Samsung Galaxy Tab A with S Pen 10.1 Inch; 16 GB Wifi Tablet (Black) SM-P580NZKAXAR

I wanted to upgrade my old Dell 7" tablet that was no longer charging and the particular Android OS on it was buggy. I remembered Samsungs having a good display and slick appearance in general. There are lots of tablets out there to choose from and lots of reviews to read. I found almost all of these tablets have serious issues, even the name brands. I kept coming back to Samsung and trying to understand why I would pay more for this than most other brands while wondering if I was even going to use it enough to justify the purchase.I'd tried a pen on my old Dell and it was neato but fairly useless. I got interested in this particular model because of the 10" screen and the pen. The pen is very cool and I use it a lot. It interacts with the screen in an intelligent way that makes it easy to either handwrite or do scripting to text. The Samsung Note app is good and that's my main app for notetaking. There were some adjustments I had to make in the settings before it was doing exactly what I wanted, but after some time it is set the way it needs and works seamlessly to aid navigation and editing. You have to get this exact model if you want the pen!Software is great, OS is stable, though some apps I use are unstable, but the device itself is solidly built and their implementation of Android has been reliable. I went to Play and was able to download most of my favorite apps on it. Because the device has the speed and the good specs, there aren't many delays in using it, other than logging into the security screen (required for corporate email, among other things). It either comes with or I downloaded Investing.com, which looks very slick and professional. Microsoft Office apps come standard. I think you have to log in with an account after a time, I used my corporate account and that has worked well so far. The drawing capability of One Note is superior to Samsung Note, but of course that wacky One Note filing system makes it weird. I prefer to put up with Samsung's app, with it's minor annoyances, but where I can see the note I just made as a small icon and easily navigate my notes. If you like a more sophisticated visual aspect to your notes, One Note lets you get very creative with color and style options you can select with the pen. You can do all the things you can do on a desktop version like insert images and so forth. And there are many background choices for a stationary type of look.Haven't used the Word or Excel yet, but I've already logged in with my credentials so that will be seamless to use if needed. I took off or disabled what bloatware I could. Like a new PC, this thing takes an investment of time over the first few days to get rid of what you don't want and load what you do. I was pleasantly surprised to find the Google To Do app dowloadable and it works great on this device. It syncs to my gmail account tasks. So useful to have the Tasks separated out as a separate app again. My OBD II software for reading car computer data that was flawless on my phone would not hook up and work with this tablet. That's about the only software disappointment I've had. Everything else has worked as expected. I moved my old micro SD card from my old tablet to have my music collection available, no issues with that being recognized. Now, with about everything I want loaded, it's got enough space to run efficiently and download more apps if needed.I've done a lot more with this device, trying to keep up with the other office geeks but not spend too much. I got it to recognize my corporate VPN and it was very straightforward, with an assist from our network guy telling me which protocol to use. Calendar app seemed to just take over on its own after I set up the email. It loaded all my work tasks and somehow grabbed my Google appointments, which I thought was slick and handy. Having got that far, I loaded ES Fileshare (?), which lets me remote into the corporate file system to view the same folders I'd see in Microsoft Explorer. It's slow to get going and loaded for viewing, but if I'm headed to a meeting where I'll use it, I can get it warmed up first and then no problem. Oh, and Microsoft has come out with a new RDP Client app in the Play store. I downloaded it and it works, I logged into my work PC with it and could operate almost everything there with my pen. I even ran SQL queries with it!Recently, I found out about some decent piano teaching software, which I've always wanted. With a 3ft data cable (a USB printer cable) and an OTG (on the go) adapter, I got my digital piano hooked up to this tablet as a USB Keyboard Input. Downloaded the full version of Synthesia ($8) from Play and my keyboard can be used to interact with the software, which recognizes the mini USB input as a piano. This is the same port the charger goes in. The big screen is almost the size of a piece of sheet music, sits on my piano rest. I also put it on a standalone sheet music stand, the thick kind, and use it to run through songs using Guitar Tabs. Such an improvement over my old Dell in the screen brightness, size and response, so it becomes more usable for these hobbies.But the main thing I'd use this for practically in a work meeting would be to VPN in and then use Chrome to view our web application, for which it works well, though again probably needs to be up and running before the meeting because that takes time. Secondly, I use the Notes app to jot down notes and action items. The ability to title these with the date and name I need is what makes all these notes accessible for the future. I can't do that with my scribbled notes in my paper notebook. I also can't erase my bad handwriting with ease and start the word over like I can with this stylus.Best of all, the day I went to order this, Amazon dropped the price $50 bucks and then it was a no-brainer.

