[Real Users] My Samsung Galaxy TabPro S Review

rhapdog

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Who has a Samsung Galaxy TabPro S?

What's the good, the bad and the ugly? How long have you had it and what do you think?

Put your User Review here to help others. The more detail the better, we really appreciate hearing how it performs in the field.


Here is a quick spec sheet.:
Windows 10 Home or Pro
12" FHD+ 2160x1440 SuperAMOLED Touch Display
6th gen Core M (dual core 2.2 GHz)
4GB RAM + 128GB SSD or 4GB RAM+ 256 SSD
290.3x198.8x6.3mm (11.43x7.83x0.25inches)
693g (24.45oz)
5,200mAh (39.5W, 7.6V) up to 10hrs / Fast Charging (2,5hr complete charge)

LTE cat 6 (300mbps downlink, 50mbps uplink)
Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac MIMO, Wi-Fi Direct
NFC
Bluetooth 4.1
GPS, GLONASS
Accelerometer, Hall, Light
5MP ffc
5MP rear camera, autofocus

Includes keyboard portfolio case with dual position stand



Looking forward to seeing this thread fill up with TabPro S goodness!!!
 
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Jefstead

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New Galaxy TabPro S Owner

I received my Galaxy TabPro S yesterday and have spent roughly 24 hours with it.

First impressions:
  • Solid build quality on the tablet itself. Very similar to the new Galaxy S7/edge.
  • Excellent battery life so far. I would say about 9-10 hours after the initial charge.
  • The M3 processor and 4GB RAM work just fine for browsing, the entire MS Office suite, and even League of Legends at 60FPS with all details off.
  • They keyboard is decent to type on. I would say pretty close to the new Surface Pro keyboards.
  • The touchpad is very good, but doesn't have a lot of area to cover.
  • The AMOLED screen is great. No light bleed!
  • They keyboard cover attaches to the back via magnets and has two positions. Not as great as an adjustable hinge like the Surface Pro, but covers 90% of what I need. What is interesting is the lower magnets (back base) is what triggers the lid close setting to turn off the screen. This threw me for a bit as I was expecting the keyboard close to trigger it.
  • The size is perfect for traveling. I can see this replacing my iPad Pro and Macbook with no problems.
  • The graphics driver has crashed a couple of times. It ships with the Intel driver from January, so hopefully a more recent update to that driver will fix that issue (seems to crash more on heavy flash video pages).

Overall, quite pleased for $900. The battery life is fantastic and it does everything I wish I could do in Windows in the iPad pro form factor. Happy to answer any questions people might have.

Update after a few days of usage:
  • Still having graphics driver issues even after updating to the latest version available via device manager. The Netflix and Hulu Windows 10 apps cause the graphics drive to fail (at best) our outright blue-screen the machine (at worst) every single time. Kind of frustrating as those apps are far more touch friendly than opening a browser. These aren't new apps, so I have to wonder who at Samsung tested this considering they are promoting it as a tablet and these are (in my mind) critical apps that need to be compatible out of the box.
  • Battery life is still very good,. Mixed use of Chrome, MS Office, and chat clients (Skype/Sococo) is getting me about 9 hours of real usage.
  • Performance is still more than adequate for day to day tasks.
  • Not really a fan of the keyboard/U-case. I would rather have a silicone case with a tear-away keyboard similar to the iPad Pro and keyboard to give the tablet more protection when the keyboard is not attached.

Still pleased with it, but I am also eyeing the Huawei MateBook to see when that might come out in the US as that is probably the closest competition in this form factor.
 
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mhonard

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I too own the Samsung Galaxy TabPro S and although i like the tablet I am struggling with a few issues:
1.. No USB pass-through power. This is a MUST HAVE with a device with one USB-C port. I tried both apples and a aftermamarket Type C USB 3.1 Hub USB-C to USB 3.0/ HDMI/ Type C Female Charger Adapter and they tablet will NOT charge. Anyone have any ideas. This will kill the usage for me.
2.Screen auto dims after a min or so if not being used. Seems like about 20%. Spent 1 hour with Samsung technicians and tried everything including turning ambient sensor off. Confirmed problem with another unit. No a killer problem but very annoying.
3. Occasionally the mouse icon disappears. Seems if I detach and reattach the keyboard it comes back 60% of the time. Otherwise I need to reboot.
4. Won't wake from sleep occasionally. Need to hard reboot.
 
