Samsung Galaxy Tab A7 — quad speakers, modern look, affordable price

The Galaxy Tab A7 looks a lot like the Tab S7 from earlier this year — a clean rectangular front with a uniform bezel all around the screen. It's slightly thicker than the bezel of the flagship Tab S7 and the screen is slightly smaller. The Galaxy Tab A7 has a 10.4-inch display with a resolution of 2000 x 1200 pixels. For comparison's sake, the Tab S7 has an 11-inch screen with 2560 x 1600 pixels. So, yes, there's a tiny difference in the ratios as well — the Tab A7 is 15:9, the Tab S7 is 16:10.

That's not all that's different, though. The Galaxy Tab A7 has an LCD panel, instead of an AMOLED one, and you can forget about that ultra-smooth 120 Hz refresh rate.

Around back, the Galaxy Tab A7 is a flat metal slab — a nice, matte finish, which is bound to feel good. You can pick it up in dark gray, gold, or silver — the latter has white bezels on the front. There are no connectors anywhere on the tablet's body, so it won't have a Book Cover accessory or an S Pen. But it does have a headphone jack.

The Galaxy Tab A7 is powered by the mid-range Qualcomm Snapdragon 662 chip. It has 8 cores split in two clusters — 4 cores run at 1.8 GHz, 4 cores run at 2 GHz. The tablet comes with either 32 GB or 64 GB of internal storage and a microSD card slot that can take a card of up to 1 TB. As for RAM, we are locked at 3 GB.

The Tab A7 doesn't put much emphasis on cameras — we got one main shooter with an 8 MP sensor and one front-facing cam with a 5 MP resolution. You know, the "good enough" type of camera, which is there for emergencies but don't expect to take pro-grade photos with them.

The battery capacity is rated at 7,040 mAh — definitely smaller than the Galaxy Tab S7's 10,090 mAh cell. But do keep in mind that the Tab A7 needs to push a lower-power processor and a much simpler, 60 Hz LCD display. So, we expect the Tab A7's battery life to be up to par.

It's worth noting that the Galaxy Tab A7 comes with a quad speaker stereo setup, tuned by Dolby Atmos. No corners cut here — the A7 is here to deliver on quality media experiences.

They look like they can be the same thing, but they are vastly different. The Galaxy Tab S7 is a powerful production machine, with an S Pen stylus (comes in the box) and a smart keyboard Book Cover (sold separately) and the on-board DeX suite, which gives the tablet a desktop-like UI on the fly. The Tab S7 also has a 120 Hz AMOLED screen and more powerful internals. It's a machine for the type of user that needs their tablet to be more than a Netflix binge machine. And it's priced accordingly, starting at $650.

The Galaxy Tab A7 is for those that need a portable device to watch their favorite media on or play some Android games on. It looks modern but comes at a significantly lower price — we've yet to get an official listing by Samsung, but early reports and leaks put it around the $250 - $280 range.