For years, I’ve idly dreamed of having a tablet with a reasonable-sized screen that I can use as a blogger on the road. Something I can actually write on, as someone who doesn’t get on terribly well with virtual keyboards. Something smaller and lighter than a laptop, something more spontaneous than a laptop. I’ve had a couple of tablets in my time, an ill-advised HTC Flyer 7″ that died more because the utterly unique charging cable broke than anything else, and an 8″ Acer Iconia One that just had no brain from day one, although that one wasn’t on me. I’d like an iPad, of course, but those things are expensive and by the time you’ve added the accessories you need for them these days, like the keyboard case and the pencil, you’ve pretty much doubled the already extortionate price.
Nonetheless, after a good search through the website, I went to Currys in October with a half-hearted intention to buy an iPad. When I got there, I discovered that the prices online and the prices on the shelf were completely different and long story short, I went home with a Samsung Tab S6 Lite.
Now, I know it’s not the latest tablet and it’s certainly not the flagship. It makes no sense whatsoever to write a review of an older tablet but perhaps it might be of use if you’re thinking of investing in something for use on the road.
First impressions of the Tab S6 Lite: yeah, I like it. You can’t go wrong with “thinner and lighter”, although I haven’t seen the non-Lite to compare just how much thinner and lighter it really is. I like that it came with a pencil and I like that I could buy a keyboard case for £28 instead of £200 (that link goes to Amazon but it’s not an affiliate link). I like the big 10.2″ screen after always having smaller ones, I love that I can splitscreen it so I can see two things at once and I particularly like that it has enough brain to be able to download and run everything I want. With my previous tablets, I’ve always had to ration apps – every single time I downloaded something new on the Acer, I had to delete two existing apps which means by now there’s virtually nothing on it. I daresay this one will deteriorate over time but right now, I’ve got everything I could possibly want on it, plus some stuff I’m just trying out. I’ve even been able to download some TV and movies for watching on planes! I’ve never been the person who gets to watch movies on a plane!
I’ve been trying to get into the habit of calendar blocking – I think it’s less useful when you’ve got a 9-5 job and fill up your free time with adventures than when you’re trying to balance university, a job and content creation. It doesn’t really benefit me at all to have a huge block every single day telling me I’m going to work and I don’t block in my walks or my blogging time or anything like that. But I am putting in other stuff – Guide things, the occasional medical thing, events, plans and whatnot – and colour-coding it and so I’m enjoying the calendar widget that means I can use one face as a kind of dashboard.
It’s only been on one trip so far. I planned to take it glamping but there were a couple of reasons I didn’t. First, it doesn’t have mobile data and the shepherds hut doesn’t have wifi so that massively limited what I could do with it. Second, I was afraid it would get wet, muddy, cold or trodden on. Third, although I needed two blog posts to be written about it and finished within 12 hours of getting home, I was supposed to be relaxing and not doing blog stuff.
But I took it to Germany. As I said earlier, I downloaded some stuff to watch on the plane. I wrote my daily diaries/blogs for my mum on an actual keyboard. I did write at least four posts for this very blog but I did them in Notion rather than directly into WordPress, one of them while sitting on a plane that was delayed on the tarmac because no one had delivered the baggage – can confirm that it’s excellent for blogging on a plane! I watched videos in my hotel room. I took my Kindle and that was better for reading over breakfast downstairs because bringing a tablet to breakfast looks weird but I could also open my Germany guidebook in the Kindle app on my tablet back in my room so I could see it properly on a big screen and plan my day accordingly. I liked having it slotted into its case and functioning as a mini laptop and I liked that I could take it out of the case and just use it as a big phone.
At home, I rarely put it in its case unless I want to prop it up on my desk to have a video running in the background next to me, which I sometimes do. Some people listen to podcasts. I occasionally like to have a video running where I can listen to it and glance across from time to time. I take it in the bath too, also out of its case. As far as I can see, it’s not waterproof so it goes in a waterproof case. Actually, I bought that thing years ago. The old one my old tablet and Kindle shared got a hole in it and I couldn’t find one of a suitable size so had to go for something a bit big. As it happens, it’s a perfect fit for the Tab S6 Lite. Usually I just doomscroll until it’s time to get out but I’m trying to get into the habit of opening the Kindle app so I can read. No, I can’t just take the Kindle too – it’s still only the one waterproof case between the two of them.
I don’t have anything techy to say about it, I’m afraid. I don’t personally get on very well with virtual keyboards which is why I keep singing the praises of the physical one but I guess there was nothing stopping me from getting a physical one to use with my phone. I do blog from it in the bath sometimes – it’s an excellent time to be productive but the autocorrect is a lot less clever than on my iPhone and that makes . I’m constantly catching the top row of numbers and it won’t learn that I will never want to write “th3”, “tge” or separate words with “c” instead of a space. That said, it’s still more satisfying to write on the big screen and it feels like the battery lasts longer too. It probably does. Apple is notorious for its diminishing batteries. I’ve had my phone two years and treated it impeccably, exactly as everyone says to preserve battery health and it’s already at max capacity 78% and giving me a warning that it’s severely degraded. I daresay that’s in my tablet’s future too but it’s only two months old. Let me enjoy the full function for a while!
The only issue I have is that I can’t find a free app to do pictures with. Almost all I want to do it resize them and I’m having a little trouble with that. You’ll have noticed I have all the graphic design skills of an ape (I have a B at GCSE in Graphics!) but I have a layered template in GIMP that I use to make the featured image and I just can’t find anything at all to do that job. Other than when I’m imposing Blogmas on myself, I schedule posts so I’ve got time to deal with the pictures when I get home but it would be nice to be able to do everything from the tablet.
So, yes. If you add on a case, I’m pretty satisfied with the Samsung Tab S6 Lite as a lightweight travel “laptop”. Next month I’ll write some blogs from Iceland on it and I’ll take photos of me using it. Idiot! I knew I was writing this post when I was in Germany and it never occurred to me to set up the camera to take photos of “using it as a travel laptop”!