Galaxy Tab S6 now official, Snapdragon 855, lots of RAM and new S-Pen

Samsung has launched the Galaxy Tab S6. The latest Android tablet from the company is perhaps its most concerted effort to take on the market segment that Apple currently dominates with its iPad Pro. It also integrates a few features that could also give potential Microsoft Surface Pro customers pause for thought too as its approach has it sitting somewhere between its two competitors in terms of form and functionality. It replaces the outgoing Galaxy Tab S4 but will sit above the mid-range Galaxy Tab S5e with which it shares similar design language with a strong emphasis on thinness and portability.

Importantly, Samsung has fitted the Galaxy Tab S6 with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 855 octa-core processor and married it with 6 GB/ 128 GB and 8 GB/256 GB options. In previous years, Samsung has tended to fit its flagship tablet with a year-old Qualcomm chipset – for example, the Tab S4 from last year was fitted with a Snapdragon 835, not the Snapdragon 845 which was the flagship chip from 2018. Fitting the Tab S6 with the Snapdragon 855 shows Samsung is keen to pick up switchers from either Apple’s iPad Pro or Microsoft’s Surface Pro who still want some decent processing horsepower under the hood.

While the iPad Pro is optimized around a touch-first mobile tablet optimized operating system and the Surface Pro offers a fully-fledged desktop PC experience, the Galaxy Tab S6 sits in between those two paradigms. You can very much use it like an iPad, but it also offers Samsung’s DeX experience built in which delivers a Windows-like desktop mode. To take full advantage of the latter, Samsung’s new keyboard cover now integrates a touchpad. Included in the box (unlike its competitors) is a new improved S-Pen with Bluetooth LE which also offers air-based gesture support and can charge wirelessly when attached to the rear of the device in a special semi-recessed slot.

The Tab S6 centers on a 16:10 Super AMOLED display with a 2560 x 1600 pixel resolution that also includes an under display finger print scanner for the first time. It weighs in at just 420 grams (a shade under 15 ounces) and is just 5.7 mm thin. Despite this, Samsung has managed to build in a 7,040 mAh battery that offers 50 percent more battery life than an iPad Pro at up to 15 hours on a single charge. It also incorporates a dual-rear camera system for the first time with a 123-degree wide-angle lens.

The Galaxy Tab S6 goes on sale in the US on September 6 and starts from US$649 for the 6 GB/128 GB Wi-Fi model and US$729 for the 8 GB/256 GB the more fully spec'ed variant. 4G LTE models will also be released, but they will come a few more weeks down the track.