It's alright. Entry level tablet with a few niggles but definitely usable.
Been using an old iPad 3, 2010 version so it was time for an upgrade. Went with the A7 10.4" screen as it was only released in 2020, it's still for sale on the Samsung website so my assumption was that if it is currently promoted, then Samsung are still behind it in terms of reputation and their belief in product quality.
So.....it's alright. It's not the fastest and most responsive tablet in the world but it does have a quality look and feel to it. It has issues which are annoyances more than dealbreakers. Firstly, the lock screen barely stays on long enough for you to start typing in the PIN code. There are lock screen settings, but none that address this and there are multiple forums of outraged users over this specific issue. One of those forums pointed me in the direction of an app which addresses this and works perfectly. But I shouldn't have to download an app just for the device to function normally!
Secondly, my preference is to have the remaining battery percentage displayed and yes, there is a setting to turn this on, great. But after some use or time on standby, it deactivates itself and is nowhere to be found until you go back into settings to reactivate it. This is clearly a software issue that Samsung need to resolve, and I'm sure they will in a future operating system update.
I mentioned the old iPad at the start of the review. If I compare speed and responsiveness between the two, the iPad still wins, hands down. This should not be the case when comparing an 11 year old tablet against a 6 month old tablet so I am very disappointed by that.
You can have multiple user profiles on the A7 which is great, as this wasn't a feature available on the iPad. However, if powering on from off, the primary user must log in first before it is possible to switch to any other user profile, which sort of defeats the purpose of multiple user profiles! The workaround? Leave it on Standby constantly which again, is not great and it's a constant drain on the battery, albeit a very slow one. But it's just one further design flaw that disappoints. I see Samsung as a prestige technology brand and an industry leader. These niggles make customers lose trust and confidence in them.
I do wonder if the above issues would be present in the more expensive S range of tablets priced at £600 and up? I expect they would as they use the same operating system. Had I spent that amount of money and experienced these same issues, the tablet would be going back! But I paid £200 for the A7 and had already read reviews that said it was entry level, so you really do get what you pay for with this unit.
Good bits? Screen is nice. It's HD rather than 4K but given its size, you don't really notice and watching Netflix and other video is very good.
Memory is expandable with a micro SD card; I've added a 128GB card. But the downside is that none of the apps or any part of the system software will store on there. It will only allow photos and video that you take to be stored externally which, quite frankly, is rubbish. By the time I loaded in all the apps that are present on my phone (S21 Ultra 256GB), the 32GB onboard memory was practically full which really limits what can be done and what it can be used for!
I had previously read reviews which suggested the A7 did not have an internal accelerometer / gyroscope and you could therefore not play any games that require the device to be tilted to steer, fly or balance. This is absolutely not true; it is equipped with this functionality and it works perfectly.
I'll probably keep this for a year or 2 before the limitations on memory and lethargic response times annoy me enough to spend proper money on a flagship model. At which point, I'll donate the A7 to my 6 year old, a target audience I'd suggest, to which this model is probably better suited.
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Verified purchase: Yes | Condition: New
