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Samsung Galaxy Tab A 8 SM-T290: Budget Tablet To Be Released Soon

The Samsung Galaxy Tab A 8.0 SM-T290 is a new budget tablet that will be released soon. We already know its specs and how it looks like thanks to a leak.

Last updated on

03/07/2019

Published on

July 2, 2019

Andrzej Tokarski

Samsung is going to release a new budget tablet soon. It is called Samsung Galaxy Tab A 8 2019 SM-T290 (WiFi) and SM-T295 (4G). The 8-inch tablet will be very inexpensive and is kind of a smaller version of the popular Galaxy Tab A 10.1 2019 (review). While it hasn’t been announced officially yet, its spec sheet and a couple of press photos have been leaked already.

Samsung Galaxy Tab A 8 2019 on* Amazon

The Galaxy Tab A 8.0 2019 SM-T290 is a budget tablet with pretty weak hardware. I’m expecting it to cost around 200 US Dollars. Don’t confuse it with the 8-inch Galaxy Tab A 8.0 2019 with S Pen (SM-T200 and SM-T205) which offers much better specs. But while the S Pen version has been released in a couple of Asian countries only so far, I’m expecting the SM-T290 to be released worldwide.

Let’s check it out in more detail.

Galaxy Tab A 8 2019: HD Screen & Snapdragon 429

Because of its wide bezels around the screen, the tablet does not look very modern. Even though there’s lots of room, we don’t get a physical home button or a fingerprint scanner. The back is mostly metal, it’s 8mm thin, and weighs 347g.

The 8-inch screen has an aspect ratio of 16:10 and a simple HD resolution with 1280 x 800 pixels. I think a HD resolution on 8 inches is alright but full HD would have been better. With this resolution, it competes with the Amazon Fire HD 8 which costs just 90 US Dollars.

Samsung is shipping the Galaxy Tab SM-T290 with budget hardware that should be fine for normal tasks but certainly not great for gaming. We’re getting a Qualcomm Snapdragon 429 SoC that consists of four 2GHz cores. It has access to 2GB of RAM and a 32GB internal storage.

Read: These Are The Best Samsung Tablets

The cameras have a resolution of 8 and 2 megapixels. It also supports Bluetooth 4.2, WiFi a/b/g/n and optional 4G LTE. The battery has a capacity of 5100mAh.

Just like other recent tablets from Samsung, it is running their One UI interface on top of Android 9.0 Pie.

Source: Roland Quandt

Samsung Galaxy Tab A 8 2019

Read now: Our Samsung Galaxy Tab A 8 2019 Review

Considering its inexpensive price, the Samsung Galaxy Tab A 8.0 2019 SM-T290 is a good tablet. While many aspects are not outstanding, it does offer a pretty decent 8-inch HD screen, a good-enough performance, and up-to-date software. I also like that its battery life is very long.

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