Samsung Galaxy Tab S 10.5

The Galaxy Tab S 10.5 is the best Android-powered media tablet available, but its competition is stiff.

The Samsung Galaxy Tab S 10.5 is one of the firm’s best ever tablets with a thin and light design, although there is still too much plastic. Hardware is decent, namely that impressive display and great battery life making this a consumption machine. It’s got pretty much everything you could want on a tablet, and it is priced competitively against its key rivals earning it a recommended award.

It’s too early to say which tablet is the best, as we still need to test performance, battery life and camera quality among other things. It’s clear that the Tab S 10.5 is a strong rival to the iPad Air, but for those who own other Apple products the iPad Air may remain the obvious choice.

The Surface Pro 3 and the Galaxy Tab S 10.5 are both impressive tablets that offer stunning, big, bright and colourful displays. They’re both ideal for multi-tasking – running more than one app simultaneously, side by side – but you won’t be able to run powerful desktop apps like Photoshop on the Android tablet like you can on the Surface. If you’re simply looking for a thin-and-light tablet with a big display, you’ll probably find you’re better off with the Galaxy Tab S, but for a device that could potentially replace your laptop completely, it’s the mid- to high-range Surface Pro 3 models you’re after.

These are undoubtedly two of the best 10in tablets money can buy and it’s a very close call. However, for the same amount of money you’ll get a higher-resolution screen and a fingerprint scanner with the Tab S. If these aren’t killer features for you then the Sony Xperia Z2 Tablet won’t disappoint.