Excellent tablet. The screen is huge, the battery life is amazing I use it a couple of hours a day and only need to charge about once per week so far, could go even longer.I use the tablet for drawing, Kindle, email and a few games. It handles all of these without trouble. Games I've tried include Dragon's Lair, Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition, and Hearthstone, as well as Monkey Junior and other kid's educational games.As a Kindle device, I love the larger screen. I have 20/20 vision, but as I've gone into my forties I find reading slightly larger print to be a better experience. The screen real-estate on this tablet means I can kick the text size up a notch and still have plenty to read on each page.I also have a few large PDF documents, and with Adobe Reader (a free app) I was able to set them up to page through with a tap at the edge of the screen, just like a Kindle book. These documents are very image heavy, but the reading experience is still very smooth and fast. I was surprised by how nice it was. This tablet has some serious muscle.One thing I was surprised by is how fast this thing downloads apps. Apps that will take a few minutes on my HTC M8 take less than one minute on this tablet. I assume this from better use of wireless AC, but the experience is great.Since I do have the Android phone I mention above, all my apps from that phone auto-installed on the tablet as soon as I connected my Google account. That was very convenient.One thing I would recommend is to pick up a 64GB SD card (or larger) for this tablet. Moving apps over to this card is very easy and fast, and if you store a lot of big files like movies or comic books or lots of pictures, then internal storage isn't going to cut it.Another recommended accessory would be a decent set of bluetooth headphones.If you're looking for a good 10.1" tablet though, go ahead and stop looking, this is a great device.Enjoy!

I am very impressed with the Samsung Galaxy Tab A with S Pen. I have been using the Apple iPad for the last several years through my ex-employer. After leaving that company, I bought the Chuwi Hi10 Plus Windows 10 tablet based on the price and semi-decent reviews. After a few days of using the Chuwi, it had way too many glitches to be considered a working tablet. The Galaxy Tab A is equally impressive as the iPad, if not more so. The touch response is flawless, screen display is excellent, and the S Pen works great. I installed the OMOTON screen protector, and the S Pen still works great.One of my huge gripes with Apple over the years is the fact that their products have no ability to expand storage. This Galaxy Tab A with S Pen has the capability to expand up to a 256 GB microsd card. I installed the Samsung 128 GB microsd Evo Select, and it works great so far. The other little perk regarding the Tab A with S Pen over the regular Tab A is the fact that the S Pen version comes with 3 GB's of RAM as opposed to 2 GB for the regular Tab A without the S Pen (yes, the S Pen version does cost more too).Even though I really wanted a Windows 10 tablet, I simply cannot justify spending that kind of money to have Windows 10. Once again, I tried the Chuwi brand Windows 10, and I got exactly what I paid for. Being that Microsoft now offers most of its office apps for free (without editing of course),there really is no need to own a Windows 10 tablet unless you do need the full capability of the Microsoft Office applications, etc. With the 128 GB microsd card now added, I was able to transfer all of my OneDrive data, and much more.My only wish for the Galaxy Tab A is if it had more connection ports like hdmi, usb 3.0, etc. It only comes with one micro usb port...that is it. Having said all of that, I think the Galaxy Tab A with S Pen is an outstanding purchase.