TABLET | £690 from Laptops Direct www.snipca.com/47493
Out of this world
This is the smallest and most affordable of the three tablets in the new S9 series. The S9 Ultra has a 14.6in screen and costs £1,199, the S9+ has a 12.4in screen and costs £999, while the standard S9 we’re reviewing here has an 11in screen for £799 – though it was already discounted to £690 by Laptops Direct at the time of writing. That’s even less than the last generation Tab S8 is still selling for, and even at its regular price, we have no reservations in calling it our new favourite Android tablet (see page 30).
As you’d expect from a device at this price, the S9 is a premium product both inside and out.
Without a case, the S9 is a slip of a thing at 498g and measuring a compact 254x166x5.9mm. That means you can easily hold it with one hand while scrawling notes or doodling using the supplied S Pen stylus. Handwriting recognition is by no means perfect, but it’s a handy way to scribble down ideas when you’re on the move.
The OLED screen has a peak brightness level of 582cd/m2, which isn’t dazzlingly bright but enough to make it readable in any situation. That’s well over 100cd/m2 brighter than the Tab S8 and makes it great for watching TV and movies on – an experience made all the more enjoyable by a superb quartet of speakers that produce surprisingly well-rounded bass tones.
The S9 uses the same components as the S9 Ultra and S9+ – all built around an eight-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip. In our processor benchmark tests the S9 ran around 56 per cent faster than the Gen 1 processor found in the S8. Our test unit had 8GB of RAM (a 12GB model is also available), but this didn’t hold it back when we connected it to a 4K screen over USB-C – the tablet continued to perform smoothly, even with multiple windows open.
This didn’t reduce the battery life either, lasting over nine hours in our continuous-browsing test, and just over 13 hours when playing back video.
The S9 doesn’t come with a charger, just a USB-C cable, so you’ll need to provide your own. If you use a 45W fast charger, which costs around £20 on Amazon (www.snipca.com/47496), the battery will go from zero to 24 per cent in 15 minutes. By 30 minu
