Is the Galaxy Pro 8.4 the best current Android deal?

[ControlD]

So, I am just about ready to give up on my Windows 8.1 tablet. I really don't want to spend a huge amount of cash on a tablet, $200 or so sounds about right. I have looked around and the Samsung 8.4 Pro can be had for $199 refurbished from various sites, which seems like a pretty good deal. Before I pull the trigger however I want to make sure there isn't another obvious choice that I am overlooking.

This is purely a consumption device for me, so Kindle, streaming video, web and a few games are all I will be using the device for.

A Nexus device would be even better, but the Nexus 9 is out of my price range and it seems like the Nexus 7 is getting a little long in the tooth.

 

[Roland00Address]

Yes

It is not a perfect device. It could have a faster gpu (shield is better) , it could have a brighter screen (nexus 7 is roughly 150 nits brighter), it could have better battery life (nexus 7 is 1 to 2 hours longer on average)

But honestly it is an amazing device, it is 50 to 75% faster than the nexus in cpu and gpu tasks. It has an amazing screen (only select ipads are better and just barely, the nexus 7 is also good but the samsung is a little better with color and such).

It is roughly 1/2 an inch wider, and 3/4 of an inch taller. Yet it has 44% more screen area. It weighs roughly 13% more.

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Overall for $200 it is this years nexus price device.

It is currently $247 at B&H if you want new instead of refurbished.

 

[gmaster456]

What Windows tablet do you have? For $200 it is a good tablet. The physical home button and capacitive buttons are slightly annoying but it isn't a huge issue.

 

[ControlD]

What Windows tablet do you have? For $200 it is a good tablet. The physical home button and capacitive buttons are slightly annoying but it isn't a huge issue.

I have a Dell Venue Pro 8.

I'm used to the Samsung button layouts (my phone is a Note 2) so I don't think that will bother me too much.

 

[gmaster456]

What problems are you having with the Venue? Just out of curiosity

 

[ControlD]

Overall, I actually like the Venue 8 and I really do like Windows 8.1 as a tablet OS. Being able to run real desktop applications rather than some stripped down "app" version is awesome.

However, there are some driver issues probably more Intel related than Dell's that make the tablet frustrating at best to use. At least two of the components, WiFi and audio, will quite often prevent the device from going into connected standby mode. So what happens is, you use the tablet for a bit and then put it down. The screen turns off and you forget about it. Come back a day later and the device has drained to 0% battery. Sometimes muting the audio and enabling airplane mode helps, sometimes it doesn't. Most times I forget to even do that anyhow. In the winter I use my tablet mainly when running on the treadmill and it is incredibly frustrating to have a dead battery 50% of the time.

 

[poofyhairguy]

It could have a faster gpu (shield is better) , it could have a brighter screen (nexus 7 is roughly 150 nits brighter), it could have better battery life (nexus 7 is 1 to 2 hours longer on average)

Ug, I read that and almost threw up. I hate what the Android tablet market has become.

Android phones? At either normal or phablet sized we have great options.

Tablets? Get ready for trade-offs and excuses.

I really really hope some Chinese company shocks us this year with a One Plus One of tablets. The market needs it.

 

[ControlD]

Ug, I read that and almost threw up. I hate what the Android tablet market has become.

Android phones? At either normal or phablet sized we have great options.

Tablets? Get ready for trade-offs and excuses.

I really really hope some Chinese company shocks us this year with a One Plus One of tablets. The market needs it.

That's sort of why I was having a hard time coming up with an Android solution. For my usage however I imagine even a cheaper tablet would work. I had even considered going with the 7" Amazon tablet, but the Samsung seems like a lot more device for just a little more money.

 

[DeviousTrap]

Overall, I actually like the Venue 8 and I really do like Windows 8.1 as a tablet OS. Being able to run real desktop applications rather than some stripped down "app" version is awesome.

However, there are some driver issues probably more Intel related than Dell's that make the tablet frustrating at best to use. At least two of the components, WiFi and audio, will quite often prevent the device from going into connected standby mode. So what happens is, you use the tablet for a bit and then put it down. The screen turns off and you forget about it. Come back a day later and the device has drained to 0% battery. Sometimes muting the audio and enabling airplane mode helps, sometimes it doesn't. Most times I forget to even do that anyhow. In the winter I use my tablet mainly when running on the treadmill and it is incredibly frustrating to have a dead battery 50% of the time.

