Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

After having bought this tablet and used it for a couple of days, that was what I was asking myself, “who is this for, exactly?” Let’s just say Samsung isn’t reigniting the tablet wars anytime soon with the Tab S6, that War was won, long ago, by Apple. But I really missed the Android eco system, I hadn’t owned a non-Apple tablet in years, the Tab S2, to be exact. I did purchase Google’s Pixel Slate, briefly, in a previous attempt to return to the green guy, but found it to be too unwieldy, buggy, and just plain expensive to justify keeping it. That all being said, I thought the Tab S6 was a bit on the pricy side, but not nearly so much as the Pixel Slate, even with the keyboard, and as Samsung is the biggest Android show in town, it’d be a good place to start again with the OS. I was wrong. I feel like, ultimately, Android doesn’t work on tablets. It’s, as I said before, too unwieldy. Use an Android tablet a day, then use an iPad the following day, you cannot tell me the iPad experience isn’t just more fluid, more usable, just better. But the OS itself wasn’t enough for me to give up on the Tab S6, it also promised great sound, DEX, a desktop environment with the Tab S6, when you add an “optional” $170 keyboard, and a great screen. The Tab S6 delivers on two of these promises, but the 3rd is so poorly done that it ended my experience with this tablet. The sound, is quite good, especially for the size and form factor of the tablet. The screen is very nice. Usual overblown saturated Samsung AMOLED screens, but it looks good and blacks are true. Dex? Horrible. First of all, I remind you that on a tablet that is definitely advertised as a laptop replacement, does not include said tablet. Would these tablet manufacturers PLEASE STOP advertising a product as a tablet replacement and then not include the keyboard? When I add the 170 to the standard 650-750 price for the tablet, and now my “laptop replacement” is pushing well over 900 bucks...might as well get a laptop, right? The CPU / RAM will easily exceed what’s in the S6. And if you want a tablet only device, the newest non-pro iPad has a beautiful screen, great speakers too, and costs about 1/2 as much as the S6. Back to Dex, the reason why it is terrible is that A) you must attach the “optional” keyboard to even use it. B) most, and I mean most, of your Android apps will be nonfunctional in Dex mode, so what’s even the point of it? I don’t need a desktop environment to surf the web, which is all you’ll be doing in Dex mode anyway. It’s just a stupid desktop-like experience to try to justify making you spend 170 just to get into it. So, if you want a pure Android tablet, there are 1000 varieties, much cheaper. Heck, a Amazon Fire tablet is so much cheaper and will give you your basic android experience, buy it instead. If you want a great tablet, buy the cheapest new regular iPad. If you want a tablet that can truly replace a laptop, get an iPad Pro with a brydge keyboard, they are fantastic. But if you truly want an Android/tablet hybrid? Chrome book!! I replaced this with a Pixel book, so much better keyboard, it’s backlit (Tab S6 keyboard is not backlit, for 170? whatever), it still has a good touchscreen, and the Android integration actually works...usually.