Samsung Galaxy Tab S7 coming Sept. 18, starting at $649
This gaming-and-work-friendly tablet arrives later this month with a custom clip-on keyboard.
- Author of the award-winning, NY Times-reviewed nonfiction book The Tetris Effect; Longtime consumer technology expert for CBS Mornings
We already know a lot about the upcoming Samsung Galaxy Tab S7 and Tab S7 Plus, having previously tried a prerelease version of the higher-end Plus hardware and its excellent clip-on keyboard. Now we also know the S7 and S7 Plus are both coming Sept. 18, starting at $649 (£619) for the Galaxy Tab S7 and $849 (£799) for Galaxy Tab S7 Plus . Samsung says they'll be the first 5G-enabled tablets available in the US.
In the few weeks since that earlier hands-on, we've already seen more interest in that often-ignored premium Android tablet territory, with Lenovo 's announcement of the Tab P11 Pro, an 11.5-inch OLED-screen tablet with -- yes -- its own custom clip-on keyboard with touchpad and stylus.
I haven't tried the Lenovo P11 Pro yet, but I did spend about a week with a nonfinal version of the Samsung Tab S7 Plus, using it for gaming , office work and media consumption. I thought the sold-separately keyboard cover was about as good as the one on the iPad Pro , and the improvements to Samsung 's DeX platform for work and productivity tasks made for a decent occasional office computer, not that I'd recommend it for full-time writing or spreadsheeting -- plus it was very easy to wirelessly cast the DeX display to a larger screen.
One interesting thing the Tab S7 can do (as can other Android tablets ) is stream games from Microsoft 's Xbox cloud gaming (formerly xCloud) service. It's still in beta, but it works well enough to offer a console-like feel on a tablet. The iPad and iPhone are currently not able to access the service -- nor similar cloud-based game platforms like Google Stadia or Nvidia GeForce Now -- for business reasons, not technical ones.
Android tablets continue to have a small but consistent audience, divided between low-cost impulse purchases like the Amazon Fire line and premium iPad competitors like the Galaxy Tab S7. Note that our hands-on impressions of the Tab S7 Plus to date are based on nonfinal hardware, but we look forward to benchmarking and reviewing the finished hardware when it's available.