SamsungGalaxy Tab A9+ Plus 11” 128GB Android Tablet, Big Screen, Quad Speakers, Upgraded Chipset, Multi Window Display, Slim, Light, Durable, Kids Friendly Design, US Version, 2024, Graphite

Surprisingly snappy and nice given the price point. Usually, lower-end tablets tend to be laggy, have poor resolution screens, and/or low/slow storage, but this actually feels more premium than you'd expect. I don't plan on playing games on it, but it does play the few I've tried smoothly.The screen, while not IPS, is still quite nice. Plenty bright and doesn't look washed out as most lower-priced screens tend to be. And the 1920x1200 resolution is nice too. Text looks crisp and clear. Many lower-end tablets cheap out on the resolution and I think 1080 is the absolute lowest acceptable resolution on a screen this size, so 1200 is pretty good.I chose the version with 8GB RAM because I didn't want it to make up for lack of memory by using storage (many cheap tablets do this), which is slower than RAM and wears out the flash storage faster. But my daughter has the version with 4GB of RAM and it seems to work pretty good too. She hasn't really stressed it so I would suspect it would not do as well with memory-intensive apps, or frequently switching between many apps.The additional SDCard storage capability is good if you want to put a bunch of music and videos/movies for a trip. It will NOT use the SDCard to augment/add to internal storage though - meaning, you can't set it to install most apps to it. You CAN set the cameras to store to the SDcard though, so that'll help save internal storage space if you plan to take a lot of pics/vids. I put in a 256GB card pre-formatted as exFat and it read it fine. You can either have the tablet format a fresh card, or do it on a PC beforehand.My main purpose for this is a bedside e-book reader, and the battery management feature on this is a HUGE plus. Since it is plugged in pretty much all the time, the battery would sit at 100% constantly. Well, that's not healthy for a battery. But this tablet has an intelligent battery management that will automatically set the max charge percentage for you if it sees it being plugged in all the time, or allows you to manually set the max charge percentage. Mine is set to 80%, which is good for battery longevity. It also lets you disable fast-charging, which tends to stress the battery, so it's best to disable it if you don't really need it. My Samsung phone (s24) has these features too, but a phone sees much more off-charger use, so it's not as useful in my opinion.Another minor feature I find handy is the ability to double-tap the screen to turn it on. This saves wear and tear on the physical button. Most newer devices have this feature, so probably a minor thing, but my old tablet didn't have it and it's a nice feature to have.I honestly think the A9+ is the sweet spot between price, performance, and features. The price is attractive and you really aren't sacrificing or compromising on much. Sure, it maybe can't compete against a high-end tablet, but at less than half the price, that's fine with me. And if you *need* a high-end tablet, you might as well spend a few extra dollars for a full laptop.

This little Samsung with the (8GB RAM/128 GB storage version) has been the perfect combination of tablet ultra-portability but with enough power and screen space for light productivity. I paired it with a small folding keyboard, bluetooth mouse and stand. It allows me to get a little work done on the go and then go right back to the simplicity of a tablet for streaming or browsing, whether it's on the couch or the airplane's tray table. Bluetooth connected devices are ultra-responsive. Multitasking several apps and browser tabs with Brave has never caused it to slow down. One of the key decision points was not spending a huge amount of money on a device that might get damaged or stolen, and feeling like I constantly have to watchdog or baby it. This fits the bill perfectly. My other tablet is a Fire HD 10 2021 edition, which is great for streaming and light web browsing, but really hit its ceiling trying much more beyond that. This was the perfect step up without spending a lot.

Use case: PhD student, love to read + need to read, dyslexic & need TTS (I use Speechify)This is my first Samsung tablet and it has been great. Not sure if it's because of the Android interface, some special Samsung magic or both. But I've been able to figure out a relatively easy workflow to read both PDFs and EPUBs on Speechify while also having a reader app open side by side which syncs my annotations to my GDrive. For my needs none of Apple's tablets have been helpful. It's nearly impossible to have Speechify open alongside a reader app on iPad. The split view is finicky. In addition, there are a bunch of app compatibility and sync issues.

Why Four stars? There is an obscure deficiency regarding Android 14's access to camera and sensors by an app that most users won't encounter relating to teleconferencing. Otherwise, a great device. I got this to replace a Galaxy Tab S5E - a $700 tablet back in 2018. In so many ways they are the same. Basically the same Qualcomm snapdragon processor but with 4cores running at almost 3GHZ, and modern graphics instruction sets added to the GPU section on the die. Bluetooth has been upgraded. WIFI has been upgraded. It has a larfer,screen by one inch diagonal. Speaker in the upgraded $200 dollar version are "almost as good as the S5E with barely noticeable drops in bass. the Samsung S5E lost vendor support in Nov 2022 with the last security update to firmware (android 11) being three years ago. The S5E still gets Google Play system patches to android os, but these don't update system drivers, and so the OS are not as secure. The Galaxy Tab A9+ takes the S5E into android 14 with current firmware updates. Also, you get Samsungs latest OneUI 6 launcher.Mine has 8GB system ram with the option of creating an additional 8 GB VIRTUAL RAM on the hard drive, and a 128 GB hard drive that I'm assuming is eMMC. The original S5E was 6 GB system ram, and 128 GB HDD EMMC. The S5E did not have the app incompatibilities with teleconferencing features that are present in the A9+, but this is so minor. Otherwise, it was a great upgrade for someone failure with how the S5E did business. Added bonus - the headphone jack, which the much pricier S5E did not have back in 2018. The nice thing about Qualcomm processors is that they get more updates from Google play system (not to be confused with Google play store) after vendor support stops for the tablet itself. Tablets based on mediatek processors tend to get less of these after vendor support stops (my experience). Camera quality is the same. Image stabilization is respectable. Does this compare with $700 options of today? No. But very workable.My only regret is not getting the cellular option.Final word: for those with an aging S5E that they were on but realize its no longer safe to use on the internet, this is an excellent option - more like an upgrade to system components as opposed to a $700 version of what's new. In terms of speed, it is fairly capable compared to mediatek competitors in the price range, and its Samsung/ Qualcomm heritage ensures future updates to system firmware, unlike rival brands at this price point who maintain a product for 1.5 years and then its junk.