Samsung Galaxy Tab S7 FE review

Display

The Samsung Galaxy Tab S7 FE and the Galaxy Tab S7+ have the same screen diagonal of 12.4," but the similarities end here. The "Fan Edition" relies on a TFT LCD panel locked at a standard 60Hz refresh rate.

The display has a resolution of 2,560 x 1,600 pixels or 243ppi - plenty sharp for a tablet. There is no information on the maker of the screen glass.

The screen supports HDR10+ as per all hardware-reading apps we ran. Widevine L1 DRM is also present. We successfully ran HDR10 YouTube videos, and it seems Amazon Prime recognizes it as HDR10, too. Netflix cannot identify the Tab S7 FE as a supported device, and at the time of writing this review - you cannot use it. This should change soon enough, though.

We captured a very good 432 nits of maximum brightness in our display tests. The Tab S7 FE has a sunlight boost on top of this, which allows it to go as high as 522 nits. The black levels are impressively deep, and the final contrast ratio is about 1900:1 - an excellent one!

The minimum brightness at the far left of the scrubber is just 3.3 nits - a great one!

There are no color settings on the Galaxy Tab S7 FE, so what you get out of the box is what you'd experience through its lifetime. The good news is that the screen is calibrated very well to match the DCI-P3 color space with an average deltaE of 2.4.

Battery life

The Galaxy Tab S7 FE has the same battery as the Galaxy Tab S7+ - a massive 10,090 mAh cell. It supports 45W fast charging, but just like the Tab S7+, you get a puny 15W adapter in the box.

The Galaxy Tab S7 FE clocked north of 11 hours on our web browsing script - a solid time for a tablet. The more expensive Tab S7+ and its OLED screen did worse here - 7 hours and 49 minutes.

Then the Galaxy Tab S7 FE scored 9 hours and 33 minutes before its battery dropped to 10% when playing looped videos in fullscreen. Another solid number here, although the Galaxy Tab S7+ managed to keep looping our video for more than 12 hours.

Charging speed

The Galaxy Tab S7 FE supports 45W fast charging, but if you want to enjoy such speedy experience, you need to buy Samsung's 45W adapter separately. The tablet ships with a 15W adapter, which refills just 18% of the battery in 30 minutes.

30min charging test (from 0%)

Higher is better

• Huawei MatePad 11
  36%
• Huawei MatePad Pro 12.6
  33%
• Apple iPad Pro 12.9 (2018)
  20%
• Samsung Galaxy Tab S7+
  18%
• Samsung Galaxy Tab S7 FE
  18%
• Doogee S88 Pro
  16%

A full charge requires 3 hours and 5 minutes, which is outrageous. This tablet, as well as the other Tab S7 slates, should have been bundled with at least 25W chargers!

Time to full charge (from 0%)

Lower is better

• Huawei MatePad 11
  1:50h
• Huawei MatePad Pro 12.6
  2:10h
• Samsung Galaxy Tab S7 FE
  3:05h
• Apple iPad Pro 12.9 (2018)
  3:30h
• Samsung Galaxy Tab S7+
  3:35h
• Doogee S88 Pro
  3:49h

Speakers

The Galaxy Tab S7 FE has two speakers, unlike the Galaxy Tab S7 and S7+, which have four. They are still tuned by AKG and support Dolby Atmos, so you are not losing any of the enhancements.

The two speakers are placed symmetrically on the shorter sides, and the output is very well balanced.

The Tab S7 FE loudspeaker scored a Good mark on our test. Their sound is rich and clean, and we can even hear some bass even if it's not as loud as the iPad Pro's. Still, we think everyone will be happy with the overall sound experience as we were.

Use the Playback controls to listen to the phone sample recordings (best use headphones). We measure the average loudness of the speakers in LUFS. A lower absolute value means a louder sound. A look at the frequency response chart will tell you how far off the ideal "0db" flat line is the reproduction of the bass, treble, and mid frequencies. You can add more phones to compare how they differ. The scores and ratings are not comparable with our older loudspeaker test. Learn more about how we test here.