ed here with the digital digest and today i wanted to share a comparison between the lenovo tab p12 pro on the left and the samsung galaxy tab s8 plus on the right now these are two of the best tablets money can buy here in 2022. the question is which is right for you now for me personally i went with the s8 ultra because for me the 14.6 inch display on this tablet is a game changing feature same internals as the s8 plus but again a much larger display which for me personally is someone who uses a z fold 3 as my daily driver which means i have nearly an eight inch tablet in my pocket i really needed something that was going to be much larger and these you know sub 13 inch tablets well they don’t give me that experience granted the s7 plus uh the taba 7 plus was the best tablet of its kind ever made just like the s6 before it but now we have larger options with that out of the way back to these two i’ll get to pricing and specs but let’s take a look and listen to their video performance right now and by the way brightness is at as low as it can be set that didn’t start my luck pause this one to catch up here for a second pretty close so i’m gonna pause them both right there and my initial impressions and which are now complete really are that they are so close you know you’ve got a 12.6 inch oled display on the left with the lenovo 12.4 inch super amoled on the right with the samsung but keep in mind the samsung has a little bit more resolution than the lenovo and it’s as i just mentioned smaller now this is actually the s7 plus but as i’ve been mentioning s8 plus is really the model most of you will compare to the p12 pro but if you’re able to pick up an s7 plus even
though they’re in clearance and no longer being made to my knowledge it is a better direct comparison when it comes to price because i think best buy right now is selling the s7 plus for a little under 800 so that puts it right on even footing and i’m talking about the model with eight gigs of ram and 256 gigs of storage so that puts it on even at least financial footing with the tab p12 pro but again when it comes to display quality i think it’s a wash some people will say they prefer samsung and anyone that follows my channel knows i have been a samsung user for many many years and it’s because you know they make some of the the greatest tech on the planet but that doesn’t mean i’m blinded by that so when it comes to overall display performance again i think it’s a wash technically the lenovo can actually get a little bit brighter than the samsung so if that matters to you there’s that the difference in resolution again 1600p here a little bit more here i don’t really think that’s something that anyone is going to notice with any regularity at least i can’t notice it okay i was willing to take even less pixel density with the s8 ultra so that tells you what you really need to know in terms of audio performance they’re also really really close both are excellent and you know it just goes to show you what lenovo has done in such a short amount of time because samsung clearly has been the best here for a while several years and all of a sudden lenovo came out of
nowhere with the tab p12 pro so let’s take a look and listen to them individually now okay start with samsung and we’re just getting music but it’s better than nothing volume is at 100 [Music] and now let’s jump over to the lenovo i mean they’re both really good i can’t knock the display on either of these devices and i certainly can’t knock the audio performance they’re both really loud let’s talk about the balance of internals so with the uh p12 pro you’re getting a qualcomm 870 it’s not as new and shiny as the snapdragon 8 gen 1 that you’ll find in the s8 plus but battery performance with the lenovo is actually better so i’ll credit that to the processor in the lenovo being a little bit less flashy so more battery efficiency the beautiful part though about this is there’s nothing you will not be able to do with one tablet versus the other you’re going to get the same experience same overall performance they both have an included pen which i haven’t even gotten to but i will so better battery life from that i’ll call it slightly inferior processor but that’s really just because qualcomm is selling it at a lower price than the eight gen one in terms of ram again eight gigs of ram which i think is a real solid number uh the six gig offering at the base for the lenovo i think is still fine but i would lean towards eight i personally in my my fold
have 12 gigs of ram that’s what i’ve been running on for a few years now it’s what i’m accustomed to it’s not that i think you have to have 12 gigs of ram but i do think that’s an appropriate number based on the fact that’s become average in a lot of samsung’s flagship android devices in terms of storage expansion both do have the ability uh to be expanded so if that’s what you’re after no worries there you can do that easily you can see when we come to the desktop the brightness is really cranked down so i’m gonna go ahead and pump that up now um battery life you know as i’ve mentioned is better with the lenovo that makes me personally feel like if you know battery life is what you need that’s what you should be after i have no better way of putting it uh you know with the s8 plus you’re gonna be getting somewhere around eight to nine hours if you’re really aggressive maybe closer to ten here you’re gonna easily get 11 possibly more so that’s that’s a pretty big difference you’re not gonna have to be anywhere near as aggressive and both of these remember have high refresh displays 120 hertz panels and that generally wreaks havoc on battery life but with the lenovo it does do better wi-fi performance on both is excellent both have great cameras the better cameras are on the samsung so to recap cameras we have an eight megapixel uh selfie on the lenovo we have a five megapixel on the samsung and then on the rear more similar in terms of
