Samsung’s new Tab A tablets aimed at Canadian families

Samsung has a new tablet line available in Canada, aimed at families looking for a single tablet on which to consolidate many home-based activities like reading, browsing and playing the occasional game.

The Tab A series, available in 8″ and 9.7″ flavours, are available today at Samsung Experience Stores for $279 CAD and $429 CAD respectively. The latter also comes with an S Pen for writing notes and sketching.

These mid-range tablets have adopted many of the more minimal aesthetic qualities of Samsung’s latest smartphones, including a new metal chassis. The 8-inch version comes with a 1024×768 pixel LCD display, which equates to a 4:3 aspect ratio, one of the few in Samsung’s lineup. It comes with a 1.2Ghz quad-core processor, 1.5GB of RAM, 16GB of internal storage, a microSD slot, a 5MP rear camera, 2MP front camera, and a 4,200mAh battery. At 314 grams and 7.5mm thick, it’s slightly lighter than the iPad mini 3.

The 9.7-inch version sports the same resolution screen, but swaps density for an S Pen and 2GB of RAM. It has a 6,000mAh battery that promises two hours of extra uptime over the 8-inch version.

Each Tab A customer will get a three-month trial of Next Issue Canada, too, which is a nice bonus.

Running the slimmed-down version of Android 5.0 that launched alongside the Galaxy S6, the Tab A fits in nicely with Samsung’s newly-simplified approach to products. At $279, the 8-inch version competes nicely with Apple’s original iPad mini, which is sold in Canada for the same price, but the 9.7-inch version doesn’t appear to offer the same value as last year’s iPad Air, which at $439 offers a much wider app ecosystem, a faster processor and a better display. On the other hand, the Samsung Tab A offers more RAM, expandable storage, and an S Pen.

We’ll put these tablets through their paces in the next few weeks, so stay tuned.