What do you generally expect to get from a budget tablet nowadays? A relatively small and not-that-great screen is probably the first thing that comes to mind, followed by a generic and not-very-appealing design and maybe even a sub-par processor from a manufacturer like MediaTek or Unisoc if we’re talking about the cheapest Android devices out there.
The Galaxy Tab A9 Plus, released by Samsung just a few months ago, pretty much defies all these expectations with a smooth and generously sized 90Hz 11-inch TFT LCD panel, an incredibly thin 6.9mm profile, and a reasonably powerful Qualcomm Snapdragon 695 chipset.
The Android 13-running mid-range giant easily breaks the “reasonable value” barrier at an unprecedented $30 discount from a regular starting price of $219.99. That’s obviously for an entry-level configuration that doesn’t exactly shine in the storage and memory departments with 64 and 4GB respectively, but it remains hard to argue with such a handsome and well-balanced sub-$200 package.
Keep in mind that we fully expect Samsung to deliver stable Android 14 goodies to the Tab A9+… any day now, with a couple of additional major OS upgrades also guaranteed to reach this bad boy in due time down the line. That’s not something Amazon or Lenovo’s ultra-affordable tablets can compete with, while Apple seems to have no intention of ever cracking the low-cost market segment.
The Tab A9 Plus is no pushover when it comes to audio performance or battery life either, and unlike some of Samsung’s best phones right now, the super-sized slate also supports microSD storage expansion.
Speaking of storage, there is an upper-tier 128 gig variant you may want to consider as well at a $30 discount of its own from a $269.99 list price, but that one was actually more substantially marked down just a couple of weeks ago, so it might be a better idea to wait for that deal to return… at some point in the more or less distant future.
