Samsung Galaxy Tab S5e 10.5" (Your Choice) (Open Box)
$168.26
Condition: Factory Reconditioned; Open Box
Model: Silver | 64GB | Wi-Fi Only
Screen Size: 10.5"
Top positive review
7 people found this helpful
This is a great tablet. *Finesse*
By L W on Reviewed in the United States on December 10, 2020
So my old Samsung Tab S2 finally broke -- it was still working fine but it fell. I then thought: "It's 2020, I should try out a cheap low-to-mid-range brand, surely they've come a long way." Well, not really. I spend $200 on a Vankhyo tablet with case and pen (P31); when I first got it, the heft of the tablet, the pre-applied screen protectors (front and back, back is glass too), the fact that it came with Android 10 pre-installed, etc., gave me a somewhat good impression. But the quality of the IPS screen and UI and many other things on the cheaper tablet left much to be desired. There is one thing that econo-tablets lack: finesse. Well, that and just good hardware. This Samsung S5e tablet has all that and it makes a huge difference. The screen of the S5e is just leagues above cheap tablets. It is, of course, an AMOLED display which allows for very deep blacks. I'm talking about black as night blacks. Most of my reading I do at night, and the fact that (when you invert the text) the black can get pretty much as deep black as the bezels is just incredible. The resolution is 2560 x 1600 with pretty high pixel density and that makes for fine/crips lines and detail. My Tab S2 had all this too (and at only 8 inches!) and it's a must if you're reading with the lights off because you don't want a light-haze to blast your eyes right before you're going to sleep. The Vankhyo tablet, even though it had a pretty good resolution at 1200x1920 (IPS screen), could not achieve deep blacks. In fact, everything including videos just looked washed out. So if you're using your tablet to read at night or you appreciate good contrast in videos I would really recommend you get a tablet with an AMOLED (or: OLED) display that can achieve deep blacks. Cheaper tablets from Samsung that have IPS/TFT screens, although quite good, also can't achieve deep blacks like AMOLED can, although they're probably better than cheaper non-brand tablets. For example the new Samsung A7 does not have an AMOLED screen and it achieves a minimum brightness (or maximum darkness) of: 3.66 cd/m², whereas the S5e gets: 1.74 cd/m² -- so from that you can see how much darker the screen of the S5e can get at half the A7's value. A 10.5 screen is quite big for a tablet, especially when mainly used for reading books. In a way I prefer the 8 inch Tab S2 that I had because it's such a good size to hold in your hand and move around and has a better aspect ration for my use. Samsung has stopped making high end 8 inch tablets, but I'm hoping they'll return to that because there is utility to these. The Tab S2 has 4:3 ratio which is better suited to reading/editing documents and books. Widescreen tablets are really geared toward media consumption (i.e., movies, series, videos) but there is so much else you can do with a tablet that I think it shouldn't be given that much emphasis -- or at least they should offer 4:3 options as well. The S5e has a 16:10 ratio and if you read books in contiguous mode it is quite enjoyable. Since it's quite a large screen, you can keep the tablet at a greater distance which, depending on your position, can be useful. Everything from the material finish to the UI to the smoothness of operation to the overall feel just exudes quality and finesse. Yes, it cost $349 at my time of buying but the extra $ over the econo-tablets is more than worth it. I am sure that, for most people, the new Samsung A7 will be just fine as well and it currently sells at $249 and is going to be better than any cheap- or non-brand tablet. No. 1 for tablets are Samsung and Apple, of course; if you're already tied into the Apple eco-system it makes sense to go with Apple, but otherwise Samsung is king. If you have a PC and just want to drop some music or PDFs onto the tablet, it is way easier with an Android device. Apple's closed system makes it so you have to install iTunes on PC, etc.; just a hassle really, so I'd recommend going with Samsung for ease of use unless you have all Apple devices already. I think it's a sport for Samsung and Apple to make devices as thin and feature-rich as possible, but personally I wouldn't mind having the device a little thicker if it somehow increases longevity. I would also rather have a 3.5mm headphone jack rather than only the USB-C port and the headphone converter dongle. I did test the USB-to-3.5mm dongle with some Sennheiser corded headphones and the sound was good. The sound over the tablet speakers is surprisingly good. The A7 does have a 3.5 jack still so if that is important to you maybe get the A7 instead. All high-end tablets by Samsung have left behind the 3.5mm jack in favor of just a USB port. I don't like having wireless devices *on my head* for any great length of time so I'll always want wired headphones. The S5e is kind of the sweet spot right now. Its price is much lower than the newer high-spec tablets but you get a premium tablet with great