The Handy Samsung Tab A7 Lite 8.7″ Is an Essential You Need
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- THE ENTERTAINMENT GOES WHERE YOU GO: With its compact 8.7” screen, slim design, and sturdy metal frame, Galaxy Tab A7 Lite is perfectly sized for entertainment on the go
- STURDY FRAME FOR LASTING PROTECTION: Galaxy Tab A7 Lite features an upgraded metal frame that helps protect against everyday hiccups
- TWO MONTHS OF AD-FREE VIDEO FUN: Keep everyone in the family entertained with two months of free YouTube Premium¹ for hours and hours of ad-free fun
- PERFORMANCE THAT WON’T LET YOU DOWN: Comes with fast speed and plenty of storage for multiple users
The Galaxy Tab A7 Lite is available for purchase via third-party retailers and Samsung’s own website at a starting price of $159, though you can often find it on sale for less. What you get in return is a lightweight Android tablet with an octacore MediaTek MT8768T chip, 4 GB of RAM, and 32 GB of memory, though you can pay an extra $40 to upgrade that to 64 GB. Alternatively, you could use the tablet’s MicroSD card reader to slot in up to 1 TB of additional storage. There’s also an option to buy a model with support for 4G LTE (through Verizon or AT&T) for an additional $40.
The unit we reviewed is Wi-Fi only and arrived sporting 64 GB of memory, meaning it retails for $200. However, at time of publication Samsung is running a big sale on its website that slashes the price down to $40, which is an incredible value.
Samsung Galaxy Tab A7 Lite review: Design
As the name suggests, the Galaxy Tab A7 Lite is a lighter, smaller spin on the Galaxy Tab A7 tablet the company released in 2020. It’s 8.37 x 4.91 x 0.31 inches in size and weighs in at just 0.81 pounds. It means that it’s lighter and more compact than almost every tablet on the market. The notable exception is Apple’s iPad mini, which is still a bit smaller and lighter (at 8 x 5.3 x 0.24 inches and 0.66 pounds) than the Tab A7 Lite.
Of course, the iPad mini is still reliant on Apple’s proprietary Lightning port for charging, whereas the Galaxy Tab A7 Lite sports a more ubiquitous USB-C port instead — though rumors suggest Apple is swapping that out for USB-C on an updated iPad mini due out at the end of 2021.
Along the bottom edge of the Tab A7 Lite you’ll find a Type-C USB 2.0 port which is predominantly used for charging the device. The power/wake button and volume controls are nestled along the top right edge, while the microSD card slot is located on the left edge.
Samsung Galaxy Tab A7 Lite review: Display
The Tab A7 Lite’s 8.7-inch, 1,340 x 800 pixel screen looks pretty good in most situations, though in bright light I found myself staring at my reflection more often than I liked. Colors look nice and bright, and the bright reds and yellows popped in films like The Tomorrow War and Knives Out. However, there was some noticeable blurring and smudging of details in dark or fast-moving scenes. That could have something to do with the Tab A7 Lite’s rather low pixel density. At roughly 179 ppi it’s not as sharp as the Fire HD 10 2021 (224), the Galaxy Tab A7 (224) or the iPad 2020 (264 ppi).
Based on our colorimeter testing, the Galaxy Tab A7 Lite is capable of displaying 81.8% of the sRGB color spectrum. That’s a fair bit short of the 100% ideal, and a bit less vivid than the iPad 2020 (97%) or the Galaxy Tab A7 (101.7%).
The screen gets bright enough to be usable in broad daylight, but it’s not the brightest tablet you can buy. In our testing the Tab A7 Lite’s display had a maximum brightness of 315 nits, which is good enough but not as bright as the Galaxy Tab A7 (329.3 nits) or the iPad 2020 (484 nits).
These results are well in line with the Tab A7 Lite’s budget-friendly asking price, and they help explain why it can sometimes be hard to make out dark scenes or use the tablet in bright light. However, the display works well as an input device. I had no trouble tapping and swiping my way through Android, and gesture controls worked well.
Performance
The MediaTek MT8768T chip powering the Galaxy Tab A7 Lite isn’t exactly a powerhouse, but its 4 GB of RAM helps make the experience of flipping between apps and playing games nice and speedy.
However, be prepared for some hitches and slow down when you open a lot of apps simultaneously or try to play more demanding Android games. When I opened 15 tabs in Chrome and tried to flip between them quickly, I regularly saw a bit of slowdown. I could play games like Asphalt 9 and Call of Duty Mobile pretty well on the Tab A7 Lite, but it often struggled to maintain a smooth framerate when the screen got busy in either game, and cutscenes promoting new content in Call of Duty Mobile often looked more like slideshows.
In short, using the Tab A7 Lite for anything more than browsing the web and watching media is often a lackluster experience, and that’s backed up by our lab testing. The Galaxy Tab A7 Lite earned a score of 907 in the Geekbench 5 multicore performance benchmark, which we use to help measure the tablet’s overall performance. It’s a poor score that puts it quite behind tablets like the 2021 Amazon Fire HD 10 (969), Microsoft’s Surface Go 2 (1,563), and the iPad 2020 (2,685).
