Samsung’s Tab S4 Needs Work to Achieve Productivity Potential

DeX and a keyboard make it Windows-like, but not Windows

Lance Ulanoff
8 min readAug 8, 2018
It’s like Windows, right?

Samsung’s Tab S4 Android tablet is a gorgeous-lightweight tablet that might have generated some excitement four or five years ago.

These days people don’t care much about the tablet space and the companies that play in it either sell super-low-end tablets or high-end, productivity workhorses. Though thin and gleaming, the Tab S4 ($649.99) is part of the latter group. It ships with an excellent stylus and is built to pair with the solid if uninspiring Book Cover Keyboard ($149.99).

Like Apple’s iPad Pro, the Samsung Galaxy Tab S4 is a 10.5-inch device (the S3 was 9.7 inches) and their resolutions are similar. The iPad Pro is 2224x1668, while the Tab S4 is 2560x1600. The difference is in the aspect ratio. The iPad Pro is 4:3 while the Tab S4 is a shallower 16:10. The Tab S4 is, at 249.3 mm x 164.3 mm x 7.1mm slightly narrower than the iPad Pro (250.6mm x 174.1 mm x 6.1 mm) but supports a 10.5-inch screen by eschewing the Home Button. The iPad Pro still has Touch ID.

While it’s nice to have such a clean screen, I prefer the deeper screen of the iPad Pro. The iPad pro is also a thinner and lighter device.

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Lance Ulanoff

Tech expert, journalist, social media commentator, amateur cartoonist and robotics fan.