The Samsung Galaxy Tab S 10.5 is one of the firm's best ever tablets with a thin and light design, although there is still too much plastic. Hardware is decent, namely that impressive display and great battery life making this a consumption machine.

During a special event in New York on 12 June, Samsung unveiled two new tablets, the Galaxy Tab S 10.5 (with a 10.5in screen) and the Galaxy Tab S 8.4 (you guessed it, with an 8.4in screen).

Samsung's Galaxy Tab S 10.5 sports a stunning Super AMOLED screen, a fingerprint reader, and top-notch specs. If you want the best Android slate, it should be near the top of your list.

Stunning Super AMOLED screen; Fingerprint scanner; Thinner and lighter than the iPad Air; MicoSD expansion slot; 3GB of RAM

Screen feels almost too bright and vivid; No black model available; Isn't dust/water-resistant like GS5; Fingerprint Scanner isn't ideal for tablet use; Sony's Xperia Z2 tablet is a little thinner and lighter

The Samsung Galaxy S5 was a significant step past the S4, but the step was subtle: It was in the screen and the software. The Galaxy Tab S 10.5 ($499, 16GB) pours the S5 equation into the best Android media tablet we've seen so far. It's slim, well-designed, and beautiful.

Slim and light; Amazing screen

Wi-Fi and GPU performance not quite up to the competition

With a gorgeous screen, super-thin design and long battery life, the Galaxy Tab S earns its place as one of our favorite tablets.

Stunning screen; Long battery life; Thin and light; Some useful software additions; like free magazines

Some minor performance hiccups (on the WiFi-only models; anyway; Samsung's "Magazine UX" interface still feels overbearing; Finicky fingerprint scanner; "Simple Clickers" make it cumbersome to use Samsung's optional cases

Thanks in part to Samsung's own success with big-screen phones, tablets have begun to lose their luster. The Galaxy Tab S 10.5 literally brings it back with a display so vibrant and colorful that it promises to make the iPad look dull.

Samsung's gadget playbook is pretty obvious to anybody who's been watching. It has created a relatively stable (if uninspiring) design language, chosen plastic as its preferred material, and cranked out device after device - each one based on small, iterative technological updates to the previous...

Great display; Thin and light; Multi window software; Great display; Thin and light; Multi window software

Plastic body; Confusing software features; Finicky fingerprint reader; Plastic body; Confusing software features; Finicky fingerprint reader

Samsung's tablet lineup can feel a bit crowded-it already offers Tab and Note devices, each with its own Pro version.

Samsung Galaxy Tab S 10.5 is the full-size member of the freshly announced tablet family by Samsung. Like its smaller sibling, the Galaxy Tab S 8.4, the newcomer capitalizes on the world's only 10.5-inch Super AMOLED screen panel and aims to capture a spot at the top of the tablet hierarchy,...

10.5" WQXGA Super AMOLED display with a resolution of 2560 x 1600 pixels, The Wi-Fi-only version comes with Exynos Octa 5420 chipset; quad-core Cortex-A15 CPU plus quad-core Cortex-A7 CPU; Mali-T628 GPU, 3GB RAM, The LTE (Cat.4) version comes with Snapdragon 800, quad-core Krait 400 @ 2.3GHz; Adreno...

The available color schemes might not fit all tastes; Android still lags behind iOS in terms of tablet-optimized apps; GPU performance leaves a lot to be desired; No NFC

The Tab S 10.5 is basically the bigger version of the S 8.4, which is more or less a bigger version of the S5 (minus some features like the heart rate sensor and the Extreme Power Saving mode).

Compact design; superb display and decent camera

The expected price,might be physically big for some and it lags a bit when switching between apps