**Unboxing and First Impressions: Samsung Galaxy Tab S8 with Snapdragon 870**

The Samsung Galaxy Tab S8 is an Android-based desktop PC that has been transformed into a gaming powerhouse. As soon as I plug it in, it asks me if I want to extend the display mirror the screen or go into PC mode. I've chosen to go into PC mode, and after plugging it in via a USB-C to HDMI adapter, I'm now connected to a wireless keyboard and mouse.

In PC mode, I can use the tablet like it is right now, with multiple apps open, while also connecting an external monitor for a larger display. This setup allows me to switch between the tablet's screen and the external monitor seamlessly. The performance of this device is impressive, with some notable examples including ESP using PPSSPP 4X resolution, which runs at full speed in 3x on the Snapdragon 870. I've also tested the Dolphin Emulator for GameCube, which works really well on the Snapdragon 870.

The Dolphin Emulator not only emulates GameCube games but also Wii games. I took a closer look at Sonic Colors, which is one of those games that natively runs at 30 FPS on the Wii. With the Vulcan back end, I noticed similar performance between opengl and Vulcan, with opengl being just a bit more stable for certain games like Simpsons Hit and Run.

One notable exception was Soul Calibur 3, which required me to switch to the Vulcan back end at 1x due to system limitations. However, this device is still capable of running many popular games at full speed, including God of War 2 in 2x resolution using opengl. When I upgraded it to 3x and tested Gran Turismo 4, performance remained excellent.

The form factor of the Samsung Galaxy Tab S8 is a major selling point for me. At 8.8 inches, it's the perfect size for handheld gaming. The screen is an IPS display with 500 nits of brightness, making colors pop and ensuring good visibility in bright environments. Additionally, the device features dual stereo speakers tuned by JBL, which provide excellent sound quality.

Overall, I'm thoroughly impressed with this device and believe it has the potential to become a top choice for Android-based gaming. Its compact size makes it perfect for on-the-go gaming, and its performance is more than capable of handling demanding games at high resolutions. While there are other powerful tablets on the market, such as the Samsung Galaxy Tab S8 with a Gen 1 CPU, I believe the Snapdragon 870's performance is well worth considering.

**First Thoughts: A Closer Look**

I've been playing around with this device for the past couple of days and I'm still blown away by its performance. In terms of emulation, the Dolphin Emulator has been a standout performer, particularly when it comes to GameCube and Wii games. The experience is incredibly smooth, with no noticeable lag or slowdown.

One thing that did strike me was the limitations of running certain games at high resolutions. For example, Tatsunoko versus Capcom performed flawlessly in native resolution, while God of War 2 worked well up to 3x. However, when I tested it at higher levels, such as 4x and beyond, performance began to dip.

Another notable exception was the game Soul Calibur 3, which required me to switch back to the Vulcan back end at lower resolutions due to system limitations. While this wasn't a major concern for me, it's worth noting that not all games will be compatible or run smoothly on this device.

Despite these minor quibbles, I'm still thoroughly enjoying using this device and exploring its capabilities. If you're interested in learning more, I'll leave some links to relevant resources and videos in the description below.

**The Verdict: Is 8.8 Inches Perfect for Handheld Gaming?**

As I've spent time with the Samsung Galaxy Tab S8, I've come to realize that its compact size is a major advantage when it comes to handheld gaming. The 8.8-inch screen feels perfectly sized for my hands, and I've found myself reaching for this device more often than not.

In contrast, larger screens like those on other tablets can feel overwhelming or unwieldy in certain situations. For example, if you're using a larger tablet with a stylus, it can be difficult to navigate the screen without accidentally switching tools or interacting with areas that aren't meant to be touched.

That being said, personal preference plays a significant role when it comes to screen size. If you're someone who prefers a more immersive experience and is willing to compromise on portability, a larger screen may be the way to go.