specs we have a 13 and a 5 on the lenovo a 13 and a 6 on the samsung now even though those numbers are close they don’t really mean that much samsung has the better cameras lenovo is not that far behind this kind of reminds me of the pen experience but samsung is just a much more mature manufacturer in this space which means better cameras better camera software this is again very similar to their s pen performance which i will get to versus the precision pen so cameras are better here but not by enough that i would say forget about the lenovo because to me and i think to many of you the cameras on tablets are nice to have but far from a necessity so we expect them but how much we use them compared to our phones or a real camera i think is another story altogether so moving away from the cameras you’ve heard about the displays let’s talk about charging these tablets similar battery life although you know lenovo’s better i’ve mentioned it half a dozen times both 45 watt chargers this one comes with a 45 watt this doesn’t you’ll have to pick one up but that means really fast charging for tablets that both have batteries that are over ten thousand milliamp hours so that’s impressive the battery is slightly larger here i think it’s ten thousand two hundred versus ten thousand i don’t know if it’s 80 or 90 it’s something like that i can’t memorize everything folks i try my best and i
don’t have any notes believe it or not so that’s why i screw up occasionally i’m not going to go nuts but when it comes to batteries they’re both large they need that 45 watt charging so let’s talk about the keyboards as i mentioned not included for 745 included for 8 30 not included really unless you pre-order or things go on clearance later down the road which may happen but this is pretty expensive the keyboard and you can’t actually get this is not the keyboard they introduced with the s8 plus it actually has no trackpad i recommend getting one of these if you can still find it i’m gonna have mine left over i’ll probably end up selling it and that’s because it is the better keyboard versus the new one which omits this and i think that was to push people towards the s8 ultra where you can get a keyboard with a trackpad which is another reason i like it it’s more of a pc experience but nonetheless no backlighting on either of these so if you were looking for that it’s not here but i don’t think that’s a big deal it’s still nice to have keyboard functionality trackpad functionality but again they’re very close i think that samsung has a little bit of an edge here just brand notoriety and awareness but i have to say lenovo drawing on their key style from their
experience with their laptops is pretty important when you talk about a keyboard experience also the trackpad is larger here but remember this isn’t even available anymore for the s8 plus you’d have to find one of these in terms of the actual texture of said cases i actually also like the lenovo much more because it has texture this gray finish i like the way it looks also there’s just something about the samsung keyboard cover cases that they could be more premium i think we can all agree on that let’s talk about software which is probably one of the most important things that everyone is wondering about and that’s another area where samsung rips it up and that’s because with samsung you’re looking at four years of software updates five years of security updates with the lenovo you’re looking at a couple of years two years so there’s a big difference there but think of it in terms of costs you’re paying more for the samsung products and that level that many years of software updates that’s built into that price with the lenovo you’re paying less you’re paying less because you aren’t getting that additional two years now if lenovo thinks to you know address that and change it i think that will be smart um because that is a defining
characteristic but as this continues to go on sale that may not matter i mean when i bring up software updates and a lot of us like to talk about it the majority of consumers do not i’m not saying that’s a good thing it’s just reality uh so software updates here are better look from just about every angle the samsung should be the superior device because it is more expensive and it’s not made by apple right so that means they actually have to give us something for that extra money and samsung has done that well granted they’ve gotten more gouging over the years they really don’t have much competition except for apple and vice versa it’s pretty much the same so either way again the experience you’re going to get with either of these incredibly similar i already stated that whatever you’re going to plan to do with them is going to be pretty much the same you’re not going to find that one crashes or stalls where the other performs perfectly not going to happen so now let’s talk about pens for a moment since both of these tablets come with one the samsung of course comes with its in my opinion best-in-class s-pen it’s come a long way it’s matured it works exactly as it should and i think it’s the best solution of its kind on the market now a lot of people when they hear that say what about the apple pencil well the apple
