Display
The display has long been the main feature of Samsung mobile devices. The company gives it a special attention, because it has the most advanced technologies in this field. De facto it has no worthy competitors here, and this can be clearly seen on the Galaxy TabPro S. At MWC 2016 in Barcelona Huawei announced the tablet MateBook, which was extremely like the Galaxy TabPro S. Not literally, but in the main function: it is a 12-inch tablet on Windows 10 with a keyboard attached. Do you know what their main difference is? Right, it is the display.
Actually, Huawei's device received an excellent display, but this is in any case an LCD matrix. As for Samsung, it is supplied with an OLED-screen in the modification of Super AMOLED, and it is the best in the market in many respects. I will not be surprised if soon the South Korean company returns completely to the market of laptops in their premium segment, where it will offer large AMOLED-displays. The 12-inch matrix in the Galaxy TabPro S is used for the first time too.
The tablet gets the following benefits from such a screen: small thickness, low power consumption, excellent color reproduction, wide viewing angles, good brightness, "natural" blacks. And it's all subjective, so to speak "by eye". The display is really excellent, and even unusual in something. Thus I'm not used to seeing a normal black on a Windows device - in LCD matrixes, we remember, it is slightly greyish due to the peculiarities of the technology.
The Galaxy TabPro S’s screen has high resolution, though it does not set records. We are talking about 2160x1440 pixels, the same figures as in the Surface Pro 4 and the Huawei MateBook. At 12 inches diagonal, it provides a good point density at 216 ppi. The aspect ratio turned out to be quite unusual: 3:2. It is like in the pictures with SLR cameras. This makes the screen not so "square" like in the iPad with the ratio 4:3, but not so elongated as in the most displays with the aspect ratio 16:9. Microsoft for some reason considered this option to be successful, and has begun using it since the days of the Surface Pro 3. Now this experience is repeated by Samsung and Huawei.
Meanwhile, the maximum brightness was measured at the level of 331.1 cd/m2, which is not so much. Although it depends on what to be compared to. For an average tablet at 7-8 diagonal this result is a slightly below average, but for a full-fledged notebook – is noticeably higher. Perhaps the main thing here is to determine is it sufficient for the typical use of the Samsung Galaxy TabPro S or not, and the answer is" yes". The flaw is fading in the sun, but nevertheless, it is strange to imagine a person who will carry a heavy 700-gram 12-inch tablet like a phone. But the brightness of black is zero, as it should be in the OLED-display, which gives it an amazing depth and the highest contrast.
Цветовой охват экрана тоже не подвел – он заметно превосходит пространство sRGB и приближается к Adobe RGB, прямо как у профессиональных мониторов. Однако что для ЖК «высший пилотаж», для AMOLED является нормой, в чем не раз доводилось убедиться, тестируя многочисленные смартфоны с матрицами Super AMOLED. В общем, по части цветопередачи устройство Samsung не оплошало тоже.
The color screen coverage also did not disappoint - it is clearly superior to the space sRGB and is close to Adobe RGB, just like in professional monitors. However, what seems to be superb for LCD is just a norm for AMOLED, we made sure of it while testing multiple smartphones on the matrix Super AMOLED. In general, the color reproduction of the Samsung device has not failed as well.
The gamma curve looks good. It is significantly below the reference curve of 2.2, which means a slight darkening of the image, but the eye cannot catch it.
Another interesting characteristic of the screen is the evenness of illumination. You would have thought that in this respect AMOLED is better than a liquid crystal matrix, but it is not. As can be seen, the upper right corner is noticeably darker than the bottom left one. The jump in brightness is 40-50 cd / m2, which is generally not visible.
As for the evenness of color temperature, the situation is better. It is not perfect, but much more equal. The differential does not exceed 400K, which is very little in absolute terms, which makes it invisible for the eye as well.
Nothing interesting can be found in the screen settings. Although, in fact, what can one look for, if it is common Windows 10, where the system settings cannot be customized?
However, no one forbids operating the equipment through the personal software. Especially for this aim, the Galaxy Settings app with the AMOLED section was created. Inside we could find screen switch profiles: adaptive, movies, photos and basic. All exactly the same as in the Samsung smartphones. However, while changing these profiles, we did not notice any difference. Probably, the problem was caused by the unfinished beta version of the application - at the time of testing the tablet was not on sale yet.
Despite some flaws, the Galaxy TabPro S display is really excellent: clear, with good colors, deep blacks and wide viewing angles. It is very pleasant that the OLED technology is gradually coming to the big devices.
Camera
It seems that a huge tablet, which is five minutes away from a laptop, does not need two cameras. Actually, it is really hard to wear, to say nothing of shooting with it. But no, the Galaxy TabPro S offers two cameras of the same resolution at 5 megapixels (!), one front and the other one - rear.
The managing application turned out to be both simple and advanced, with a certain set of parameters. So you can adjust the white balance, ISO sensitivity, and to make a timer recording.
The choice of settings is rather poor, especially for the pictures. You can only select the aspect ratio, which influences the picture resolution. The maximum for both cameras is achieved at a ratio of 4: 3.
The quality of recording is pretty good. Of course, the large Windows-tablet cannot be compared with the Samsung smartphones, but nobody expects such a breakthrough. Nevertheless, the images are quite good, especially in a well-lit area. The white balance is correct, there is no glare or much noise.
For shooting video, there is a separate mode. The white balance adjustment is also available here, as well as the selection of resolution. I think that choosing anything below the maximum Full HD does not make sense.
The video looks good, at the image level. The picture has high definition, accurate colors, and generally, it looks quite natural.
The front camera, in spite of the fact that it has the same resolution of 5 megapixels, shoots worse and it one can see it immediately. The images are not clear, and there is much noise. Although for a facial sensor, the quality is similar to that of a decent smartphone.
In Windows-tablets the camera is not a strong point, and therefore, we can say that the Samsung Galaxy TabPro S made a pleasant surprise in this regard. For this category of devices it performs at a good level.