Have you tried just resetting the thing to factory defaults? I've got the same tablet and non of those issue, so I doubt it's exactly a driver issue. Likely a bad config somewhere, but you'll be chasing it for hours, so it's easier to reset.

 

[ControlD]

Have you tried just resetting the thing to factory defaults? I've got the same tablet and non of those issue, so I doubt it's exactly a driver issue. Likely a bad config somewhere, but you'll be chasing it for hours, so it's easier to reset.

I did a factory reset last night, so we'll see if that helps.

The Dell forums are full of people with the exact same problem so I don't have high hopes. Maybe a driver update introduced the issue at some point.

 

[Roland00Address]

Overall, I actually like the Venue 8 and I really do like Windows 8.1 as a tablet OS. Being able to run real desktop applications rather than some stripped down "app" version is awesome.

However, there are some driver issues probably more Intel related than Dell's that make the tablet frustrating at best to use.

No such problems with my Asus T100. I know it uses some broadcom drivers. Never had battery drain issues.

Ug, I read that and almost threw up. I hate what the Android tablet market has become.

Android phones? At either normal or phablet sized we have great options.

Tablets? Get ready for trade-offs and excuses.

I really really hope some Chinese company shocks us this year with a One Plus One of tablets. The market needs it.

I agree to a point. There needs to be a perfect device in the $200 to $300 market. I wish there is a One Plus One for tablets.

But the $100 to $150 and $150 to $200 markets in my minds you are guaranteed to get sacrifices. Getting a top gpu soc will take at least $20 (maybe Intel will change this with throwing money around), getting a 1080p ips screen that is calibrated $40 or so. Then ram, board, flash, wifi, warranty, software support (hopefully minimal), etc.

Assuming a $150 device the retailer wants at least 10% though in reality they often get 15% before expenses. So that is 15 to $22.5. Plus you want to make your own 10 to 15% and now it is a lot harder to cram the BOM around a $100

Added to the fact if this is a gold device you will be cannablizing your sales.

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I completely agree with you, my goal is to see such a pristine device for $200 for I understand how these markets work and if companies do not make money selling better specs for higher AOSP they do the race to the bottom that lead us to the pc oems like Dell and HP.

 

[gorcorps]

Overall, I actually like the Venue 8 and I really do like Windows 8.1 as a tablet OS. Being able to run real desktop applications rather than some stripped down "app" version is awesome.

However, there are some driver issues probably more Intel related than Dell's that make the tablet frustrating at best to use. At least two of the components, WiFi and audio, will quite often prevent the device from going into connected standby mode. So what happens is, you use the tablet for a bit and then put it down. The screen turns off and you forget about it. Come back a day later and the device has drained to 0% battery. Sometimes muting the audio and enabling airplane mode helps, sometimes it doesn't. Most times I forget to even do that anyhow. In the winter I use my tablet mainly when running on the treadmill and it is incredibly frustrating to have a dead battery 50% of the time.

The Venue 8 pro is simply a poor device. We've had a lot of issues with them at work and we've all but abandoned them. Drivers I'm sure are the main cause, but the stylus is terrible (even the new ones).

 

[poofyhairguy]

But the $100 to $150 and $150 to $200 markets in my minds you are guaranteed to get sacrifices.

Agreed, and at that price point I am willing to deal with issues. That is why I kept my Nexus 7 even though the touchscreen makes me want to murder it sometimes. I get that tablets don't have the subsidy to prop them up like phones so they will always be a step behind.

With that said, what is depressing about Android right now is that at NO price point are you going to avoid issues. If I could pay $600 today for a tablet with no compromise on anything including build quality I would do it in a heartbeat. But that simply doesn't exist, every "high-end" Android tablet has a compromise somewhere or requires you to play a lottery.

The Android phone market is completely fleshed out- we have compelling offerings across the entire range of price. With Android tablets it feels like we are a year or two away at best to get to a place like that. Anything you buy today probably will have some issue, or won't be running the latest OS in 18 months. For a tablet that sucks.

 

[ControlD]

The Venue 8 pro is simply a poor device. We've had a lot of issues with them at work and we've all but abandoned them. Drivers I'm sure are the main cause, but the stylus is terrible (even the new ones).

I never even bought the stylus for mine, but I had heard it wasn't very good well before I bought the device.