picture and sound, and it is still getting Android updates from Samsung. When I received the tablet, Android 9 was installed on it. After configuring I checked for updates and it downloaded Android 10 (~2gb in size). After this installed and I rebooted, I checked for updates again and a 700mb November update was then installed. I read that this tablet is also slated to receive Android 11 (and UI 3.0 that comes with it) so it is still future proof for a while. If I had to find some negatives, I'd probably say that the touch swipes and such don't always quite register as I intend, but I don't think it's due to any hardware issue with the screen so it could just be an Android 10 thing. When I swipe up to get past the lock screen, it will require a more thorough (greater distance) swipe upwards to actually unlock it, while I would think that the movement in itself should indicate what I want to achieve and that it shouldn't require me to travel as great a distance. One the Tab S2 I would just do a half-hearted swipe up with my thumb while holding the tablet with the same hand and that would unlock it, but not so much with this tablet. I like the power button being inverted, whilst the volume button lever is extraverted (so you can easily tell the difference between the two) but, at least with a case around it, I often find myself having to feel around and then use my nail to "get in there" to press the power button. In summary: this is a great, high quality tablet and is the current sweet spot for people wanting a Samsung tablet with high-res AMOLED display. It is worth the extra money over cheap exotic brand "high spec" tablets. If an unknown brand tablet has similar specs like 4gb of RAM, 64gb of storage, etc., it doesn't mean it will perform the same -- it won't. Samsung tablets are at another level. This performs better in most things than a Samsung S6 Lite (it being in the price range of the S5e). The processor and graphics on the S5e are better, however the S6 Lite has an S-Pen included. The S5e does not support the S-Pen and doesn't offer palm-rejection, so if you need S-Pen functionality in this price range you're better off with the S6 Lite.
Top critical review
5 people found this helpful
Definitely not worth the money + has apparent security issues
By Joe Smart on Reviewed in the United States on March 18, 2020
The Galaxy Tab S5e has a Super AMOLED display that looks gorgeous with rich colors, excellent contrast, and deep blacks but problems start to appear almost as soon as you start using the tablet. The display can't be calibrated (which was a feature on earlier Galaxy Tab models) and offers touch response that can be shockingly bad--while using basic everyday apps I sometimes needed to touch the display three or four times before a touch would register which is worse than the performance on a $100 budget tablet from Chuwi. I was then surprised to not experience that same touch response issue playing games. I downloaded two different screen test apps from the Play Store and the display operated perfectly with no touch response issues at all. Samsung's Game Optimizing Service built into the OS most likely ramps up the power into performance mode so gameplay is smooth. The display test apps are apparently treated just like games and get the same high-performance treatment which is touch response registers very differently in testing than during regular everyday use. Another issue that plagues the S5e display is a very pronounced jelly effect while scrolling within certain apps. Complaints of a jelly effect when using Chrome instead of Samsung's own internet browser are widespread but I found one of the worst offenders to be the Samsung Member's App--the jelly effect was so bad I couldn't stand using the app and decided to completely uninstall it. There's also a known issue with internet connectivity being cut off when you hold the S5e by the corners in portrait mode because your hands block the antenna. This design flaw was noticed by purchasers and reviewers almost immediately after the S5e shipped out and there's a warning about it on the Consumer Reports website. It doesn't seem possible the S5e could have gone through testing without Samsung discovering the problem so the likely explanation is Samsung did know about the issue but decided to sell the S5e anyway. The display also has a lower-resolution than Samsung uses on many of their smartphones so if you want HDR certification for Netflix streaming you can forget about it--at best the display can play video at 1080p although many owners have reported 720p video streaming. I don't see any way that watching a movie on a 10.5" display at 720p isn't a lot more preferable to 4K HDR on a 6" display but a lot of people are obsessed with hardware specs and will consider Netflix on the S5e inferior to watching it in 4K HDR on their smartphone. The biometric authentication on the S5e is also below average at best. You get a very unreliable fingerprint scanner on the side of the tablet that also doubles as the power button. Unless you are using a case with a cutout for the power button the fingerprint scanner can be difficult to locate by touch and it usually takes me 2 or 3 tries before