Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 8.0 Review

Performance: Battery Life & Camera

Samsung includes a 1.3 megapixel front-facing camera and a 5 megapixel rear-facing camera with the Galaxy Tab 3 8.0. The rear-facing camera is located in the upper left corner of the tablet and does not have a flash, which will limit the situations in which it can capture excellent images.

         

         

Many of the outdoor images we captured using the Galaxy Tab 3 8.0’s rear-facing camera were disappointing. Granted, these images were taken on a cloudy, dreary day but in real life, the green, yellow, and red leaves still popped against the background. The pictures make things appear duller than they really were. Still, we were able to capture some usable images with this camera. Close-up shots were much better in terms of detail than many of our landscape shots.

Battery Life

In an attempt to quantitatively measure the Galaxy Tab 3 8.0’s battery life in a controlled benchmark environment, we ran AnTuTu's battery rundown test. This a newer test for us, so we're still building out our baseline reference numbers. This test is fairly intense, ramping-up CPU cycles in an effort to drain the battery as fast as possible. Overall, this test provides a solid look at endurance under duress and heavy use.  

 

The Galaxy Tab 3 8.0 has a large, 4450 mAh battery. Given that this battery is considerably larger than the Nexus 7 (2013)’s 3950 mAh battery, we weren’t surprised to see that the Galaxy Tab 3 8.0 earned a top spot in our comparison chart with an AnTuTu battery test score of 562.

Samsung rates the battery life of the tablet at up to 11 hours of use. In the real world, you should be able to get through a full day without any issues. Users who don’t demand a lot from the tablet may see multiple days of use from a single charge. Obviously, battery longevity varies depending on how you use the tablet and screen brightness so your mileage will vary.
 


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