Samsung's $399 Galaxy Tab S5e Takes on iPad

Samsung is bringing its tablets closer to its phones. The new Galaxy Tab S5e will share texts and phone calls with your Samsung phone, making this slim, metal-clad tablet the leading competitor to Apple's base-model iPad.

The S5e fits between Samsung's $329 Galaxy Tab A and its $649 Galaxy Tab S4. It's in the sweet spot; I don't know anyone willing to pay $649 for an Android-powered tablet. The S5e's body is super slim and light for a 10-inch tablet at 9.64 by 6.3 by 0.22 inches and 14.1 ounces, slimmer and lighter than the iPad.

It'll be the first Samsung tablet with "call and message continuity," which lets you make and answer calls and texts seamlessly between your Samsung phone and your tablet. "You get a seamless, cross-device experience where it doesn't matter what device you're using," Samsung senior product marketing manager Stephen Hawke said.

The tablet has a 10.5-inch, 2,560-by-1,600, 16:10 format HDR AMOLED screen, 13MP and 8MP cameras, quad speakers, and a 7,040mAh battery. Samsung estimates 14.5 hours of battery life. It comes in 4GB/64GB or 6GB/128GB versions, both running on a Qualcomm Snapdragon 670 processor. It comes in black, gray, and gold.

Samsung senior product marketing manager Stephen Hawke said the Tab S5e (the "e" is for essential, but the company won't commit to a Tab S5 without the "e") is for entertainment and a bit of productivity.

The tablet runs Android Pie with various Samsung applications built-in. This will be the first tablet with Bixby voice commands, encouraging you to use Samsung's forlorn, little-loved voice assistant. More compellingly, it can flip into a desktop-like mode with via the built-in DeX application and a keyboard case, and it can seamlessly share messages and phone calls with a Samsung smartphone—even making calls through the tablet when you're away from your phone, if the tablet has an internet connection.

We didn't get a hands-on with this tablet; we just saw a presentation about it, so I can't tell you how it actually feels to use. But there's not much going on right now in the world of quality, midrange Android tablets. Huawei has its $350 Mediapad M5 , whose specs are pretty similar to the Tab 5e, but otherwise the whole sector seems to have been clear-cut by the iPad.

Samsung was encouraged to produce this product because desperate Android tablet shoppers have been gathering up old Tab S2s and S3s, and "we want to see what we can do with a current-generation product," Hawke said.

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Hawke said he sees this tablet as being at the center of a connected home, maybe on a dock in the living room. Samsung has designed a new SmartThings app with a more tablet-centric interface, to control smart home devices.

Unfortunately, at $399.99, Samsung is still going to have a hard time arguing people out of buying $329 iPads. Android integration helps—in an Android household where people want to share apps, get calls or messages from Samsung phones, or control SmartThings smart home devices, this tablet will absolutely fit in.

The Wi-Fi model of the tablet will be available sometime before July, with LTE models following later in the year. We'll have full reviews when we can get them.