Galaxy Tab S7 FE seems like a poor excuse for a Fan Edition device

It’s a little unclear right now when Fan Edition really means for Samsung. The company hasn’t told us exactly who these fans are and how it decides which features these fans love the most when it sets out to make Fan Editions of flagship phones and tablets. It probably does some internal polling that we will never see the data on, and it makes us wonder if there’s really a proper goal Samsung has in mind.

After all, take a look at the Galaxy S20 FE and compare it with the Galaxy Tab S7 FE. The former gives you pretty much every major feature from the Galaxy S20 and Galaxy S20+ (you even have to make do with the Exynos 990, but let’s not enter that territory, shall we?). The latter? Well, you get some of the good Galaxy Tab S7 and Tab S7+ features, but a lot of them are missing.

The only true flagship stuff — as in features that you don’t see on Samsung’s mid-range or budget devices — you’re getting are the S Pen, 45W charging, and software features like DeX mode. Actually, scratch the S Pen off the list, because the stylus has been available on plenty of mid-range Galaxy tablets already. As for everything else, there’s nothing really special on offer. Sure, the display is huge and so is the battery capacity, there’s 5G (yay?) and hey, there’s a 3.5mm headphone jack as well!

A made-for-fans Galaxy device with an LCD display?

But it’s strange how Samsung has the audacity to call the Galaxy Tab S7 FE a device made for fans without giving you an AMOLED screen, let alone a high refresh rate. Who in their right minds is looking to pay €600+ for a tablet with an LCD display that works at 60Hz when even a sub-$200 Galaxy M series phone has a 90Hz panel? Well, some customers surely wouldn’t mind, but it’s a huge omission from a device that’s supposed to be made for some so-called fans.

Don’t even get us started on the processor choice and the amount of memory you’re getting. The Tab S7 FE has a Snapdragon 750G, the same chip that powers the 5G-capable-but-otherwise-budget Galaxy M42 5G and the Galaxy A52 5G. And… wait for it… the base variant has 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage for €649! Is the 750G powerful enough to run Dex mode on the tablet? Will 4GB of RAM handle the weight of running three apps at once using the Multi-Active Window feature?

These are questions that will only be answered once we’ve had the chance to test the Galaxy Tab S7 FE, but theoretically, this tablet lacks too much of what made the Galaxy Tab S7 and Tab S7+ so good. Even if it turns out to be a fairly solid tablet, perhaps Samsung should have called it the Galaxy Tab S7 Lite, as there’s a good chance many customers will buy one thinking it’s a flagship killer of sorts like the Galaxy S20 FE and end up being disappointed.

Or perhaps that’s the goal here, to use the Fan Edition branding to lure gullible customers into spending their hard-earned money? We can’t say, but we sure hope Samsung won’t bungle up the upcoming Galaxy S21 FE in a similar way and tarnish the Fan Edition brand before it has even had the chance to take off.

• Model: SM-T737
• Dimensions: Tablet: 185 x 284.8 x 6.3 mm
• Display: 12.4 inch / mm TFT
• CPU: Snapdragon 750G
• Camera: 8MP