S Pen Finds a Home on Galaxy Tab A 10.1

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Samsung's latest Galaxy tablet, the Tab A 10.1 inch with S Pen, arrives later this week. Starting at $349 and available at select U.S. retailers on October 28, the slate's biggest selling feature is the S Pen stylus, which adds features including GIF creation and translation and pronunciation.

While owners of the briefly-available Galaxy Note 7 handset should be familiar with these new S Pen features, it's nice to see those features land on a tablet (and a device that hopefully won't face the same fate as the Note 7). The Tab A's S Pen will also feature the same "ballpoint pen-like" seen in the Note 7's pen, which made drawing feel more natural than before.

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Note-takers may find the S Pen especially useful, as it's tied to Samsung's Notes app, which makes it easier to access apps including Action Memo, S Note and Scrapbook.

The tablet features a 10.1-inch, 1920 x 1200 pixel display panel, an Exynos 7870 processor, 3GB of RAM and 16GB of storage. That screen will be much more readable and sharp, as its pixel density is 1.7 times greater than its predecessor. The tablet's blue light filter and anti-glare features should make that high resolution panel easier on your eyes. 

The Galaxy Tab A 10.1 measures 0.32 inches thick and weighs 1.22 pounds. It runs Android Marshmallow, so yet again, Samsung device owners are stuck in the previous year's flavor of Android. The tablet comes in both black and white, so owners can pick the color that matches their other devices.

Samsung says the tablet's 7,300mAH battery should make it through up to 14 hours of internet usage, and we look forward to putting that claim through the paces with the Laptop Mag battery test. Speaking of which, stay tuned for a full review of the Galaxy Tab A 10.1 inch.

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Henry T. Casey