Samsung’s new, cheaper 7 inch tablet is now available in the US. A number of stores including Newegg, Best Buy and Staples are offering the Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 Lite for $160.
While that makes this the cheapest 7 inch tablet Samsung has offered to date, it still feels kind of overpriced. That’s because you can pick up a Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 7.0 with a better display and cameras for just $20 more.
The Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 Lite looks a lot like its slightly more expensive cousin on paper. Both tablets have 7 inch, 1024 x 600 pixel displays, 1.2 GHz dual-core processor, 1GB of RAM, and 8GB of storage.
But the Lite model has a TN display panel with poor viewing angles while the original Galaxy Tab 3 7.0 has a higher-quality PLS display with wide viewing angles. If you’ve ever held a phone tablet in your hands only to watch the screen start to look like a photo negative when you tilt the display a bit, you’ll know how important viewing angles can be on handheld devices.
The Galaxy Tab 3 7.0 also has a 3MP rear camera and 1.3MP front-facing camera while the Lite model only has a 2MP rear camera and no front camera for video chats (or selfies). And it has a mono speaker rather than the stereo speakers you get with the more slightly expensive model.
The Lite model does have a few things going for it. Samsung ships the new model with Android 4.2 rather than Android 4.1, and it’s a tad thinner, at 0.38 inches rather than 0.39 inches. I doubt you’d be able to tell the difference, especially since the Lite model is actually a bit heavier at 0.7 pounds rather than 0.67 pounds.
All told, if you can afford to spend $180 rather than $160, I’d recommend skipping the Lite model. And if you can afford to spend a little more (and don’t need a microSD card slot), you’ll probably get an even better deal with a $229 Google Nexus 7.
There have been crummy sub-$150 Chinese no name tablets available for some time with awful screen resolutions and slow chips. But even those brands are now moving beyond this embarrassing spec. Can’t really see why Samsung wants a piece of that 2012 action.
Samsung’s phones are difficult to not recommend as the cream of the Android crop. Why then do the tablets fall so firmly in the difficult to recommend category? They are either overpriced (sometimes more than a comparable iPad) or reasonably priced but lousy. The Galaxy Tabs are hardly worth looking at. Samsung still has nothing to answer the Nexus and Kindle lines. Where is the value?
Yes this is really a bad tablet. In the Nordic countries the original tab 3 7.0 was sold for about $99 this Christmas and for that price it’s not a bad deal.
If you want a better tablet than the Kindle the Tab pro 8.4 is the one to buy, it’s miles better the the new Ipad mini but so is the old Note 8.0 (with it’s pen) because of the limited os on the Apple tablets.
I have yet to see a “lite” model from Samsung that isn’t absolute crap and basically a rip-off…
Look at the Ativbook 9 lite… total junk, absolutely unworthy for the supposedly “low” price.
Better yet. Just buy a cheap Asus Memo Pad 8. Faster, bigger and better screen, and a better UI.
Similar specs to the Tab 2 that I bought. Still prefer that, even with the lag. I don’t have to deal with those awful physical buttons.
Oh Sammy, you nut you…
This is a crappy price for those crappy specs.
CRAPPY
There are tablets that are a decent value at $99, or at $149. but not any cheap device from Samsung. Aside from battery life, the galaxy tab 3 7.0 is a terrible tablet – and i got it at $139. At $180, it’s frankly shit.
https://ebookne.ws/1eKW77C
And I would expect the lite version of the tablet to be equally bad.