Within Samsung’s recent slew of FE lineup launch, the company also announced new FE tablets. What we have here is the Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 FE+. I have no idea why the name is not the Tab S9+ FE but it’s actually the Tab S9 FE+, but I digress. This is a simple tablet and it’s just a bigger version of the Galaxy Tab S9 FE, the one without the plus.
Now, this tablet is positioned as a mid-range tablet, but is it actually a recommended buy? We’ll go through all aspects of this tablet, starting with the screen since it’s the most important thing when it comes to a tablet.
It’s using a 12.4-inch screen with a rather high resolution of 2560×1600 pixels in resolution, and 16:10 aspect ratio. It also has an adequately sized bezel so I can grab the tablet on its side and still be comfortable using it. Now, our colorimeter reports slightly higher than 98% sRGB color gamut coverage and can reach a maximum brightness of around 750 nits – which is actually good.
However, this is an IPS LCD screen. I mean, an IPS LCD screen is not an issue since this is a rather good screen but the black levels and contrast levels are just not that good when compared to an OLED screen. We’ll return to this later in the video.
The second most important thing about a tablet is the speaker. The Galaxy Tab S9 FE+ comes with a stereo speaker system and it’s offset to the side. I don’t know if I should call this the top or bottom or the right, to me, it’s at the “top side”.
I think the placement is good since most people playing games or watching movies will be holding it at the lower side anyway, so two speakers are okay and they sound quite good.
Now, the Galaxy Tab S9 FE+ actually has pogo pins at the bottom of the tablet too. That’s actually the ports used for the keyboard cover case. The Galaxy Tab S9 FE+ has the exact same dimensions as the Galaxy Tab S9+ – the high-end non-FE version. I don’t have the Tab S9+ so I asked our friend Vtechgraphy to try it out – and he told me that both the tablets do indeed use the same keyboard cover case. The fit is 100% perfect and everything works exactly the same.
Why would you want a keyboard cover case with this mid-range tablet? Well, it does have Samsung DeX. Yes, full-fledged Samsung DeX just like its flagship tablets and phones. You can treat it like a laptop replacement too – but that heavily depends on your use case. We did a video about using DeX as a laptop replacement before.
And since this is a Samsung tablet, you can enable DeX mode without plugging in an external keyboard or mouse. No idea why you’d want to do this, but you can.
Surprisingly, this tablet does not have display output via its USB-C port. That means you can only use DeX on the tablet itself.
The next question that many people will have is – the performance. It’s an Exynos 1380 chipset and surely the experience is going to be bad, right? No, not right. Even though the specs of this tablet are similar to the Galaxy A54 that we reviewed earlier this year.
Now, the Tab S9 FE+ does not have the weird storage read/write speed limitation that the A54 had – and that’s good. The Exynos 1380 can finally shine at its maximum potential, and I’m surprised. It performed magnificently – especially at such a high render resolution.
The battery is another point of concern though – but not to worry since its 10,090mAh battery can last for more than 16 hours in our battery life test. That’s really good considering the Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra can’t even last 10 hours in this test.
The charging speed is also good as this tablet can take in a maximum of 45W via USB-PD PPS charging standard – and it took less than an hour and a half to charge completely. That’s good.
And oh – this tablet also has a microSD card slot and if you get the cellular model then you’ll also be able to stuff in a SIM card within this slot. This entire tablet is also rated for IP68 – just like the high-end Galaxy Tab S9 series of tablets.
By the way, the S Pen is also IP-rated. It’s included in the box and works as expected – you can draw and write using the S Pen, or just to poke around like I always do. But this is not the complete S Pen experience since it doesn’t have wireless connectivity – so there is no magic wand feature.
This tablet also has two cameras at the back and as pointed out by some of you, tablet cameras are useful to take pictures of the whiteboard or something like that. It serves that purpose well enough.
There’s also another thing that I really want to talk about – and that’s the fingerprint scanner. The Galaxy Tab S9 FE+ has its fingerprint scanner built into the power button itself – and that makes so much more sense compared to the under-display fingerprint scanner on the Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra. I need to press the power button anyway, so integrating them into this one button makes a lot of sense.
Should you buy the Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 FE Plus?
Finally, I want to comment about the price. The Galaxy Tab S9 FE series of tablets are as shown on the screen. There are quite a lot of configurations available, hence creating a lot of permutations.
What we have here is the Galaxy Tab S9 FE+ WiFi model with 256GB of storage – and the price of this is at RM3,099. Samsung Malaysia is also having a promotion right now – and they’re giving the Smart Book Cover accessory for free. You know, that origami case that I thought was too expensive? I still think the rugged case I got for the Tab S9 Ultra was better than this origami case, though.
Anyway, back to the price. I think generally, the price of this tablet is too high. Yeah, it’s a great tablet for what it sets out to do but for a mid-range tablet, it’s just too expensive. I think for the price of this tablet – it should be using an AMOLED screen instead. That would make the price justifiable.
At the current state, I think the best time to get this tablet is during a discount. It’s still new so there aren’t any major discounts yet so be a little patient. Maybe during the 12.12 promotion is the time when Samsung will offer some discounts? I surely hope so.
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Hi from New Zealand
Question. Is this tablet able to make phone calls on the cellular model or can you recomend a tablet or phablet
That is 8 to 10 inch that does make phone calls . Thankyou.
Not sure if iwe can make calls using the cellular model. Maybe have a look at the Galaxy Tab A series with 8-inch size? That’s more usable, I think.