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Delirious D

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I too own the Samsung Galaxy TabPro S and although i like the tablet I am struggling with a few issues:
1.. No USB pass-through power. This is a MUST HAVE with a device with one USB-C port.

i find it annoying that the box came with a little pamphlet advertising the adapter and even gives the website.. OH BUT WAIT its not available yet. typical samsung releasing devices with no accessories.

2.Screen auto dims after a min or so if not being used. Seems like about 20%. Spent 1 hour with Samsung technicians and tried everything including turning ambient sensor off. Confirmed problem with another unit. No a killer problem but very annoying.
i read in one of the reviews that their is no way to disable the auto dim. its belived that samsung put in that feature to avoid burn in.
 

mhonard

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W.R.T #1
I found if I use a Apple 25Watt USB-C charger (both ends must be usb-c) I can charge the unit through a USB pass-through connector. My Theory is that the Samsung fast charger/cable combination doesn't work because it has a pin that's unique and is not passed through the connector. Why the setup has to be USB-C to USB-C may be for similar reasons but I really don't know

W.R.T. #2
You may be right about screen burn -in...I thought that was in the old days. There is however a fix to extend the time to 10 min but its kind-of hidden, at least from search. You need to go into settings and the very last icon is "Extras". Under extras you will find Samsung's special settings. Pick galaxy settings, AMOLED, at at the bottom there will be an option for dimming options. It can be turned up to 10 minutes max. Took 3 calls back to Samsung and level 2 tech 3 hrs to find this.
 

Delirious D

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W.R.T. #2
You may be right about screen burn -in...I thought that was in the old days. There is however a fix to extend the time to 10 min but its kind-of hidden, at least from search. You need to go into settings and the very last icon is "Extras". Under extras you will find Samsung's special settings. Pick galaxy settings, AMOLED, at at the bottom there will be an option for dimming options. It can be turned up to 10 minutes max. Took 3 calls back to Samsung and level 2 tech 3 hrs to find this.

haha i was surprised when i read the burn-in info. like didnt we leave plasma behind. lol



i'm liking the samsung flow. the fingerprint unlock is a little slow. but hoping with updates. should be faster.
 

Buji

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24 hours in, here's my initial thoughts:
This tablet is replacing a 12 inch android tablet (also by samsung) and is a 'second interface' for me. light browsing, news feeds, media consumption, and light sketchwork (when the ding-dang stylus becomes available!) so I'm not expecting it to do any heavy lifting.

What you you already know:
That Amoled screen. others have covered this before, but I will say this was a primary motivator for me. I read a lot of comics / watch shows/ stream games at night and light bleed drives me nuts. It's gorgeous and beyond any fault I can find.

The Build quality: SOLID. more so than my notepro 12.2, comparable in flexing/creaking to the surface 4 they had at best buy. (so, like unless you are purposely trying to hurt it, it feels like a solid piece of glass / aluminum

Battery Life:
Verdict is out on this, but after a full charge I spent a good 6 hours tweaking testing, running it through the paces and got it down about halfway. This bodes well. Seemed to charge back up to 100% in about 40 minutes but I wasn't watching it that closely.

Network connectivity: no real surprises here, I was worried the wifi adapter might not be strong enough to stream 40k bitstream reliably, or the tablet able to handle the data associated with it.

Memory: Not enough, appears to be the achilles heel here. Most of the time when I needed to test the limits, I was able to get a pretty good sense of impairment unless I closed everything else. I'm kinda ok with this considering the price point and the rest, but they need options.

I did not experience any bluescreens or wakelocks (failing to come out of sleep). I did run windows and samsung update immediately after the launching wizard and made sure all of that was up to date before I started testing.

Here are the apps I was worried about that seem to work without issue:

Splashtop remote screen to my main pc, running games and heavy lifting with Photoshop, Reaper Music Studio, etc, works pretty good. Use the client from their website instead of the one in the MS store. Expected resolution differences (my pc runs at 1080p on a 55" monitor) result in some letterbars, but with the amoled contrast this isn't that annoying to me.

XBOX streaming with the XBOX application - works great, can stream at highest resolution

Photoshop Cs2 works pretty good so far for my needs (15mp image editing, fine art creation) but haven't been able to test stylus work. This remains a concern for me because PS can eat up some MEMORY. I don't even want to think of what a newer version of PS might do.

