more storage, but the smaller model is perfectly adequate. Given the data, this is of course a so-called budget tablet, but perhaps it will meet my requirements.The resolution is only 1340×800 pixels, however, in contrast to the iPad Air, which has a wonderfully better resolution of 2360×1640, albeit on a larger display.

Setup

Setting it up wasn’t a problem, because the manufacturers have learned and can sometimes adopt the settings from another tablet, even if it is equipped with a different system, like Apple.

At least the apps that I installed on the iPad were also downloaded and installed on the Samsung tablet, even though of course not all apps are available for Android, and vice versa.

And since I still have a Google account, the setup was done pretty quickly. Then I set up my password manager, and I had all my accounts set up on the new tablet very quickly.

Handling

This tablet is exactly the right size and fits well in the Have a nice day . For some websites, the 1340 pixels wide and just 800 pixels high are a bit tight, but you can switch to portrait format. The same applies to YouTube. In portrait format there is enough space for the video, but underneath there is still enough space for comments or links to other videos etc.

For consuming content (social media, emails, websites) this tablet is just right and it is also sufficiently powerful. If you scroll really quickly, the display may stutter for a moment, but scrolling so quickly isn’t that a problem if you want to read a website.

Camera

I just want to mention it. There is of course a rear camera with 8MP and a selfie camera with 2MP !! resolution. Of course, you can’t expect much from the camera in this price range. Maybe at most to scan a QR code or a Zoom conference with a lower resolution.

While the selfie camera with the low resolution only produces mush, at least in photo mode, the rear camera is still somewhat bearable. If it switches to Pro in photo mode, at least the resulting image is no longer compressed so much (at least 4.4 MB instead of 647 KB, which does make a difference)

Conclusion

I have now got myself a different case to the one shown in the pictures. But the Galaxy Tab A9 is still a really good tablet that is just right for the intended purpose. Not to mention the option to expand the memory with a micro SD card and, for example, have the option of saving the contents of my cloud.

Let’s see if I still think the same in a year 😉

ciao tuxoche