Between the ubiquitous smartphone and the workhorse laptop lies the middle child of tech purchases: the humble tablet. Is it a glorified TV for bed or sofa, is it an email machine, is it a digital newspaper, or can you use it for getting your work done much like you can with a PC?
Perhaps what these questions show is that a tablet is the most chameleon of devices as it can adapt to be whatever you want. If you don’t want to go for Apple’s ever popular iPad. Which starts from £329 and goes well north of £1,000 as you go up the range, you might be more tempted by the latest tablet from Samsung.
The Samsung Galaxy Tab S10 Lite is the firm’s newest tablet with an almost identically sized 10.9-inch display to the cheapest 11-inch iPad. Where the Tab S10 Lite one-ups the iPad is with its 90Hz refresh rate, which means text, apps and games will scroll smoother than on the iPad’s 60Hz screen.
That’s paired with a large 8,000mAh battery which Smasung says will last for 16 hours of video playback (better than the iPad’s quoted 10 hours), a slim design with a frame that’s just 6.6mm thick, plus an 8MP camera on the back and a 5MP on the front so you can take those family video calls without a hitch.
Perhaps best of all, the Tab S10 Lite comes with Samsung’s S Pen stylus in the box – that’s something you can’t say of Apple, who sells its Apple Pencil pens separately for costs of about £100.
That means you can use the Samsung Notes app or third party options such as Notion or Goodnotes to take handwritten notes, draw graphs, doodle, or make professional art in apps such as Sketchbook and Picsart. Buying the S10 Lite even gets you a year’s free subscription to the full version of Goodnotes.
The tablet is also chock-full of Samsung’s Galaxy AI software, which is a little hard to ignore in my experience, but you don’t have to use it. It’s there with handy things such as Circle to Search though, which Google searches anything you circle on the screen.
“The new Galaxy Tab S10 Lite is designed to bring practical, everyday functionality to more people around the world,” said Changtae Kim, EVP & Head of New Computing R&D Team, Mobile eXperience Business at Samsung Electronics. “We built it to be a reliable companion that empowers users to get more out of every moment, with useful features and a versatile design that fits naturally into how they jump between classes and playlists, stay productive during the day or turn downtime into creative time.”
The Galaxy Tab S10 Lite comes with 128GB storage and 6GB RAM and Android 15, though Samsung should support the device for several years with free software updates.
When the S10 Lite goes on sale on September 5, you’ll be able to pick it up in grey, silver or a great-looking Coralred. Samsung has not confirmed a price yet for the UK, but in the US it’ll cost $349 – so expect it to sell for about £349.