HULU, Neflix, Amazon Video, Google Movies and TV, all of them through Chrome works fine.

Netflix Windows 10 app worked fine for me.

NextGenReader Feedly client - works fine, needs a black theme instead of just Dark to take advantage of amoled

Kindle for PC - even with grey on black theme, still has a menu bar to the left of whatever I'm reading. Distracting and using more power than necessary - will probably end up using Calibre to read ebooks as it's infinitely more tweakable.

Comixology (windows 10 app is being discontinued but works pretty good, online reader works fine. Comix in Amoled = YESSSSSSSSS)

Some issues I've discovered:

Dishanywhere remote access - video flickers light/dark until bitrate is settled. I use this a lot and have never seen anything like that. it's only the streaming video content, and based on the sloppiness of the rest of their code, I suspect the dish app is struggling to auto-lookup some display info. Don't have this problem on other win10 x64 machines.

4k 60fps youtube videos stutter badly and don't stream. Likely insufficient video memory. If I knock it down to 1440p it seems to be ok.

Reddit in Chrome with RES is going to max out the RAM pretty quickly. Not a surprise as Chrome is a RAM hog anyway.

Sound has some weird crystallization process effect I can't seem to turn off. I've checked settings in the realtek and the windows control panel for the speaker devices. It's mostly only noticeable to me during quiet dialog scenes, with the volume turned up.

NFC detection of the cover seems either overly sensitive or flaky. I don't know if this is systemic, or is the nfc reader or the nfc chip in the cover. I disabled NFC because it was driving me nuts and filling up the notifications with messages. I have a few other nfc devices and readers so I'll look and see if I can narrow this down. I'm hoping it's the nfc chip in the cover, as I have replacement NFC tags I can use that read better anyway.

Wish I could remap the 'start button'.

Need to explore utilities for surface and other wintabs. I'm not in love with the onscreen kb, and miss my radial pie menu shortcuts from my notepro.

Samsung needs to release the freaking stylus already.

Allright, that's it for my user review. Let me know if anyone has any questions.
 

Delirious D

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24 hours in, here's my initial thoughts:
This tablet is replacing a 12 inch android tablet (also by samsung) and is a 'second interface' for me. light browsing, news feeds, media consumption, and light sketchwork (when the ding-dang stylus becomes available!) so I'm not expecting it to do any heavy lifting.

What you you already know:
That Amoled screen. others have covered this before, but I will say this was a primary motivator for me. I read a lot of comics / watch shows/ stream games at night and light bleed drives me nuts. It's gorgeous and beyond any fault I can find.

The Build quality: SOLID. more so than my notepro 12.2, comparable in flexing/creaking to the surface 4 they had at best buy. (so, like unless you are purposely trying to hurt it, it feels like a solid piece of glass / aluminum

Battery Life:
Verdict is out on this, but after a full charge I spent a good 6 hours tweaking testing, running it through the paces and got it down about halfway. This bodes well. Seemed to charge back up to 100% in about 40 minutes but I wasn't watching it that closely.

Network connectivity: no real surprises here, I was worried the wifi adapter might not be strong enough to stream 40k bitstream reliably, or the tablet able to handle the data associated with it.

Memory: Not enough, appears to be the achilles heel here. Most of the time when I needed to test the limits, I was able to get a pretty good sense of impairment unless I closed everything else. I'm kinda ok with this considering the price point and the rest, but they need options.

I did not experience any bluescreens or wakelocks (failing to come out of sleep). I did run windows and samsung update immediately after the launching wizard and made sure all of that was up to date before I started testing.

Here are the apps I was worried about that seem to work without issue:

Splashtop remote screen to my main pc, running games and heavy lifting with Photoshop, Reaper Music Studio, etc, works pretty good. Use the client from their website instead of the one in the MS store. Expected resolution differences (my pc runs at 1080p on a 55" monitor) result in some letterbars, but with the amoled contrast this isn't that annoying to me.

XBOX streaming with the XBOX application - works great, can stream at highest resolution

Photoshop Cs2 works pretty good so far for my needs (15mp image editing, fine art creation) but haven't been able to test stylus work. This remains a concern for me because PS can eat up some MEMORY. I don't even want to think of what a newer version of PS might do.