I have been chasing this battery drain issue for awhile now, and it is a weird one. Some people have the problem and others don't. Running built in Windows diagnostics (powercfg) seems to reveal some driver problems, but other people have the same issues flagged in their sleep reports but still have good battery life.

It has sort of become a game for me at this point, but now that winter is back and I am using my tablet regularly it isn't that much fun anymore.

 

[tdawg]

I got a Lenovo S8-50 (atom cpu based) from best buy when they put it on sale for $149. It's a nice 8" tablet and has a microSD slot and 1080p screen. So far, it's been very nice, especially for the price.

 

[gmaster456]

The fact that it is now 2015 and a 2013 tablet (Nexus 7) is still considered the benchmark to which all other tablets are compared to is quite sad. There really aren't that many good tablet out there for Android. The Nexus 9 was supposed to help fix things but it didn't deliver and ended up being disappointing as it was too overpriced. And there really isn't anything too compelling on the low end. In the midrange you have a huge mishmash of tablets, mostly being Samsungs that are hard to differentiate from each other.

The Nokia N1 looks like a promising, low priced option but only the lord knows if it will ever actually show its face in the US.

For Android you're either looking at $150 newegg specials or $500 high end tablets that don't really deliver for what they promise, usually due to a software issue or Android itself. It's all a mess.

In the tablet space, the HP Stream, Galaxy Tab 8.4 and the iPad Mini 2 look to be the best values right now for their respective platforms.

 

[gmaster456]

I got a Lenovo S8-50 (atom cpu based) from best buy when they put it on sale for $149. It's a nice 8" tablet and has a microSD slot and 1080p screen. So far, it's been very nice, especially for the price.

For $150 and a 1080p IPS screen that isn't bad at all.

 

[Roland00Address]

The fact that it is now 2015 and a 2013 tablet (Nexus 7) is still considered the benchmark to which all other tablets are compared to is quite sad

Agreed with everything you said but a little over lunged with your rhetoric. The Ipad Mini 2 (the retina one) has what marginal update with the ipad mini 3 or the ipad air 2? The nexus 7 2013 is only 3 months older than the mini 2. Same logic with the ipad air vs 2.

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I agree with everyone that we need a flagship android. In my opinion Google should be making a high end flagship for tablets that everyone else competes with underneath the price (establishing a floor of it has to be this good to cost $400+). But with phones since they are subsidized I believe the opposite should happen and google tries to make a $300 to $400 device so the OEMs do not get crazy with charging so much for minimal improvement.

You need a market to be at least somewhat competitive or else the people will wonder why do I need a new one when I already have one. This is a deflationary principle, you save your money for there is no reason to buy now and you hope you get a better deal in the future. Markets can be very rational but they can also be very rational in making stupid decisions.

 

[gmaster456]

Agreed with everything you said but a little over lunged with your rhetoric. The Ipad Mini 2 (the retina one) has what marginal update with the ipad mini 3 or the ipad air 2? The nexus 7 2013 is only 3 months older than the mini 2. Same logic with the ipad air vs 2.

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I agree with everyone that we need a flagship android. In my opinion Google should be making a high end flagship for tablets that everyone else competes with underneath the price (establishing a floor of it has to be this good to cost $400+). But with phones since they are subsidized I believe the opposite should happen and google tries to make a $300 to $400 device so the OEMs do not get crazy with charging so much for minimal improvement.

You need a market to be at least somewhat competitive or else the people will wonder why do I need a new one when I already have one. This is a deflationary principle, you save your money for there is no reason to buy now and you hope you get a better deal in the future. Markets can be very rational but they can also be very rational in making stupid decisions.

When I mentioned all other tablets I was referring to Android specifically.

Also, if Google had released the Nexus 9 for $350 for 32gb I don't know if we'd be having this discussion right now. Because at that price, the tablets handful of drawbacks are much more forgivable namely the build. And I can almost guarantee that $350 is still enough to turn a profit on. But $400 for 16gb and a whopping $480 for a measly 32gb is too damn much for a tablet like that.

 

[poofyhairguy]

Agreed with everything you said but a little over lunged with your rhetoric. The Ipad Mini 2 (the retina one) has what marginal update with the ipad mini 3 or the ipad air 2? The nexus 7 2013 is only 3 months older than the mini 2. Same logic with the ipad air vs 2.

