Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7 (Verizon Wireless LTE) Review

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Samsung's Galaxy Tab series boasts seven distinct models. Throw in all of the variants of each one -- LTE, WiFi, WiMAX and even the Galaxy Note 10.1 if you want to be picky -- and all of a sudden the number of tablets produced by the Korean electronics giant over the past sixteen months shoots up to exceed twenty. In a vast sea of incredibly similar-looking Android slates, there's one model that dares to be different: the Galaxy Tab 7.7, an oddly sized tablet with a stunning Super AMOLED Plus display.


When it was Verizon's turn to make its own changes to the tried-and-true tablet and offer the device on its own LTE network, Big Red didn't try to reinvent the wheel. If it's not broke, why fix it, right? Aside from the obvious -- it swapped out the original HSPA+ / EDGE radios with LTE / EVDO / CDMA -- we noticed the addition of an IR sensor similar to the one found on the Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus, which is mainly used in concert with Peel's Smart Remote app. This version also sports a different color scheme, with the light gray plastic ends replaced by a darker hue.

That said, we love the idea of having a top-notch 7.7-inch display. Truly, the form factor and screen size come together to achieve a near-perfect balance between easy content consumption and portability. No, it's not going to slip into your jeans pocket, but it fits easily into most purses and even managed to find a home in this editor's suit pocket. But what if you're not donning either (or your suit lacks the tablet-sized pockets)? Fortunately, it's still small and light enough that you don't feel like you're carrying around a laptop or netbook, which is to say you could get very comfy using this on the regular.

Camera

Cameras don't get much respect on tablets. Truth is, front-facing shooters typically make more sense on slates than rear-facing ones, since it's much less awkward to conduct video chats than it is to snap a picture -- or worse, a home movie -- on the thing. Add to this the fact that the camera here is low-grade even compared to other tablet cameras, and you have yourself plenty of mediocre images. Allow us to emphasize that this doesn't mean your pictures will be horrid, but the lower resolution -- combined with the struggle of keeping such a large device still long enough to get a photo that doesn't wind up blurry -- makes it pretty difficult for us to recommend that you grab this over your five or eight megapixel smartphone cam.

These unpleasantries out of the way, the 7.7 is smattered with tons of settings (panorama mode, macro, metering, white balance, etc.) that can at least increase your likelihood of taking a lovely shot. It offers autofocus and the ability to change the point of focus by tapping on different parts of the viewfinder. Night mode is able to capture some extra backlight to help produce fairly reasonable low-light results, although a lot of noise is still present. We rather like the detail in our macro shots, including texture, particles of dust and so on, but again you shouldn't expect to see anything better than your average Galaxy S II here. For what it's worth, the LED flash works well, capturing plenty of color when taking shots in the middle of the night.


Wrap Up

The Galaxy Tab 7.7 is one of our favorite Android tablets to date, and fortunately Verizon's version doesn't give us any reason to doubt our feelings at all. It still keeps the same solid design, good performance and gorgeous display, and it offers better battery life using LTE than what we were able to eke out of its HSPA+ compadre. If you're specifically interested in a tablet that runs Android, we can't imagine you'd find much better elsewhere.

Unfortunately, you're also paying a hefty premium for the device: it only comes with one storage option (16GB) and will run you $500 when you sign up for a two-year commitment. Sans contract, you'll be forking out $700. You might be getting the best available tablet in that size and form factor, but you can also shell out close to the same amount of money for a new iPad or Transformer Prime. Oh, the anguish of decisions. We suppose there could be worse things to worry about in this life

Engadget.com