HULU, Neflix, Amazon Video, Google Movies and TV, all of them through Chrome works fine.

Netflix Windows 10 app worked fine for me.

NextGenReader Feedly client - works fine, needs a black theme instead of just Dark to take advantage of amoled

Kindle for PC - even with grey on black theme, still has a menu bar to the left of whatever I'm reading. Distracting and using more power than necessary - will probably end up using Calibre to read ebooks as it's infinitely more tweakable.

Comixology (windows 10 app is being discontinued but works pretty good, online reader works fine. Comix in Amoled = YESSSSSSSSS)

Some issues I've discovered:

Dishanywhere remote access - video flickers light/dark until bitrate is settled. I use this a lot and have never seen anything like that. it's only the streaming video content, and based on the sloppiness of the rest of their code, I suspect the dish app is struggling to auto-lookup some display info. Don't have this problem on other win10 x64 machines.

4k 60fps youtube videos stutter badly and don't stream. Likely insufficient video memory. If I knock it down to 1440p it seems to be ok.

Reddit in Chrome with RES is going to max out the RAM pretty quickly. Not a surprise as Chrome is a RAM hog anyway.

Sound has some weird crystallization process effect I can't seem to turn off. I've checked settings in the realtek and the windows control panel for the speaker devices. It's mostly only noticeable to me during quiet dialog scenes, with the volume turned up.

NFC detection of the cover seems either overly sensitive or flaky. I don't know if this is systemic, or is the nfc reader or the nfc chip in the cover. I disabled NFC because it was driving me nuts and filling up the notifications with messages. I have a few other nfc devices and readers so I'll look and see if I can narrow this down. I'm hoping it's the nfc chip in the cover, as I have replacement NFC tags I can use that read better anyway.

Wish I could remap the 'start button'.

Need to explore utilities for surface and other wintabs. I'm not in love with the onscreen kb, and miss my radial pie menu shortcuts from my notepro.

Samsung needs to release the freaking stylus already.

Allright, that's it for my user review. Let me know if anyone has any questions.
I think the audio could be better on the pro. Feels like my note 5 has louder speakers. But the BT is a plus so i been using my LG infinims no issue.

I agree cant wait for the stylus to come out.
 

Delirious D

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Any one have issues with the trackpad. Idn if its tooooo sensitive or what. But sometimes when im trying to click on something my pointer bounces to another part of the screen. Its like the tra k pad is detecting the the hovering over it. Really annoying. I was taking a test once and my heart stopped thinking i exited out. Thankfully just ended up another tab.
 

ad78

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Gents - anyone here kindly upload your recovery disk? I created myself then wiped the HD to load a fresh one. the problem now is I lost the freaking usb stick!!!! that recovery I believe is like 23gb in total of Samsung crap..
 

Buji

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I was just thinking the other day that I needed to do this just to be safe. I'm super busy the next couple of days, but I'll let you know when I do it. Maybe someone else here can get it before I get around to it.
 

theefman

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24 hours in, here's my initial thoughts:

Comixology (windows 10 app is being discontinued but works pretty good, online reader works fine. Comix in Amoled = YESSSSSSSSS)

Question on this, not exactly Tab Pro related. Do you mean you are still able to download the Comixology app from the store? Thanks.
 

Buji

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Question on this, not exactly Tab Pro related. Do you mean you are still able to download the Comixology app from the store? Thanks.

yeah, I can still download it but it's pretty basic. Mostly I have been reading using the web reader. Neither of these options support the higher definition of the comics :< I even toyed around with running bluestacks and trying to run comixology there with a high resolution profile, but it ended up being unstable.
 

theefman

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yeah, I can still download it but it's pretty basic. Mostly I have been reading using the web reader. Neither of these options support the higher definition of the comics :< I even toyed around with running bluestacks and trying to run comixology there with a high resolution profile, but it ended up being unstable.

Thanks, that's good to know the option is available even if not perfect.
 

sdmckenna2

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I did run windows and samsung update immediately after the launching wizard
I did the windows updates, but you seem to be mentioning "samsung update". Is there a Samsung application that I have to run to get the Samsung firmware & driver updates? All I found on Samsung's website was an updated USB driver which I installed, even though the download file had "mobile phone" in the filename. :(
 

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