The iPad Air 2 is a HUGE leap over the iPad Air 1. HUGE. It has a GPU better than Nvidia's Sheild, twice the ram of the Air 1, and a CPU with 40% more power than the Air 1. It was the Mini 3 that was the slight update in 2014, but part of that was the fact the Mini 2 was such a huge leap over the Mini 1 in 2013. The iPad Air 2 is the huge iPad leap this year, and is probably the best mobile hardware value since the legendary iPad 2.

And that points out the real BIG problem- Google is being left behind. The iPad is so far ahead of all Android tablets that Apple could have started resting on its laurels a year or two ago and given us re-labeled iPad 4's Nvidia-style. But instead it refines the iPad design with the Air, and then gives us mobile's first "good enough" compute device in the Air 2. They keep moving the line and we are left holding our Nexus 2013s in Androidland.

At this point I have kinda given up hope on Android tablets, at least at the high-end. By the time someone gets it right the tablet might not even be a relevant form factor anymore- like someone releasing an awesome netbook today. I hope 2015 gives us a good sub-$200 device that I can recommend to people who want to buy a tablet for their kids or as a gift, but I have no expectations that the iPad will be seriously challenged at the high end this year or probably even the next.

 

[poofyhairguy]

Also, if Google had released the Nexus 9 for $350 for 32gb I don't know if we'd be having this discussion right now.

Or even a $600 64GB Nexus 9 with a build quality of my M8 would have been better.

 

[tdawg]

For $150 and a 1080p IPS screen that isn't bad at all.

Agreed.

 

[Super56K]

I can weigh in on this with a bit of insight. I've owned a Nexus 7 2013 for a little over a year and got a Tab Pro 8.4 about 1.5 weeks ago.

The good: Nice screen with a lot more real estate compared to the N7. Micro SD slot is always useful to have. Lightweight, even with my folio case. 8.4”, 16:10 AR is about the perfect tablet size.

The bad: Crappy speakers. Occasional freezes and frequent stuttering. I’ve even had some random lockups that restarted the device. More frequent app crashes/force close compared to N7 (HBO Go crashes at least once every time I stream with it using a Chromecast). Samsung’s insistence on using a physical home button and reversing where the back and multitask are compared to stock android. It also gets annoying accidentally touching on one of those capacitive keys when holding the tablet in landscape mode.

The ugly: The N7 2013 feels faster and runs smoother, regardless of what the paper specs state. Touchwiz + 1600p is not a good combination in its current software state. Touchwiz just sucks in my opinion. I didn’t like it on an S3 phone I used to have, and I like it even less on this tablet. The system settings menu is a special kind of terrible only Touchwiz knows how to achieve. It’s sad that Samsung is OK with impressive specs being hamstrung by such a mediocre user experience, but it is what it is unless you’re OK with voiding warranties to put something like CM on it. Will the 5.0 tablet Touchwiz be better optimized? Will it come at all to this device? Who knows.

Now, the important part: I’m keeping mine because a $200 tablet at that size and resolution with a micro SD slot is hard to come by. Even with the negatives, it’s still a great value for $200. Videos/reading/comics/web browsing look great on it. My N7 has been fine, and still is, but 7” is a little cramped for many things outside of books. Most of the Touchwiz user experience gripes go away once you’re in an app too, but it’s still disappointing knowing that Touchwiz is always lying in wait to slow the tablet down, or rear its head because you accidentally brushed against a capacitive button or left some superfluous feature enabled.

I still recommend it though at that $200 price point.

 

[Ravynmagi]

I'd still go with the Nexus 7 2013, if the 7 inch size is not a deal breaker. It's not as long in the tooth as you might think. The screen still looks great. It CPU is dated, but running stock Android makes it feel faster than some of the newest tablets. And it's a very nicely designed and feeling tablet, I love the rounded tapered edges and the soft touch back. The Nexus 9 is really hideous in my opinion compared to the Nexus 7.

And Android 5.0 is really nice. It's hard for me to use Android 4.4 now now that I have 5.0 on my Nexus 7.

 

[ControlD]

I can weigh in on this with a bit of insight. I've owned a Nexus 7 2013 for a little over a year and got a Tab Pro 8.4 about 1.5 weeks ago.

Thanks for the detailed review.

Agree on the Touchwiz points, and I need to look into what kind of ROM support (if any) there is for this tablet before I consider buying I suppose.