10.5" Samsung Galaxy Tab S4 w/ S Pen: 256GB $500, 64GB Expired

It might have been nice to include the information, or you could ask nicely, or maybe you could have just googled what Best Buy Student deals is and clicked on the first link. To flag a deal, because you are too lazy to figure something out or you need hand holding is messed up.

I initially bought he S5e and than saw this sale and took it back for the S4. Heres a quick summary if anyone is comparing the two.

The biggest thing to know about the S5e, it has WiFi problems. Depending on how you use the tablet you might not ever notice but one if my main uses for a tablet is Steam In Home STreaming / Moonlight. Both of these services are incredibly susceptible to ANY networking issues. With the S5e the tablet would have to be in a stand and not touching any part of my body to get consistent WiFi and even than would still have regular network judder and signal drop out. Not something you would notice on Youtube or Netflix stream sessions but anything highly dependent on low latency will struggle. Heaven forbid you want the tablet in your hands or your lap for htis purpose, it was basically unusable... In its stand on my table it would pass network tests at 85-90 megabits on AC, put it in my lap or hold it? It would routinely fail to "pass" at 20 megabits (and that says nothing for the judder and latency).

So bear that in mind, and that might ultimately make any decision about the S5e easy.... Moving past that though.

Performance - S5e shows a bit more "android jank", especially when using the default samsung launcher. Everything is "adequate" but theres no illusion that your not rocking a mid range snapdragon. Ignore the benchmarks, I'm talking about day to day use, theres no mistaking this chipset for anything other than what it is. If you game on your tablet (not stream but actual games) tahn it just gets worse because the CPU is pretty CLOSE to an 835, but the GPU is not. Moving to the S4, yes, its not an 855 or even 845, but the 835 is appreciably smoother and faster when moving around, loading apps, etc. It's also not just the cpu/gpu but also the memory, S4 is UFS and the S5e is just EMMC. Just another thing that contributes to the S5e feeling "slower" in day to day use beyond just what you see on a bench mark. what I'm getting at is despite how "close" they appear in some tests, I don't think thats true in the day to day usage.

Build - fark I miss the S5e. when you take that thing out of the box it feels impossibly thin and light, yet somehow sturdy and expensive. It feels "next gen" in the hands, there is just not comparison. Again like with performance, the spec sheets make the S5e and the S4 seem very close in dimensions and weight but man the feel in the hand couldn't be more different.. the glass back on the S4 feels outdated and cheap in comparison (odd how that works out). No comparison, S5e crushes the S4. On the other hand, you lose battery life and a headphone jack, two things I really care about and god I hated having to keep that dongle around with the S5e just so I could watch a movie in bed quietly whiel my wife sleeps.

Screens - Same, literally. both amazing.

S-Pen - S4 comes with it, S5e its not even an option.

For me the decision was made regardless as I was going to just return the S5e due to the unlivable issues with its wifi performance (no it wasnt defective, look online, its a well documented issue). I was just going to wait and see how the S6 reviewed but that was more than I really wanted to spend. So when the S4 went on sale for $399 that made it easy for me. In every way but the physical design (weight,metal back) the S4 was either BETTER or side grade (no finger print sensor but the Iris scanner works well enough). The S4 is also "enough tablet" for me where as the S6 is just over kill.

s5e doesn't have a headphone jack, for those who care.