Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 8.0 Super AMOLED Annoys Me

I’ve tried the new Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 8.0 a few times now and there’s an issue with the screen I just can’t tolerate.

I mentioned it in an earlier post:

The Super AMOLED screen is killer. But I have to point out that when viewed at a sharp angle, whites tend to become bluish.

Well, it’s not just at sharp angles that pure white begins to have a blue tint!

I noticed this during another fondle of the Nook edition of the tablet. I downloaded a sample of an eBook. That gave me a pure white background for reading. And if I wasn’t just about perfectly head-on to the display with my eyes, it would shift to an increasingly-blue color.

Maybe most people can live with that, but it irritates the hell out of me.

The Insignia Flex Elite 7.85 is less than half the price of Samsung, but white stays white regardless of the viewing angle.

I was warned about the Samsung screen in earlier Comments.

John:

According to Wikipedia these tablets have pentile displays. I absolutely despise pentile displays, so these two are dead to me. Shame, they do look nice.

Filipp:

Hm I am sure they have their awful PenTile display there. That means that it is not actually retina screen as it is much less sharp. And it will cost up to 3 times more than standard retina chinese tablets.

Doing a quick Google brought up this: I am officially done with HD Super AMOLED displays.

And in that he raises an issue I hadn’t even considered nor tried: The appearance of the screen with reduced backlighting. According to him — and his illustrations prove it — the screen will look like low-resolution crap.

I also found this post: Galaxy S4 vs HTC One – Display Comparison.

And here’s a photo that explains a little of the screen issue:

Samsung, on the left. That blue!! It’s even worse on the Galaxy Tab S2 8.0.

Since reading will be the primary use for my tablet, I’m not sure I can live with the blue-shifting of the Samsung.

I’m beginning to consider just saying the hell with it all and getting the iPad Mini 4 — it has the monstrous power of the iPad Air 2. I wouldn’t have the microSD card slot I need, so I’d have to investigate offline storage via Bluetooth or WiFi.

Or I can also say the hell with it and go for the cheap-ass Insignia Flex Elite 7.85 with its regrettable battery life.

Or maybe the mythical Nexus 8 from Colorfly and Google will happen after all. But would it have a microSD card slot? Nexus branded devices tend not to.

I haven’t made any final decision yet, but since others sometimes read these posts for their own buying decisions, I wanted to bring it to everyone’s attention.

Same-day update: It turns out the new Mini 4 does not have the guts of the iPad Air 2. It’ll use the A8 CPU, not the A8x CPU of the Air 2. Which means I’ll have to go through an entire new round of Google Books PDF tests on the beast.