Ultimately, I believe 8.8 inches is an ideal size for handheld gaming, providing the perfect balance between portability and display quality. If you're in the market for a new device and are looking for something that can handle demanding games at high resolutions, the Samsung Galaxy Tab S8 is definitely worth considering.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enforeign what's going on everybody it's ETA Prime pack here again today we're going to be taking a look at an awesome high performance Android tablet known as the Lenovo Legion y700 now this is one I've actually been wanting to get my hands on for a little while and they do offer a couple different storage variants of this unit the one I have here has 12 gigabytes of RAM and 256 gigabytes of storage but when it comes to that CPU this little tablet is rocking a Snapdragon 870. now with the Gen 1 out it might not sound like a lot but when it comes to these smaller tablets this is a little Powerhouse so I spent the past few days with the y700 and I'm really enjoying the experience here I mean we've got plenty of power to run our favorite apps but this is really focused on gaming and of course with the gaming tablet we're definitely going to be testing out some emulation but first up let's take a look at what it came with now this does have a 50 watt charger in the Box it supports 45 watt quick charging and we've got a 6550 milliamp hour battery which does offer all-day battery life the unit that I picked up did come with this clear silicone case but I'm not exactly sure if everyone is going to come with this we also got a screen protector in the Box so there are a few things I look for when I'm looking for a gaming phone or a gaming tablet and one of them is video over USB type-c and this tablet does support it so we can easily connect this to a larger display this actually has a PC mode built in which is really awesome we've also got dual stereo speakers tuned by JBL and the 3.5 millimeter audio jack and when it comes to the specs for the CPU we've got that Snapdragon 870 great octa-core CPU we've got a big Prime core up to 3.2 gigahertz this does really great with emulation and if you're into Android you know exactly what chip this is for the GPU it's using the Arduino 650 you can pick this up in two different variants one with eight gigabytes of RAM and 128 gigabytes of storage or 12 gigs of RAM and 256 gigabytes of storage but both do support a micro OSD card I think the size on this display is perfect for a little gaming tablet it's a 120 hertz 8.8 inch IPS 1600 by 2560 with 500 nits of brightness I mean it looks absolutely beautiful dual stereo speakers Wi-Fi 6 Bluetooth 5.1 a 6550 milliamp hour battery with 45 watt quick charging capabilities and you can charge this from 0 to 100 in about 45 minutes so yeah I mean you can get up and go real quick with this thing and when it comes to the operating system this is running Android 11 with zui 13 Android 12 is on the way for this tablet though overall performance is outstanding and I expected it to be with that Snapdragon 870. we've also got plenty of ram this is the 12 gigabyte version but even if you opted for the eight you've got more than enough for a tablet like this and with Wi-Fi 6 built-in streaming video loading up web pages or download new games is really really Snappy this also has a PC mode built in which basically transforms it into an Android desktop PC but I gotta say one of my favorite features on this tablet is the legion realm and since this is dedicated to gaming this little section here has all of our games and emulators that I've downloaded so far and if we swipe down from the top we've got a lot of tools here so we can actually go to beast mode we can go to power saving mode or balanced and what this is going to do is ensure that the CPU clock and the GPU clock is up there personally I like going to beast mode here it's going to offer better performance overall and there's also a little GPU Suite built in once we start up a game I'll show you that but uh we've got our FPS on screen at all times if you want it up there we've also got the CPU temperature battery life and everything like that but yeah I mean these gaming features that are built into this tablet really help out with mobile gaming and emulation uh one thing I always like to take a look at is the wide Vine level and we're level one here so we can get HD content from Netflix Hulu HBO and nowadays we don't need it for YouTube but I did want to show off a little bit of YouTube video playback this is an HDR display so if I head over here to a 4K 60 HDR video it'll switch right over for us stats for nerds is on and I'll just show you that we are at 4K 60 HDR here from the advanced section we'll go ahead and play and I love this speaker placement so while you're gaming on this the speakers are actually towards the top on each side so your palm doesn't block them off like some other phones and tablets on the market and this thing gets really loud it also has some bass I mean those dual stereo speakers tuned by JBL on this thing sound really good not as good as something like the iPad Pro but it's getting really close and we're working with a smaller form factor here when it comes to benchmarks for geekbench 5 we get a single core of 971 multi 3139 3D Mark Wildlife which is a Vulcan Benchmark for the GPU we got a 4210 not bad at all and finally antutu with a 721 374. and if you take a look down the list here our GPU score is around 237 000. so not quite 888 or gen 1 levels but for a tablet this is really great performance okay so moving over to some gaming here's gen impact and I've just started this up from Legion realm so if we swipe down from the top here we can set our mode up you can go to energy saving mode but with a game like this that is a bit hard to run on an Android device you'll probably want to put this in beast mode because it's going to up that CPU clock so as soon as I go to beast mode we went from 0.84 gigahertz to 2.7 we've also got some GPU optimizations that can be done from the settings up here so if we move over