my fingerprint is recognized. There's also a useless face unlock option which might have actually worked three times in the first two weeks I've used the tablet. It's so worthless I've found myself shocked whenever I didn't need to use the fingerprint scanner instead. The S5e does at least have the normal Android smart lock options allowing you to keep the tablet unlocked at specific locations you choose (like at home--the location positioning isn't accurate enough to unlock only in your bedroom but not in the rest of your home) or when the tablet is connected to specific Bluetooth devices which reduces the need to rely on the tablet's poor biometrics. The Samsung Galaxy Tab S5e is actually nice for watching videos from Netflix or Amazon Prime and for listening to music (the speakers sound great). The ability to add a MicroSD card with up to 512GB of storage also gives you a lot of room for downloaded videos and music when you don't have access to reliable WiFi. The WiFi problem on the S5e specifically affects faster 5GHz connections but when streaming video in landscape mode WIFI should be reliable. This tablet is also pretty good for games. Overall touch response also improved after a couple of weeks although I'm not entirely sure why. There isn't a performance mode that can be enabled by a user but the OS includes power optomization that changes the power settings based on your usage. It's possible the OS decided to give the display more juice which is why it eventually started working better. The S5e receives the terrible software support Samsung is notorious for. Right now it's April but the S5e is still on the January security patch. Currently, Samsung is focused on updates for their obscenely overpriced S20 series phones and higher-profile devices like the S10 series so it could be a long wait before the s5e receives another update and since Samsung has a new tablet coming out soon things will only get worse. Samsung makes mediocre phones priced much too high and that applies as well to this tablet. With so many issues the current asking price of $479.99 for Galaxy Tab S5e is much too high. I only recommend this tablet if you can find it for $200 or less. Update: This tablet has grown on me slightly, mainly because the touch response issues reduced (but never completely disappeared) over time but I still couldn't recommend the Galaxy TabS5e at this price point. The lack of an update to Android 10 for such a new product was an irritant at first but it has turned out to be a blessing in disguise. The December Android 10 update for the Galaxy S10+ has been ludicrously buggy, making the $1,000 phone unstable and sometimes barely usable. Despite an abundance of bug reports from owners nearly 5 months later there still hasn't been a single bug fix. For this reason alone I would never buy another Samsung product. While it pains me very much to say this if you can't find a good alternative to Samsung when it comes to Android Tablets then I would recommend buying an iPad instead. Chuwi sells some budget tablets officially on Amazon complete with warranty but anything from their brand priced below $300 that I have used has been junk. Chuwi makes some reasonably good quality tablets and laptops (although Xiaomi, Huawei, and even Telecast are all better choices) but Chuwi doesn't sell anything even halfway decent below the $300 price point. Since Android tablets are a niche market in North America (they're a lot more popular in Asia) Samsung pretty much has the Android tablet market all to itself here unless you're willing to buy a Chinese tablet. At around $200 less than Samsung's charges you can get an excellent Chinese tablet that's sleeker, snappier, and more innovative than anything from Samsung but low-cost Chinese tablets that seem to be fantastic bargains and sometimes even have impressive on paper specs are never good products in my experience so consider yourself warned. Update: I purchased my Galaxy S5e brand new directly from Amazon. It is running Android 10 and the OS shows up as being Certified By Google in the Google Play Store Settings. My tablet has never been rooted, bootloader unlocked, or modified in any way that would affect the security of the device. I wanted to make that clear at the beginning of my update. The Android app for my health insurance company WellCare shows up in the Play Store as being incompatible with this tablet and cannot be downloaded despite all of the above. The Walgreens app has never allowed me to verify my identity on this tablet so I can view personal information regarding my prescriptions. Verification has worked on every other Android device I have ever owned, including smartphones running older versions of Android and the Huawei tablet I owned when I purchased the Galaxy Tab S5e. My current smartphone is an unlocked Xiaomi MI 9T Pro which is not officially sold in the United States and both the WellCare and Walgreens apps work perfectly. I believe the fact that certain Android apps apparently do not consider this tablet secure (both the Chase and PayPal apps do work) is something that anyone considering this tablet should be aware of.
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