Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 range hits Australia

Samsung has launched 7-, 8- and 10.1-inch Galaxy Tab 3 tablets today, expected to hit Australian shelves "soon". And the prices are aggressively impressive.

Samsung's new Galaxy Tab 3 range was shown off in Sydney today, revealing the company's new line-up of aggressively priced tablets. The range offers simple yet slick Android tablets in 7-inch, 8-inch and 10.1-inch screen sizes, all launching in Wi-Fi-only models, with 4G models tipped to appear in "coming months".

These devices are not powerhouses when it comes to cores (all dual core), cameras and pixel densities, but they are quite light, they run Android Jelly Bean and all offer microSD slots to give plenty of room to grow.

Samsung has now positioned the Galaxy Tab 3 range as its affordable range for "everyday" users, while the Galaxy Note range has taken on the mantle of Samsung's high-spec and feature-rich devices.

All the devices come with a number of Samsung content offerings and sweeteners, like 50GB of Dropbox storage for two years, a one-month Samsung Music Hub trial, a two-week Quickflix trial, AU$20 off first purchase for new Samsung Learning Hub users and a 60-day mobile security trial with Norton.

Unfortunately, Samsung still locks down its default tray of app icons so you can't customise main app selections without shifting to a full custom launcher. It's a silly lock-down that makes no sense whatsoever, particularly with Android's default web browser in place instead of the more powerful Chrome.

The Galaxy Tab 3 7-inch features a 1024x600 screen, a 1.2GHz dual-core processor, 1GB of RAM, 8GB of storage and microSD storage of up to 32GB. It's also just 300 grams, and will retail for just AU$249.

The Galaxy Tab 3 8-inch hits a very nice sweet spot in the range, with a 1280x800 screen at 189PPI, a 1.5GHz dual-core processor, a 5-megapixel camera, 1.5GB of RAM, 16GB of storage and microSD storage of up to 64GB. It's still just 314 grams, and will launch at AU$349.

The Galaxy Tab 3 10.1-inch sticks to a 1280x800 screen resolution (but at 149ppi with the larger size), a 1.6GHz dual-core processor, a 3-megapixel camera, 1GB of RAM and microSD storage of up to 64GB. It's 510 grams, and will launch at AU$399.

While the exact timing has been left to "soon" for retail arrival, pre-orders can be made at Samsung flagship stores in Sydney and Melbourne from 18 July.