Samsung Galaxy Tab S5e hands-on review

Camera

The Tab S5e does come with a camera on the front and back. Neither are particularly good, which is just as well since you ideally wouldn't be using them for any serious photography. The back camera is good enough to scan any documents if you ever need to and the front camera is perfectly usable for video calls.

Daylight samples

Battery life

We didn't do any serious battery life testing on the Tab S5e but it did last us around two days on a single charge with regular use and several hours of watching videos on YouTube, Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. It also supports fast charging and takes about three hours to charge completely with the supplied fast charger.

Conclusion

Our overall first impressions of the Samsung Galaxy Tab S5e were rather negative. It partly has to do with Samsung deciding this thing needed a mid-range chipset and absolute low tier memory and storage options. While we had the low-end model, we doubt even the more expensive version would come close to matching even the slowest iPad in terms of overall performance.

The other let down is just with the attention to detail. Things like the fingerprint sensor and the power button being generally unusable at the best of times and especially with the Book Cover Keyboard attached seems almost comical in retrospect but were deeply infuriating during actual use. Also, the keyboard not turning the screen on or off when opened or closed seemed really odd.

Lastly, the platform itself is sinking to the point where most of it is already underwater. Google gave up on Android tablets and third-party developers gave up long before that. At this point it seems like Samsung is among the few makers trying to keep it afloat but the Tab S5e is a weak attempt at that.

In the end, the only thing we liked about the Tab S5e was how good it was for multimedia consumption. If you like watching movies and TV shows while on the move or even when just lying on your couch and don't want to disturb everyone with the TV then this is an excellent option for that. However, we can't really recommend it for anything else.