If you feared the Galaxy Tab S7 FE was a one-off experiment, Samsung proved this week that's not the case. The company announced two new Fan Edition tablets, signaling bigger plans for the lineup. But have the Galaxy Tab S9 FE and Tab S9 FE+ missed the mark?
We'll discuss these tablets, their strengths, and weaknesses in greater detail in our reviews. Until then, we invite you to check out our Tab S9 FE+ hands-on video below.
More to the point at hand, regardless of what our conclusion will be for our reviews, we feel strongly about one issue, in particular: Samsung may have dropped the ball on the Tab S9 FE series with its chipset choice.
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Now the FE line needs more consistency across the board
One of the greatest things about Fan Edition smartphones is that they're powered by high-end chips, even though they don't cost as much as flagship phones. It doesn't matter that they're not the latest flagship SoCs. High-end mobile chips last longer and offer a decent experience, even if they're a year old or more. They're vastly more future-proof than mid-range chips and boast more features, so they'll always be a better choice, even if they're not the latest variants.
Ever since the Galaxy Tab S7 FE went live a couple of years ago, sporting a mid-range Snapdragon chip, we've hoped that Samsung's next Fan Edition tablet would borrow this strategy from FE phones and rock a one-year-old high-end chipset. That didn't happen.
While the new Galaxy S23 FE is powered by the high-end Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 and Exynos 2200 chips, depending on the market, the Galaxy Tab S9 FE line relies on the mid-range Exynos 1380. As a result, the Fan Edition tablets are less powerful and not as future-proof as the S23 FE phone they're supposed to complement.
Even if we leave the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chip out of the equation, the Exynos 2200 would have been enough to balance things out. But as it is, it feels like there's no cohesion between the Galaxy S23 FE and the Tab S9 FE, despite Samsung presenting them as companion devices in its 3-minute-long intro film.
Maybe Samsung leaned a bit too hard on the fact that it has no competition in the Android tablet market — which is true — and thought there was no reason to push the Galaxy Tab S9 FE series to a higher standard. Perhaps that's equally true, except it's hard to view the Tab S9 FE series in a bubble where the S23 FE doesn't exist. Not when all of these Fan Edition devices are shown together next to the “Epic starts with” tagline.
When Samsung announced these products all at once, did it not consider the possibility that fans may compare the new FE tablets with the Galaxy S23 FE before they even look at a different Android tablet brand?
This isn't a black mark on the Exynos 1380 SoC per se
We should stress that we're not arguing the Exynos 1380 is a bad chip for the mid-range market. In a universe where the Galaxy S23 FE wouldn't exist, the Exynos 1380 chip could have served the Tab S9 FE series well enough.
And we're not saying you shouldn't buy the Galaxy Tab S9 FE because it has an Exynos 1380 chip. We've yet to determine that. However, we are saying it would've made more sense for the FE tablets to have more in common with the Galaxy S23 FE. In the context in which Samsung presented these products, the Exynos 1380, or any other mid-range SoC, for that matter, doesn't add up.
If Samsung had used the same hardware across all three FE devices, it could have solidified its Fan Edition series and convinced even more fans that it is committed to the lineup. The Galaxy S23 FE has an opportunity to become a hit, but it's almost as though Fan Edition tablets still have a steep hill to climb and prove their worth before they can shine as brightly as FE phones.
Moving forward, it's probably fairer to judge the Galaxy Tab S9 FE tablets on their own merit without comparing them to the Galaxy S23 FE, but Samsung certainly made this more difficult than we would've liked.
