Artist Review: Samsung Tab S10 Lite (2025)

Review unit on loan from Samsung Singapore

The Samsung Tab S10 Lite is a 10.9-inch Android 15 tablet released in September 2025. This is an update for the Samsung Tab S6 Lite (2024) which I did not review because that was just a slight incremental update of the Samsung Tab S6 Lite (2020).

The upgrades over the previous model are:

• Exynos 1380 vs 1280
• RAM increase from 4GB to 6GB, with option for 8GB
• Storage increase from 64GB to 128GB, with option for 256GB

Listed below are the prices in Singapore, and on Amazon USA.

Bottom line

The Samsung Tab S10 Lite is for people looking for a budget tablet with good pen support. If you have more budget, you should definitely go with the Samsung Tab S10 FE which was released in April 2025.

At the time of review, Shopee SG is selling the Tab S10 FE with 8GB 128GB at SGD 500, and the Tab S10 Lite with 6GB 128GB at SGD 458.

Performance for the Tab S10 Lite is alright, bare minimal of what you can expect from Android tablets. The Samsung Tab S10 FE is noticeably more responsive. At around the same or lower price, you can get more powerful tablets such as the Honor Pad 10, Redmi Pad 2 Pro. The selling point of Samsung over the other brands is better software features with Samsung OneUI and better pen performance.

The 10.9-inch LCD has obvious IPS glow and limited viewing angles. Colours and brightness look alright, but cannot compete with other brands in the same price category. Audio quality is alright. Battery life is good, but charging speed is slow at 20W.

Pen performance is great and is one main selling point. The tablet is great for writing and drawing.

This tablet is really for those who have a fixed limited budget. My recommendation is to get the Tab S10 FE instead which has more features, and is more powerful so it will have better longevity.

Specifications

Things included

• Tablet
• USB-C to USB-C charging cable
• Samsung S Pen
• SIM ejector
• User manual

Design

The Samsung Tab S10 Lite is a beautiful tablet with solid build quality. A 10.9-inch tablet is easy to handle in both vertical and horizontal orientation.

The 5 MP landscape camera supports face unlock and auto-brightness. Face unlock did not work consistently for me so I often have to just type in the pin. And face unlock is not the secure type, and there's no fingerprint scanner, so there's no biometric unlock for apps that require high security, e.g. banking apps.

The tablet only has two speakers and the audio quality is good, loud with good stereo effect, but of course the detail and surround isn't as good compared to the 4-way speakers on better Samsung tablets.

USB-C port only has USB 2 transfer speed, and supports 25W charging which takes around 2 hours for a full charge.

Those are pogo pin connectors for keyboard accessories.

Back of the tablet has one 8MP camera with no flash. The Samsung S Pen can still attach magnetically on the back, near the camera lens, even though there's no area marked out for the pen.

My review unit is wifi-only but you can get this tablet with 5G support, limited to certain countries.

Display

The 10.9-inch TFT LCD looks alright, not impressive. Main issues I have with this display is the IPS glow is quite obvious even during daytime and with the limited viewing angles.

Shown above is LCD vs OLED, Tab S10 Lite vs Tab S11. Both have auto-brightness and the OLED display looks noticeably brighter. Even other tablets with auto-brightness looks brighter. If you want a brighter display, you'll have to switch to manual brightness.

The display is reflective with no anti-reflective coating. Maximum brightness is up to 600 nits which is good when using the tablet outdoors, but not high enough (to me) for use under direct sunlight. I find the auto-brightness to always be slightly lower than my preference, but that could be due to me using other LCDs or OLED displays which look brighter.

Refresh rate is 90Hz and make animation for pan, zoom, rotate look and feel smooth.

Display is laminated so there's almost no gap between the pen tip and line beneath.

Performance

Performance of the this tablet with the Exynos 1380 is just alright. I don't usually like to show benchmarks but in this case I want to show them just to let you see how big the performance difference is between Tab S10 FE and Tab S10 Lite.

Tab S10 Lite is responsive enough but there's the occasional stutter, even for swiping up to show the home screen. The Tab S10 FE is noticeably more responsive.

Multi-tasking with 6GB RAM seems fine. Apps are able to launch fast, thankfully. But when loading huge games, more time is needed. Old apps in memory may have to reload, but reloads are fast.

This tablet can be used for light gaming, not for graphics intensive games. With Genshin Impact, the default graphics settings is Lowest, the fifth of five options. On Tab S10 FE, it's Medium graphics settings.

