Samsung Galaxy Tab A7 Lite review – The one to buy if you want to watch the money you spend

7.3 Media mogul

If you're looking for something affordable and sturdy to serve as a distraction when all the lights go out, Samsung's Galaxy Tab A7 Lite will do the job admirably. As long as you go in mindful of its limits -- and there are a few -- you'll probably be pleased you looked this one up.

• Battery 8.5
• Display 7
• Performance 6
• Design 7.5
• Price 7.5
• User Ratings (0 Votes) 0

If you’re looking for the very best Android tablet, Samsung makes it. But, as with its smartphones, you’ll wind up paying for what you get. The Samsung Galaxy Tab A7 Lite, the most affordable tablet from the South Korean company, occupies the exact opposite end of the scale. You can expect to pay around R3,000 — often less — for one of these.

Any budget tablet will offer lower specs than you might find in products with a larger price tag. Samsung’s A7 Lite is no exception. The screen is sub-HD (but offers more than a 720p resolution). It’s not really designed for gaming. But if you’re after an affordable and attractive media consumption device, you’ve come to the right place.

Death to all but metal

Samsung has a way with design. The Galaxy Tab A7 Lite is an attractive piece of hardware. The 8.7in 800 x 1,340 screen is surrounded by surprisingly skinny bezels. The surrounding edges are sparsely populated. There’s space on the upper left edge for a microSD card. The volume and power buttons live on the upper right, but it feels a little weird. Unlike Samsung’s phones, the power button is above the volume rocket. It takes some getting used to.

Some surprising parts of the build are extremely welcome. There’s still a 3.5mm jack, in case you’re rocking a set of wired headphones, a speaker grille, and then a USB-C port for charging. That… makes a heck of a difference in this budget slate. We’re not thrilled with its offset placement, but it hasn’t done anything unpleasant as a result of it so…

The edges and rear are also welcome. Samsung’s included two plastic end-caps but the metal rear panel goes a long way towards keeping this tablet as compact as it is. It measures just 8mm thick, which is thinner than many smartphones. It weighs just over 365 grams and it handles well if you’re using it as a media player. Or you could stick it into a case that props it up if this is your load-shedding time waster.

The power of thy sword

But, as mentioned, this is a budget tablet. For all that, it runs Android 12 and Samsung’s One UI 4.1. That means it’ll connect wonderfully with Samsung Wear devices, like earbuds and smartwatches. You’re more likely to use the buds because the Galaxy Tab A7 Lite is an almost perfect media machine. Netflix and other streaming services work wonderfully. There’s also plenty of internal space — around 20GB of the included 32GB — to use VLC or another media player if you’re fond of offline media files.

The 8.7in TFT display is bright and colour reproduction, while it won’t win design awards, is more than enough to make HD content pop. South Africa’s version of the Galaxy Tab A7 Lite includes 3GB of RAM. Along with the MediaTek Helio P22T processor running everything in the background, that’s more than enough for media playback and web browsing. We did note a slight slowdown when playing files in VLC. The stutter lasts for a couple of seconds before the video and audio sync up.

Which is a roundabout way of saying that you… probably shouldn’t buy this if you’re keen on playing games. It’ll cope with older titles, but don’t expect to win (or even attempt to win) any chicken dinners. Fortnite won’t work. Nor will most graphics-heavy games. Idle games, point-and-click, and emulated SNES games, sure. But nothing much more intensive, sadly.

To ride, shoot straight, and speak the truth 

The last bits of the Galaxy Tab A7 Lite we have to cover are a) the obvious and b) the extremely important. The cameras are the obvious point. How do they perform? Well… they don’t really. There’s a little 2MP front-facing potato-cam that’ll do for video calls. You won’t ever light up social media using it unless you’re very creative with your lighting. The rear camera is a single 8MP sensor, with autofocus. It’ll take decent images provided you make every effort to ensure that the lighting is perfect.

But you’re not buying a tablet like this for its photography skills, which is why Samsung gets to skimp a little here. Far more important is battery life and it’s here that the Galaxy Tab A7 Lite performs. There’s a 5,100mAh battery at work. Given the reduced specs, even the 8.7in screen size can’t do much damage to the battery. It’ll outlast load shedding with plenty of breathing room, even if you’re actively streaming from a WiFi connection and using Bluetooth earbuds. You can clear two to three full-length movies and still have enough charge left over for an episode or two before returning to the charger.

Samsung Galaxy Tab A7 Lite verdict

No tablet is perfect. Samsung’s Galaxy Tab A7 Lite is less perfect than many. But it has several factors in its favour — there’s a solid build behind it, the battery has enough legs to keep you entertained for ages, and that screen isn’t nearly as bad as its on-paper specs might suggest. In other words, if you’re after a media player that’ll work when all others are lacking power, this is your device. But it’s relatively low-powered compared to most devices you might own and the camera isn’t worth mentioning. But that’s fine — nobody needs to use a tablet to take photographs. Unless they’ve spotted Bigfoot and don’t have any other camera to hand. Which, based on Bigfoot images out in the wild, happens far more often than you’d think.