Commercial Feature

You’ve decided you’d really, really like a tablet, but what if you think the market leading product is just too big to lug around all day? Step forward Samsung’s Galaxy TAB. With its 7 inch TFT-LCD screen and classy, lightweight build (it weighs a svelte 380g); it’s about half the size of an iPad and will even fit in a large pocket. But what about features and usability? No worries – the Galaxy TAB’s screen is crisp, bright and drenched in colour, and at 1024×600 pixels it makes watching films and videos a joy. Better still; importing videos to the TAB is a simple matter of dragging and dropping files, without having to navigate your way round a proprietary software program. Likewise, it’s a doddle to upload your personal music library to the Samsung Galaxy TAB with no need to use iTunes as the middleman. For music playback, the TAB offers simulated 5.1 surround-sounds with either the built-in speakers or through earphones. Samsung’s Media Hub app offers access to a library of film and TV titles, while Music Hub is a portal to 7Digital’s huge music catalogue.

Available in 16Gb or 32Gb versions, the TAB can saddle up an extra 32Gb of memory via its microSD card slot. Connectivity comes in all flavours, namely Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 3.0 and 3G HSDPA, while Samsung’s bundled headphones with microphone and call/answer button turn the TAB into a highly usable phone. The generous screen area is great for video chat via the TAB’s front-facing camera, but be aware that video calling only works between one Galaxy TAB and another. Still and video imagery comes courtesy of the rear-facing 5MP camera, with flash and autofocus.

Fuelled by a crunchy Cortex A8 1GHz processor, the TAB runs Android’s 2.2 operating system, which means you get that all-important Adobe Flash support, access to the Android apps mountain, and an infinite variety of customisable choices from Android Market. Check out Expansys tablet PCs and you needn’t think twice about taking your personal tablet anywhere.