OS and software

The Samsung Tab S10 Lite runs on Samsung One UI 7.0 on top of Android 15 and there's official support for Google Play Store. This tablet should get 7 years of OS and security updates.

Samsung One UI has many useful features, and I think it's one of the better UIs compared to other companies. The default file manager has proper integration with Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive.

Samsung DeX has updated to the new version but you cannot swipe down a fullscreen app to enable DeX, something you can do with One UI 8.

Pen

The Samsung S Pen is included and this is one of the best digital pens for writing and drawing. This has the same pen design from Tab S7 to S10, including the Lite and FE models.

The pen is cylindrical except for one flat side that can attach magnetically to the back and side of the tablet.

The pen supports tilt, 4096 levels of pressure sensitivity and palm rejection. The pen is not powered by battery so no charging is required. The pen does not use Bluetooth so no pairing is required for usage.

There is one side button which is customisable depending on the app you use. The pen tip has a soft tip which also provides some resistance on the glass display. The pen tip is firm and has no movement when in contact with the display. The pen tip does not make tapping sounds thanks to the soft tip.

Since the pen uses Wacom EMR, it is possible to use other S Pen alternatives too. And this pen can use the pen tips made for all S Pens that came before Tab S11.

Line tests

Line tests below were created with Medibang Paint Pro.

1. Initial activation force (IAF) is low but you will have to press down slightly to get a line. The blue lines are from the new Samsung S Pen from the Tab S11 series and those had lower IAF and could draw even thinner lines. I also had an old S Pen with the Wacom Elastomer nib which drew thicker lines. In other words, the pen performance may vary with different pens and pen tips.

2. Lines can taper smoothly and sharply.

3. Line transition from thin to thick and back to thin is smooth. This is also a diagonal line and there's no diagonal line wobble.

4. Consistent line width can be created by maintaining consistent pressure.

5. No issues with drawing dots.

6. No issues with cursor misalignment.

This is a sensitive an accurate pen. Tilt sensitivity and palm rejection both work well.

There is some latency but it's not really an issue. Latency performance also depends on the app used.

Drawing experience

Drawing experience is good since the pen performance is good.

I like the rubberised pen tip which provides some resistance on the glass so that it's easier to control the pen for drawing.

The 10.9-inch display is a good size for drawing but works better with apps with minimal UI, such as Concepts, Infinite Painter, Sketchbook, HiPaint. Apps with more UI elements will have a small drawing area as the tools and palettes take up more space. Krita does not work well because of that. Clip Studio Paint has a tablet mode with minimal UI so that works fine. I use Medibang often and have to hide the layers palette to get more space for drawing.

This was drawn with Medibang Paint Pro. The drawing workflow was smooth without issues.

This was drawn with Infinite Painter.

The shading for the hair was created with tilt effect which works well.

This was drawn with Concepts. This app supports 4-finger shortcuts and that works fine.

These are sketches drawn while commuting on the train.

This tablet is a good size to use as a digital sketchpad.

I drew this during dinner time when I saw some cops buying food.

Battery life

Battery life is around 8 hours with maximum brightness. With auto brightness, it's around 10 hours or more. Battery life is very good.

Conclusion

The Samsung Tab S10 Lite is a decent tablet but it faces extremely strong competition in this price category. Companies such as Xiaomi, Huawei, Honor are offering better hardware for the same price. So the differentiating factor from Samsung is Samsung One UI and the fantastic pen performance.

If you can stretch your budget slightly, I highly recommend you get the Tab S10 FE instead which is a better tablet in many ways.

Pros and cons at a glance
+ Beautiful design
+ Solid build quality
+ Bright, vibrant ,sharp LCD
+ 90Hz refresh rate
+ Has face unlock
+ Good audio quality
+ MicroSD card slot
+ Has 5G option
+ S Pen is included
+ Good pen performance
+ Good overall performance, but has occasional stutter
+ Long battery life
+ Samsung One UI has many useful features
+ Android 15 with Google Play Store
+ 7 years of OS and security update
- Auto-brightness does not look bright enough
- TFT LCD has obvious IPS glow and limited viewing angles
- No fingerprint unlock
- No IP rating
- Samsung backup does not backup 100% of the tablet
- USB-C port only has USB 2 speeds
- No charger is included
- No headphone jack
- S Pen replacement tips not included
- Tab S10 FE has much better performance for a small price increase

Availability

The Samsung Tab S10 Lite is available on Shopee SG, Lazada SG and Amazon (US | CA | UK | DE | FR | ES | IT | JP)