pencil works with the ipad and that is it and that’s just not the identity of the s pen at all if you’re a samsung user you’re not only going to use it here with something like the tab s7 plus 8 plus or the s8 ultra that i use it with but you’re also going to use it with your phone and i don’t just mean older note phones which i went through pretty much every generation but how about the s22 ultra how about my z fold three that i have right here that i have the s pen attached to of course this s pen doesn’t work with other devices well that’s because it has a special tip specifically for the folding display on the interior but again hopefully the point is clear the s pen for samsung works with everything their smartphones their tablets and even their windows-based two-in-one convertible laptops so they really have banked on us continuing to use a stylus and quite frankly they’ve been right people still need traditional input even on digital platforms or mediums so that air command icon you touch it it populates a neat clean functional menu of things you will use but most often you will create a note or view that note and you will easily expand that to full screen and begin drawing whatever you want precision here is really good and again the actual experience of putting a pen to paper is simulated on some level it’s not perfect but it doesn’t feel like riding on the lenovo where you’re literally just hitting glass even though both of these have corning gorilla glass 5 for
those of you that are wondering i didn’t mention that before but i do now but the precision with the s pen is top notch you want to make a thicker line a thinner line you have that ability and it’s attainable and remember again that is only one of the many functions smart select screen write live messaging ar doodle the list goes on and on as and you can customize this list of course but as uh samsung continues to develop the s pen experience that menu develops as well let me go ahead and i’ll leave that up now with the precision pen 3 lenovo does not have that lineage in fact the tip and i may have mentioned this already actually looks like the apple pencil it does not look like the s pen at all completely different forget my z-fold 3-pen we have a button similar design it’s not quite a carpenter style pencil but it’s close and it does a really good job and guess what it also has a little air command menu you can see it right there looks just like the one from samsung and essentially you touch it and it populates a menu that doesn’t look anything like the air command menu but it functions just as it does so you have different capabilities up here at the top which pretty much try to
emulate what you get from samsung hit the plus you instantly can create a note make it full screen and go ahead and write but as i said here it feels like you’re writing on something more organic than obviously the organic light emitting diode screen i mean the glass it just feels like a pen to paper here it feels like a pen to glass like pretty much every two in one that ever came before it the good news is that the precision and accuracy is still fairly good it’s just not as good as the samsung product it doesn’t have the maturity it doesn’t have the development it doesn’t have the textured uh surface the coating whatever that is the haptics it just isn’t there so this works perfectly fine and i think the average person who takes notes will be satisfied with this but this is better if you’re an artist if the s pen or i should say if the pen integration means a lot to you the samsung is the pick if having the pen is something you might use occasionally but you it’s not a primary reason for purchase the lenovo is definitely good enough for the majority of users but i wouldn’t want to give this to an artist compared to the samsung that’s what i would say note-taking awash because well notes are notes they certainly are not art unless you’re an artist and then your notes could be misconstrued as art this happens often let’s talk about productivity now in the desktop mode that each of these has moving away from the android os and the very limited fairly clean installs that both of them have you’ve got dex running under the hood for samsung which gives you a desktop experience so if you want something like windows it gives it to you if you want everything windowed if you want to be able to go into
internet well not internet explorer but samsung’s internet explorer or of course chrome and then have a windowed experience that feels like a windows desktop you get it the same applies to going through your files what any form of browser it’s going to feel like a desktop windows environment contrasting to that you know essentially lenovo surprise surprise has done the exact same thing and they didn’t even try to come up with a name like dex it’s just productivity mode and it has a dedicated button right here uh just like we have a dex button and you just hit it and you’ll see the transition we now have icons at the bottom the gesture icons are there but it’s essentially created the same format that we have going with dex but it just didn’t reassociate or reallocate the placement of the icons to give it a different look and feel to make it essentially go from one orientation to another you know here we move uh from a vertical to a horizontal and here they just leave it so or a horizontal to a vertical did i say that i don’t know i’m losing my mind here a little bit so that’s one of the big things to be aware of but it works exactly the same so if you open an
internet browser over here everything is going to be windowed i mean that’s the premise keep it windowed project unity also worth mentioning that’s going to essentially just give you a code to pair this with a device in the event you want to let it communicate this is something that lenovo’s been pushing the project unity app so that you can use this as a second display essentially so and you can do that over wi-fi natively they’re just trying to make it bulletproof so that people don’t even have to figure it out but inside windows that is easy to do but you know that pretty much covers everything i think you need to know we’re still inside the productivity mode go ahead and switch back but that pretty much covers it all i mean uh dex is a solid um i think better offering than the productivity mode here they’re very similar but dex is much more mature i mean samsung has been working on decks for years the productivity mode here is really just like i said flipping orientation ever so slightly and giving you everything in a window which isn’t a bad thing and there’s more to it it’s just not as fully fleshed out as decks again reflecting the difference in uh maturation that you have with samsung and what they’ve done in the tablet business for android as
