The Samsung Galaxy Tab S8: A Budget-Friendly Android Tablet with Surprising Performance

As we dive into the world of budget-friendly tablets, it's hard not to get excited about the Samsung Galaxy Tab S8. This mid-range tablet may not be the top-of-the-line device, but it packs a punch that will leave you impressed. With a price tag of $199, this tablet is an absolute steal, especially when compared to other devices in its class.

One of the standout features of the Galaxy Tab S8 is its performance. Despite being a budget-friendly option, it's clear that Samsung has put some serious thought into the device's specifications. The tablet is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 680 chipset, which may not be the most powerful processor on the market, but it still delivers impressive results. In our testing, we found that the Galaxy Tab S8 can handle demanding tasks like gaming with ease. Whether you're playing Minecraft or Call of Duty Mobile, this device has got you covered.

But what really sets the Galaxy Tab S8 apart is its support for controllers. Yes, you read that right - Bluetooth Xbox controller support! This may seem like a minor feature to some, but trust us, it's a game-changer (pun intended). With the ability to plug in your favorite controller and start playing, this device becomes an instant hit with gamers of all ages.

For Android gamers, there are also some impressive native titles that take advantage of the tablet's capabilities. Games like Ginge and Impact run smoothly on the Galaxy Tab S8, with frame rates ranging from 30-60 FPS. While we did experience some minor slowdowns at times, these are easily resolved by adjusting the settings or using a frame rate limiter.

But what about emulation? The Galaxy Tab S8 is also capable of running popular titles like Dreamcast and PSP games using emulators like Redream and PPSSPP Vulcan. Sonic Adventure 2 ran smoothly in 1280x960 resolution, while Tekken 6 was playable at 3x resolution with some minor hiccups. Of course, emulation can be a tricky business, but the Galaxy Tab S8 handles these tasks with ease.

One of the biggest surprises, however, is the device's performance on more demanding titles like God of War II and Chains of Olympus. While we were able to get these games running at 1x resolution using Vulcan back in, they struggled with the safe preset. Fortunately, we found that using the alpha version of the Ether SX2 emulator, which supports incremental scaling, helped resolve these issues.

When it comes to battery life, the Galaxy Tab S8 delivers. With a 7000mAh battery, you can expect around 5-6 hours of video playback, 3-4 hours of gaming, and an impressive 8 hours of web browsing. While this may not be as long-lasting as some other devices on the market, it's still a respectable showing given the device's price tag.

In conclusion, the Samsung Galaxy Tab S8 is an absolute steal at $199. With its powerful performance, support for controllers, and capable emulation, this tablet is sure to please even the most discerning Android enthusiasts. Add in its long battery life and sleek design, and you've got a winning formula. If you're in the market for a budget-friendly Android tablet that can keep up with your gaming needs, look no further than the Galaxy Tab S8.

Battery Life: 5-6 hours of video playback, 3-4 hours of gaming, 8 hours of web browsing

Emulation Performance:

* Dreamcast: Smooth performance in 1280x960 resolution

* PSP: Runable at 3x resolution with minor hiccups

* God of War II: Struggles with safe preset, but resolves with incremental scaling

* Chains of Olympus: Minor slowdowns, but playable

Controller Support: Bluetooth Xbox controller support

Performance:

* Smooth performance in demanding games like Minecraft and Call of Duty Mobile

Design and Display:

* Sleek design and 1280x960 resolution display

Price: $199

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey what's going on everybody it's eta primepak here again today we're going to be taking a look at one of the best budget android tablets of 2022. now if you're a regular view of the channel you know i love my android tablets i try to get my hands on a few every single year and when it comes down to it the best android tablets are a bit expensive in my opinion at least at the time i'm making this video the best one on the market right now is the tab s8 the tab s8 plus or the tab sa ultra but those are on up there in the 600 to 1100 range but when it comes to the new chuwi ipad max this is coming in at 199 and well worth it when you compare to other 10 inch tablets on the market we've got an 8 core snapdragon cpu 8 gigs of ram quad speakers and one of the best things about this budget tablet here it is using wide vine level 1 so we can get hd netflix hbo hulu and all of the other video streaming apps that require a wide vine certification to get hd content on your android device and this actually might sound odd to some people but when it comes to the cheaper android tablets on the market basically none of them have widevine certification so you're going to be stuck with sd content on those applications but with this we've got a certification for wide vine level 1 and we're good to go there so when it comes to the specs of the new chuwi ipad max we've got the snapdragon 680 this is an octa-core arm cpu we've got four a73 cores at 2.4 gigahertz and four a 53 cores at 1.9 we've got an arduino 610 gpu eight gigabytes of lp ddr4 ram 128 gigabytes of internal ufs storage plus it does support a micro sd card a 10.3 inch ips display with a resolution of 2000 by 1200 quad speakers ac wi-fi bluetooth 5.0 this also supports 4g lte it's using a 7000 milliamp hour battery and it supports qualcomm quick charge 3.0 but unfortunately they do send you a slow charger in the box so you will need a different wall adapter and like i mentioned this is running android 12 out of the box with no bloat whatsoever i mean this is a super clean rom when it comes to these tablets so first things first i did want to show you that we are widevine certified for level one here i've downloaded dr info from the google play store as you can see l1 i've also tested netflix and hbo go it does give me hd content now if you were to go with a more expensive tablet or even the amazon fire 10 then you'll definitely get level 1 built in all the samsung tablets have it but they're you know larger companies and their tablets are a bit more expensive except for the amazon fire but with the fire you have to work with fire os it's not true android and with this here we've got android 12 google play ready to go and the cpu they chose to use in this thing does outperform the amazon fire 10 tablet so we've also got a more powerful tablet which will allow us to play higher end games and higher end emulators and when it comes to overall performance this thing is definitely snappy it's not a super high-end chip this is an older snapdragon 680 but it's outperforming a lot of the other inexpensive tablets that are on the market right now so it's hard for me to show off you know netflix and hbo due to copyright but here we have some youtube streaming i'm at 1080p 60fps and this will handle 1440p quite well that snapdragon 680 can do it 4k is a little on the iffy side it does drop a little more frames than i'd like but 1440p 1080 60fps is good to go on this chip and the built-in speakers actually sound pretty good next thing i wanted to do was run a few benchmarks and with geekbench and 3dmark wildlife i thought we'd see a higher score here with the 680 but with geekbench 5 we get a single core of 374 multi 1461. when it comes to 3dmark wildlife 449 and i thought we'd be up in the 800 to 900 but unfortunately it's just on the lower side but the final one i ran here was antutu and we got a 252 000 out of this unit if you take a look down the list cpu is around 73 000 gpu 50 000 and so on and so on so it's not going to win any benchmark awards but let's check out some real world gaming on this device first up we've got minecraft and i didn't have to change any settings we've still got fancy graphics on i'm using an xbox controller connected over bluetooth game like this is going to run fine on the snapdragon 680 and i believe we're at 12 chunks i think that's what it kind of sets itself at on these mid-range tablets but if you wanted to play minecraft on this or get something like this for the kids to play minecraft they'll have a great time on it moving over to call of duty mobile again still using that bluetooth xbox controller this is another one that natively supports controllers and it's really up to you i mean if you want to use one you can or you can use the built-in touch controls both of them work equally as well and this game runs great on this device and finally for the native android gaming side of things we've got ginge and impact now this is definitely a harder one to run on lower end devices and right now i'm at 45 fps we can set it to 30 45 or 60 from the settings and we're at low that's just how it is right now you can go to medium 30 fps and it will do sort of 60 but i really don't think it's running at a complete 60. so i've kind of found it here at 45 low as the way to go it still looks great on this display it would be nice to be able to you know max this out at 60fps but even the samsung galaxy tab s8 does fall under 60 every once in a while maxed out like that so this tablet does handle native android games quite well but what about emulation and the first one we're testing here is some dreamcast using the redream emulator i am upscaled to 1280 by 960 and i think we could go one more step higher with this but it still looks great this is sonic adventure 2 running at full speed fps is up in the top left-hand corner with dreamcast you're not going to have an issue on this tablet the 680 has more than enough power next up we've got some psp emulation using ppsspp vulcan back in 3x resolution with tekken 6. i consider this a mid-range game to emulate on some lower end devices we do get some hiccups here and there but at 3x running at full speed looking really good but as a lot of us already know who are in the emulation there are harder to emulate psp games on android like the god of war series here's chains of olympus and with this we're still using the vulcan back in but in order to get this to run at a steady 60 i did have to drop it down to 1x so you could always take it up to around three or four with frame skip on if you don't mind using frame skip but if you want to run it at 60 1x is the way to go on the snapdragon 680 i also wanted to test out some ps2 using aether sx2 and right now we're at 1x resolution vulcan back in with the unsafe preset i was really hoping that it would handle these games with the safe preset that way we don't have any cycle skipping going on but with unsafe it actually does a pretty decent job now there are some harder to emulate games like god of war 2 here that still struggle with that unsafe preset but i'm using the version from google play and there's an alpha version out right now you can get it from the official ether sx2 website that supports incremental scaling that way we could go under 1x and it would probably help out with a lot of these games so in the end not a bad little budget tablet here coming in at 199 it definitely outperforms a lot of the other 200 tablets on the market and when it comes to something like the fire 10 i personally do like that tablet i think it's uh 150 when it's not on sale for the lower end version but i really don't like fire os i'd much rather have a tablet like this with true android installed on it we've got android 12 here with no bloat and access to google play right out of the box when it comes to battery life on the new ipad max remember we've got a 7 000 milliamp hour battery here for video playback you can expect around five to five and a half hours if you want to do some gaming on this it really depends if you're doing 3d stuff about three and a half to four hours and when it comes to web browsing you can expect around 8 hours of battery life out of this unit which really isn't that bad given that we're working with a 199 dollar budget tablet but in the end it's really up to you if you're interested in learning more maybe picking one up i will leave a couple links in the description if there's anything else you want to see running on the ipad max let me know in the comments below and like always thanks for watching\n"