Review of the Galaxy Tab A9+ tablet from Samsung

Despite the low demand for tablets in general, Samsung has both its flagship Galaxy Tab S line (including the slightly more affordable FE) and the more affordable Galaxy A. It doesn’t have the top specs, but the hardware is quite sufficient for certain tasks: watching videos, movies, making video calls, and playing games. In short, it can do everything that the vast majority of users need from a tablet. Today we’re going to take a closer look at the current representative of the lineup, the Samsung Galaxy Tab A9+.

Specifications of Samsung Galaxy Tab A9+

Design and construction

Despite its positioning as an affordable model, Samsung Galaxy Tab A9+ has a very nice thin body made mostly of metal with plastic inserts. The tablet does not feel cheap or unreliable.

If you look at the back panel horizontally, most of it is metal, with only the top strip, which houses the lens of the single rear camera, made of plastic. It protrudes slightly above the surface of the back cover.

The entire front panel is covered by a protective glass, underneath which is an 11-inch display. The bezels are the same width on all sides. They are optimal for the tablet: not too wide and do not spoil the appearance. And not too thin to accidentally touch the interface elements. The front camera is above the screen when used in a horizontal position.

The side bezels are flat with even angles. Although this does not spoil the impression when using it. There are four speakers on the sides. On the right side there is one of the microphones and a Type-C connector.

The most unusual placement of the 3.5 mm headphone jack is in the lower right corner. It is at an angle, which is not very convenient when watching videos or movies. Although nowadays it’s hard to imagine that someone doesn’t have wireless headphones for such a case.

Above is another microphone, as well as volume and power buttons. Unfortunately, the tablet didn’t get a fingerprint scanner in any form, so either a password or face recognition with the front camera.

The bottom has a tray and a contact group with magnets for connecting the keyboard.

You can install a SIM card and MicroSD in the tray.

In general, the Samsung Galaxy Tab A9+ makes a pleasant impression.It is lightweight, considering the diagonal of the display

Display

The Samsung Galaxy Tab A9+ has an 11-inch display with a resolution of 1920×1200 pixels, an aspect ratio of 16:10, and a pixel density of about 206 PPI. It uses an IPS matrix with a refresh rate of 90 Hz. It’s quite unusual to see IPS after a huge number of smartphones and (recently) laptops with OLED displays. Although this can hardly be called a drawback, given that we are looking at an affordable model.

Moreover, the display itself is of high quality. It has good viewing angles and sufficient brightness for comfortable indoor work. On a summer day in the sun, it may not be so good. The picture, of course, is more relaxed in terms of color reproduction compared to OLED. In the settings, there is an almost traditional set of settings: dark and light themes, refresh rate, brightness, scale, fonts, and eye comfort mode.

The screen has a good brightness level of 360.8 cd/m² and a static contrast ratio of 1203:1. The color gamut is close to sRGB, but the color reproduction is noticeably accentuated towards cold shades:

Platform and performance

Samsung Galaxy Tab A9+ is powered by a rather modest Qualcomm Snapdragon 695 5G processor, which can be attributed to the mid-budget segment. This is a 6-nanometer processor containing two 2.2 GHz Kryo 660 Gold cores, six 1.8 GHz Kryo 660 Silver cores and an Adreno 619 graphics accelerator. The amount of RAM can be 4 or 6 GB, and the storage can be 64/128 GB. The modest amount of built-in storage can be compensated by microSD cards.

In synthetic performance tests, the tablet demonstrates rather modest results. This applies to both graphics and processor tests. This is not critical if you plan to use the tablet exclusively for light tasks: web surfing, watching videos or movies, communication, etc.

In real use, there are some performance issues. And it seems that the main problem is not the processor, but the small amount of RAM: 4 or even 6 GB is not enough for a modern Android device. The shell and app launcher are not fast, and there is a noticeable slowdown. For games, Samsung Galaxy Tab A9+ is not the best option. But if you don’t try to run it with maximum settings, it’s quite playable. Devil May Cry, CoD Mobile and Diablo Immortal work quite well.

But it’s worth noting that the tablet does not overheat and hardly loses performance even under prolonged maximum loads. The case also does not heat up. In the CPU Throttling Test stress test, performance can drop to only 92%, which is a good indicator.

Samsung Galaxy Tab A9+ has dual-band Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac and Bluetooth 5.1. The tablet is able to work with global positioning systems such as GPS, Beidou, Galileo and QZSS. There is also support for LTE/5G networks in case you need to connect in the absence of nearby Wi-Fi networks. Although there is also a version without a mobile communication module, which is cheaper.

The tablet runs on Android 14, with the One UI 6.0 shell so far. In general, it is very close to the smartphone version, but offers some features that make use of the large screen area. In particular, the interface of some applications has been slightly modified to have two columns for more rational use of space. A bottom panel with the most frequently used apps that can be hidden. And the ability to run three apps simultaneously in split-screen mode.

Sound and camera

Samsung Galaxy Tab A9+ has four speakers that support Dolby Atmos virtual surround sound. The tablet sounds good and loud. There is even a certain amount of bass. However, two of the four speakers are placed in such a way that in a horizontal position they are often covered by the palms of your hands. On the other hand, it’s hard to think of a better placement in a tablet with four speakers.

Cameras in tablets are mostly a formality and few people will use them on a regular basis. The rear camera of Galaxy Tab A9+ has a single module with a resolution of 8 megapixels, autofocus (which does not always work well) and the ability to shoot 1080p video at 30 frames per second. You shouldn’t expect extraordinary quality:

The front camera has a resolution of 5 MP and lacks autofocus.

Battery

The tablet is equipped with a 7040 mAh battery. Thanks to the energy-efficient platform and different usage scenarios from smartphones, the tablet needs to be charged every 2-3 days under light load. That’s if you use the browser, email, messengers, and YouTube. If you add to this watching movies and active gaming, then, of course, this figure will drop significantly.

Samsung Galaxy Tab A9+ supports 15W wired charging. It takes approximately 2.5 hours to fully charge.