Galaxy Tab S2: A lighter tablet with the right aspect ratio, high price

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ars.AD.queue.push(["xrailTop", {sz:"300x251", kws:["bottom"], collapse: true}]);Last night I made my way to the rooftop of a New York City hotel to pick up Samsung's new Galaxy Tab S2, the sequel to last year's reasonably well-regarded Galaxy Tab S. The new tablets, which come with 9.7-inch and 8.0-inch varieties that share most of the same specs, build upon their predecessors in most of the right ways—they're a little faster, they trade a movie-friendly 16:10 aspect ratio for a reading-and-productivity-friendly 4:3 aspect ratio, and the old swipe-based fingerprint reader has been tossed out in favor of one you can simply press.

The downside is that the tablets start at $400 and $500 for the 8-inch and 9.7-inch models respectively—not completely outlandish for a tablet, but much more than you have to pay if all you're looking for is a basic Web, Netflix, and e-book slab. If you're looking for a high-end Android tablet and you're willing to pay for the privilege of owning one, though, they're still worth your consideration.

Look and feel, screen and specs

If it's hard to talk about the Tab S2 without mentioning the iPad, it's because Apple's tablet is still the pace car for this flagging subsection of the consumer electronics business. Superficially, both Tab S2s share a lot of similarities with the iPad Air 2 and Mini 3: all have the same 2048×1536 display resolution. The new fingerprint reader works more like TouchID than in the previous tablets. And Samsung has shifted the buttons around so that the tablet is in portrait mode when it's right-side-up.