What You Get
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The tablet is about the size and weight of a hardback book, although its rather thinner. It comes packaged with a data cable and a charging plug (the data cable doubles as the charger cable). There is also a headphone set (the device takes a standard headphone jack). That's all that comes in the box.

Charging & Battery Life
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The tab is pretty much ready to go - mine didn't need charging - so there's none of that frustrating waiting around before you can start playing. There's a good day's worth of play in a full charge - maybe more, depending on how much you're using it. It doesn't take long to charge, though although you may want to be charging it overnight for use during the day.

Getting Started
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The instruction booklet is rather small and only just detailed enough to get you started, after which you'd be well advised to seek out the full manual from Samsung's website product support page. It's easy enough to find, is actually quite readable and it does provide a lot of useful information that will help you get the most out of the tab.

If, like me you're a tablet novice and are more used to the "IBM" format of most keyboard operated laptops and desktops, you will need to spend some time mucking around getting to know the tablet and familiarising yourself with the operating format. For instance, you don't need to "turn off" apps when you've finished with them. Simply return to the home page and the app will remain dormant in the background. However, the whole thing is pretty intuitive and it won't be long before you're doing Loop-the-Loops and Immelmann Turns.

Apps & Capabilities
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As for apps, the tab comes with lots of them preinstalled and with access to a couple of app stores (including Samsung's own) where you can download plenty more for free or for good money. I downloaded Angry Birds - I've never encountered that game before and I'm hooked! I also downloaded Skype so I could talk to my brother in Australia and a couple of flight trackers so I could watch him fly home and pick him up from the airport on time.

The tab has several movie and music players, ereaders (including a Kindle app), email and social networking apps, an internet browser (you have full web access) and several memo apps. There're also a couple of map/navigation apps - the tablet has a built in GPS, which is independent of the wifi - your tab communicates with sattelites! How cool is that?!

Also, there is an QuickOffice app which allows you to create and edit word processing, powerpoint and spreadsheet documents. It's compatible with MS Office formats but the conversion from Excel into QuickOffice spreadsheet in particular is very patchy and the spreadsheet functionality is extremely limited. I bought (for a few quid) Documents-To_Go which is a similar and slightly better MSOffice clone.

Interfacing (inc. Bluetooth problem fix)
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The Galaxy interface cable is a USB connector at the far end and a proprietary plug at the tablet end.

Setting up a WiFi connection is easy. The Galaxy automatically searches for nearby networks and then prompts you for a passkey (if it's a secure or private network), which you only need to supply once. I will say that the strength of the connection varies from room to room and the Galaxy does struggle to make contact at times. My daughter's iPad has the same problem, so I suspect that it's my WifFi, not the tablet (see Accessories).

Data input is by an on-screen keyboard, of which there are several different formats according to your preferences.

As you probably know, there is no mouse. All that sort of stuff is done via the touch screen which requires you to learn a new "language". That said, it is easy to cope with although I found my fat fingers are a little bit clumsy, especially when trying to select some of the smaller icons or hyperlinks, so a stylus would be a good idea. However, you CAN zoom in on the screen to make these targets bigger and easier to hit.

An inbuilt gyroscope allows you to rotate the tab through 360 degrees and view the screen in portrait and landscape mode. I have found it a little slow to respond - although it's more of an irritation than a real failing.

You can also interface via Bluetooth. Now, I was having a terrible time trying to get this to work - try as I might, I couldn't get my laptop or moby to send a file TO my Galaxy - for some reason the sending device kept complaining that the transfer had failed or couldn't be honoured, despite the fact that the device could SEE the Galaxy. Then I discovered that I could send a file FROM the Galaxy TO the device with no probelm, and that miraculously cleared the pipeline and... Read more

This is a sweet piece of kit for the price. It's not super slick, just slick. I've owned and played with quite a few tablets now from the humble but remarkable and sadly flawed Archos Gen 9 Turbo 10.1 too the stoking Asus Transformer Prime. The Tab 2 feels right, and has a good build quality and design. It feels grown up and perfectly capable.

Best of all it just works straight out of the box. If you really must have a retina display and you can live in a fruit based echo system then go for it spend the money. Other wise get this, its a real pleasure to use and is a lot less commitment on the wallet!

I bought a sub