here we can open up our GPU panel and we can set it up as default balanced high quality or custom and with some games we can actually limit the frame rate or turn it all the way up to 120 but unfortunately gentian impact isn't affected by this on Android it's only 30 or 60. so we're running at 60 but we're in beast mode High settings and the game runs absolutely amazing on this little chip and you know in the past I've tested the Snapdragon 870 on different devices specifically the Poco F3 this game did run pretty well but on this tablet it does run much better due to the optimizations we have with the you know the legion realm the GPU tweaks that we can do and putting it up into beast mode but yeah I mean if we're running engine impact here at 60fps high settings then we're not going to have much of an issue running any of the other Android games from the market but I did want to show a few extras off I know it's not a super hard game to run but Minecraft from Google Play does 120 FPS and we're really close here I'm at 15 chunks and turning it down to about 10 and putting it in beast mode will get you that constant 120 but anything over 60 on a tablet with this game is still really playable I've got one more here I'm actually it's going to be Asphalt 9 we're maxed out running at 60 and this has been on the market for a while I knew it was going to run at full speed so playing these games on the built-in screen is great and right now we're kind of in phone mode or tablet mode but if we turn on PC mode this is going to give us a more desktop PC experience on the tablet screen or we can connect this to a larger display and then from there you can connect a keyboard and mouse and a controller and have a nice little PC set up with this tablet and this is what it looks like so as soon as you plug it in it's going to ask you if you want to extend the display mirror the screen or go into PC mode so I'm in PC mode right now I've just plugged into a USB type-c to HDMI adapter I've also got a wireless keyboard and mouse connected we can have multiple apps open and we can use the tablet like it is right now plus the external monitor in PC mode we can change the audio output and if you're familiar with Samsung Dex this is basically the same thing we've just turned this Android tablet into an Android based desktop PC and yeah you can do full screen apps here we have ESP using PPSSPP 4X resolution it'll even run chains of Olympus and Ghost of Sparta at full speed 3x there is one downside to using this tablet in PC mode and really just comes down to not being able to use Legion realm so we can't adjust those GPU parameters or CPU but if you want to mirror the display you can still access that no problem I definitely wanted to take a look at some more emulation and first up we've got the Dolphin Emulator for GameCube I'm using the opengl back end here with the Simpsons Hit and Run and it actually works really well on the Snapdragon 870 again in beast mode with all of these tests and since the Dolphin Emulator also emulates Wii games I figured I'd test a couple out here's Sonic Colors this is one of those games that natively runs at 30 FPS on the Wii and with this I just swapped over to the Vulcan back in I was getting very similar performance between the opengl and Vulcan but I did notice with that hit and run game opengl was just a bit more stable and the final one I tested here was tatsunoko versus Capcom I just kept it with that Vulcan back in we're at the native resolution and yeah GameCube and Wii are playable on this setup now I'm sure you will run into some harder to run games with Gamecube and Wii that just won't perform as well but there's a lot of stuff that's going to run at full speed here's some PS2 emulation using ether sx2 we've got God of War 2 at 2x resolution using the opengl back in and I went in this at 3x and performance was really good but once I started getting a lot of particles and effects on screen it did dip down a bit so 2x is kind of The Sweet Spot for this one but with Gran Turismo 4 I was able to take this up to 3x and in the rally stages we can go up to four ax so as you can see I did keep the opengl back in with this one and I was kind of hoping to get away with all of these games on opengl but with the last one I tested which is Soul Calibur 3 I did have to go down to 1x and use the Vulcan back end this is one of those games that gives me trouble on certain systems and the Snapdragon 870 seems to be one of those systems so overall I'm a huge fan of this tablet it really comes down to the form factor and performance of course there are more powerful tablets on the market like the Samsung Galaxy Tab S8 it's got that gen 1 CPU which does knock this out of the park but the smallest screen we can get that with is an 11 inch screen and I really do think that's a little too big for on-the-go gaming on a tablet this 8.8 inch screen seems perfect I mean it looks great here I know it's only IPS but the colors definitely pop it does support HDR and we've got 500 nits of brightness I mean I love the form factor of this thing it definitely fits right in the hand and like I mentioned while you're holding it you're not blocking those speakers off and that's a problem I always run into with like gaming phones my Palms always block those off while I'm gaming on those devices but these are kind of near the top so you can get full sound out of this thing and these dual stereo speakers tuned by JBL sound amazing so first impressions here loving this thing so far I do have one more video playing with the y700 I want to mess around with this for the next couple days so if there's anything else you want to see running in that video definitely let me know in the comments below and I'd also like to know your thoughts on the form factor of this device would you rather have a bigger screen tablet or is this 8.8 inch Kind of Perfect for handheld gaming let me know down below but that's going to wrap it up for this one if you're interested in learning more I will leave a couple links in the description and like always thanks for watching\n"