Samsung Galaxy Tab S 8.4 Vs Nexus 9: Hardware, Design, Display, Prices, And Specs Showdown! Which Tablet Is The Best Purchase?

Which tablet is the best purchase? We compare the Samsung Galaxy Tab S 8.4 and the Nexus 9 to see which is worth the purchase.

In terms of design and display, the Nexus 9 has a soft touch plastic back and a metal band surrounding the edges. There are two BoomSound speakers at the top and at the bottom of the device. It measures 228.2×153.7×8 mm and weighs 425/436grams (WiFi – 3G/LTE).

The Samsung Galaxy Tab S 8.4 measures 212.8×125.6×6.6 mm and weighs 298 grams, but that’s because is smaller and features polycarbonate material on its back. It features a perforated dots on the back and a faux metal frame. The front panel of the Tab S was placed the popular home button and inside of it was integrated the fingerprint scanner, but the device isn’t water and dust resistant.

The Nexus 9 is equipped with an 8.9 inches LCD screen capable of rendering 2048×1536 pixels at 281 ppi, while the Samsung Tab S has a smaller 8.4 inches Super AMOLED screen with a more convenient resolution of 2560x1600pixels at 359ppi. The difference between the two screens relies on the aspect ration, and the Nexus 9 has 4:3, while the Tab S comes with 16:9 ratio.

For the hardware, the Nexus 9 features an NVIDIA Tegra K1 dual-core 2.3GHz Denver processor which is backed by 2GB of RAM and has two variants of storage of 16 and 36GB, which doesn't support expansion. The Samsung Galaxy Tab S 8.4 is available in two variants of hardware configuration: a Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 quad-core 2.3GHz Krait 400 processor with Adreno 330 graphics, or an Exynos 5420 octa core processor formed by two quad core processors clocked at 1.9Ghz and 1.3Ghz, paired with Mali-T628MP6 graphics and both variants support 3GB of RAM.

For battery and camera specs, the Nexus 9 has a battery of 6700mAh, while the Samsung Galaxt Tab S 8.4 has a 4900mAh battery. The Nexus 9 can last 4.5-5.5 hours when gaming and watching videos, while the Tab S last atleast 4.5 hours.

Both tablets have back cameras of 8MP, but the Tab S colors are more vibrant and sharper, but only if users use it during the day, in adequate lighting conditions. Its camera interface is complex but not feature-rich, having some manual controls and many shooting modes.

The Nexus 9 has a simpler camera interface, offering features such as Panorama and Photosphere, but the images are not the best with this tablet, and its front camera has grainy pictures due to the resolution of 1.6MP, compared to 2.1MP camera from the Samsung tablet.

The Nexus 9 16GB variant costs $350 dollars and the 32GB variant is $80 dollars more expensive. The Samsung Tab S 8.4 16GB variant is around $407.

Which tablet is worth the purchase? Sound off in the comments section below.