opposed to lenovo who is really just getting started but that pretty much covers again inking as well as the experience uh here with desktop class software offerings from each of these manufacturers from a fit and finish standpoint to close things out pogo ports easily removed same thing with the back cover which i think is really nice i do prefer this style over what we get from samsung build quality again is excellent uh remember also i don’t know if i mentioned it the oled panel on this device is hdr capable in case i didn’t mention that now i have a little bit of lenovo branding at the top we have some buttons that will act as volume rockers and then you have your power button right here fingerprint scanner your sim trace slot which is really just for micro sd cards right there i mean it’s just a very nice tablet your quad speakers that are incredibly loud your pogo port at the bottom which is how we connect that keyboard and i do really recommend getting this with the keyboard there’s no question about it i think it completes it uh the cameras again a wide and ultra wide here they’re fine they’re not as good as the samsung okay they’re not as good as the s7 plus forget the s8
plus even though not much of a change was made the eight megapixel front camera is appreciated though because that is something where samsung does need to to get things in order and actually i’m not going to even snap this back into the case because i’m going to show it to you side by side with the samsung so now let’s go ahead and remove each of these so again easy to pull that apart i actually think the the magnetic connection here isn’t as strong as the lenovo and this is that texture of all the samsung cases that i was talking about that i’m just it’s time for a revamp samsung get on your game get on it and the back cover this is a little bit better i think it’s just a nicer look but again i see no reason to not consider the lenovo i mean i think fit and finish is better on the lenovo i’ve said that time and time again and i’m a samsung owner i don’t own the lenovo it’s going back to lenovo so keep that in mind so this is as impartial as one could possibly be uh fit and finish here very similar and that’s because well you could argue that the lenovo is a samsung copywatch right you could really slick clean design this is exactly as the s8 pluses and s8 ultra that i have over there type c port just like on the lenovo for charging this up quad speakers pogo port at the bottom of course uh more of your quad speakers uh power and volume
rocker right there and then your sd card slot on the right uh just a really slim tablet but now let’s do that side side by side since i said it was going to happen let’s just make that happen right now so you can see these are really similar yes the button layout is slightly modified you know where the mics are located you can see two on the top of the lenovo one on the top of the samsung we go to the right side that’s where both charging ports are they’re both 45 watts uh more speakers the bottom the pogo ports i mean they just build materials rounded edges of course a lot of you know aluminum basically i would call it they look very very similar sim card tray on the left side here you know it’s really a matter of personal preference generally but when things look this similar i don’t know if that’s personal preference anymore i think we’re on to something else i think it’s just become a matter of brand loyalty and pricing and do you really think that samsung has something to offer that lenovo doesn’t i would make the argument that with the pricing gap being pretty close right now i would tell everyone to pick samsung every time but as that pricing gap widens and all of a sudden this is 400 less even 500 less at that rate you could buy two of these to every one of these do i really need to make that any more clear and you can make the argument that the display the av experience video um and audio is just as good as samsung so i just really hard to make the
justification for the additional three four or five hundred dollars in price difference moving from the lenovo to the samsung just to get the samsung branding one ui some better software support and of course a slightly uh better pen experience because that and better cameras that sounds like a lot but it’s not the majority of what you’ll be using these tablets for the lenovo will be just as good as the samsung so you can’t go wrong with either of these but you definitely can’t go wrong with saving a really nice chunk of money and going with the tab p12 pro at present pricing you know i’m not going to say to anybody save 250 bucks and go with the lenovo especially if they like the samsung because for 250 difference for a 250 difference the samsung is the better device but as that gap widens as you take into account you need the keyboard cover kickstand case thing things change but overall again as i’ve said over and over again can’t go wrong with either of these tablets i will miss my tab s7 plus but i’m not gonna miss it that much since i’ve got this beast to replace it any questions or comments please feel free to post them hit that like button and as usual please feel free to subscribe and please stay safe later
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