Samsung covered almost all of its bases at the highly anticipated August 10 Unpacked event, taking the wraps off two spectacular new foldable phones, as well as two different smartwatches (with two very different price points) and the company’s most advanced alternative yet to Apple’s industry-leading AirPods.
But the world’s largest handset manufacturer did neglect another Apple-dominated market… for one pretty obvious and logical reason. The high-end Galaxy Tab S8, Tab S8+, and Tab S8 Ultra are far too young to already get a series of iPad Pro-rivaling sequels, while Samsung’s mid-range tablet portfolio was refreshed with little to no fanfare just a few months ago.
That’s right, a 2022 edition of the originally 2020-released Galaxy Tab S6 Lite debuted under the completely unimaginative Tab S6 Lite (2022) name at a reasonable price of $350 and up while you were probably paying attention to other stuff, and unsurprisingly, this budget-friendly slate is now… even budget-friendlier.
Both Amazon and Best Buy are charging $100 less than the aforementioned list price in an entry-level 64GB storage configuration, with the 128 gig variant meanwhile going for 130 bucks below its $429.99 MSRP at the time of this writing.
Interestingly, Samsung itself is offering no discounts whatsoever right now on either of the two Wi-Fi-only models, whose specs are extremely similar to those of the first-gen Galaxy Tab S6 Lite (which has been quietly discontinued in favor of this newer edition).
In a nutshell, the Tab S6 Lite (2022) is slightly faster than the 2020 generation, packing Qualcomm’s middling Snapdragon 720 processor instead of Samsung’s own Exynos 9611 chipset, and with Android 12 out the box, the newer tablet should enjoy significantly longer software support (at least in theory).
All the other stuff has essentially gone unchanged, from the not-too-shabby 10.4-inch screen with a resolution of 2000 x 1200 pixels to the decidedly unimpressive 4GB RAM count, decent 7,040mAh battery equipped with 15W charging capabilities, and perhaps most notably, handy built-in S Pen.
