Samsung Galaxy Tab A9+ 11″ 128GB 5G Review: The Budget Tablet That Punches Way Above Its Weight

There’s a familiar moment in the tech-buying journey. You need a device that can do a bit of everything: stream your favourite shows on the train, act as a digital textbook for your studies, handle video calls with family, and maybe even let you sketch out a quick idea. The problem is, the market often pushes you towards two extremes: ultra-cheap tablets that feel slow and frustrating from the moment you turn them on, or flagship models with four-figure price tags designed for professional illustrators and video editors. I’ve been there, caught in the middle, looking for that elusive “sweet spot”—a tablet that feels premium, performs reliably, and doesn’t require a second mortgage. The frustration of using a laggy, low-resolution screen or running out of storage after downloading a few apps is real, and it can turn a potentially useful tool into a source of daily annoyance. Finding a versatile, future-proofed tablet on a sensible budget is the modern holy grail for students, families, and casual creators alike.

What to Consider Before Buying a Tablet

A tablet is more than just an item; it’s a key solution for portable entertainment, productivity, and learning. It bridges the gap between the limited screen real estate of a smartphone and the bulkiness of a laptop. Its main benefits lie in its versatility—it can be a movie screen, a digital canvas, an e-reader, and a video conferencing hub all in one sleek package. In a world where we’re constantly on the move, having a lightweight device with a large, vibrant screen and long battery life is no longer a luxury, but a necessity for staying connected and productive.

The ideal customer for this type of product is someone facing the need for a larger portable screen without the complexity or cost of a full-fledged laptop. This includes students who need to read PDFs and take notes, families wanting a shared device for streaming and light gaming, or professionals who need a secondary screen for meetings and emails on the go. However, it might not be suitable for those who require high-end performance for tasks like 4K video editing, professional graphic design, or running demanding PC-grade software. Those users should consider more powerful alternatives like an iPad Pro or a Microsoft Surface, which are built for intensive workloads.

Before investing, consider these crucial points in detail:

• Dimensions & Space: Think about where you’ll use the tablet most. An 11-inch screen, like the one on the Samsung Galaxy Tab A9+ 11″ 128GB 5G, offers a great balance between immersive viewing and portability. It’s large enough for comfortable movie watching and split-screen multitasking, but still slim and light enough to slip into a backpack without being a burden. Consider the device’s thickness and weight (0.7cm and 0.64kg, respectively) to ensure it fits your lifestyle.
• Capacity/Performance: This is where budget tablets often fall short. Pay close attention to RAM and storage. With 8GB of RAM, the Samsung Galaxy Tab A9+ 11″ 128GB 5G is equipped to handle smooth multitasking between several apps. The 128GB of internal storage is a generous starting point, and the inclusion of a MicroSD card slot for expansion is a massive advantage, ensuring you won’t run out of space for your apps, photos, and downloaded videos. The processor determines the overall speed, so look for a capable modern chipset.
• Materials & Durability: The build quality dictates how a tablet feels and how well it will hold up over time. Many budget options use plastic, which can feel cheap and creak under pressure. A tablet cased in aluminium, as some users have noted this one is, offers a much more rigid and premium feel, providing better protection for the internal components and a more satisfying user experience.
• Ease of Use & Maintenance: The operating system is the heart of the tablet experience. Android offers vast customization and a huge app ecosystem, making it incredibly versatile. Look for devices that receive regular software updates, as this ensures security and access to the latest features. For maintenance, a USB-C port is now the standard, offering faster charging and data transfer, simplifying your cable management.

Keeping these factors in mind, the Samsung Galaxy Tab A9+ 11″ 128GB 5G stands out in several areas, offering a compelling package for its price point. You can explore its detailed specifications here.

While the Samsung Galaxy Tab A9+ 11″ 128GB 5G is an excellent choice, it’s always wise to see how it stacks up against the competition. For a broader look at all the top models, we highly recommend checking out our complete, in-depth guide:

First Impressions: Unboxing the Underdog

Pulling the Samsung Galaxy Tab A9+ 11″ 128GB 5G from its slim, minimalist box, the first thing that struck me was the build quality. For a device in the “A” series—Samsung’s more budget-friendly line—it feels anything but cheap. The graphite-coloured metal back is cool to the touch and reassuringly solid, with flat, modern edges that echo the design language of its more expensive S-series siblings. At just 6.9mm thick, it’s impressively slender, and while it has some heft at 640 grams, it feels balanced and comfortable to hold in both portrait and landscape orientations.

Powering it on, the 11-inch screen comes to life. It’s an LCD panel, not the vibrant AMOLEDs Samsung is famous for, but the 1920×1200 resolution is sharp and clear. The real surprise, however, was discovering the 90Hz refresh rate. Scrolling through the setup screens and the app drawer felt immediately smoother and more responsive than the standard 60Hz panels common at this price. This single feature elevates the entire user experience, making the tablet feel faster and more fluid in every interaction. Setup was standard Android fare, made simpler with Samsung’s Smart Switch if you’re coming from another Galaxy device. Out of the box, it ran Android 13, but as one user also experienced, it prompted an update to Android 14 and One UI 6.1 within the first day, which is a great sign for long-term software support.

A Deep Dive into the Samsung Galaxy Tab A9+ 11″ 128GB 5G’s Performance

After the initial setup, we spent several weeks putting this tablet through its paces as a daily driver for work, entertainment, and education. We wanted to see if its promising on-paper specs translated into a genuinely capable and enjoyable experience, or if the budget compromises would eventually become frustrating. Here’s our detailed breakdown of what it’s really like to live with.

Display and Audio: An Unexpectedly Immersive Entertainment Hub

The screen and speakers are where a media tablet lives or dies, and this is an area where the Samsung Galaxy Tab A9+ 11″ 128GB 5G genuinely surprised us. The 11-inch LCD panel is large, bright, and offers good viewing angles. While it can’t match the deep blacks and punchy colours of an OLED display found in Samsung’s Tab S series, it’s more than adequate for streaming. Watching movies on Netflix and videos on YouTube was a pleasure; the 1920×1200 resolution keeps things sharp, and we never found ourselves wishing for more pixels during casual viewing. The real game-changer is the 90Hz refresh rate. It makes every scroll, swipe, and animation feel buttery smooth, lending a sense of speed and premium polish that you simply don’t expect in this category. It’s a feature that, once you experience it, is hard to live without.

However, the real star of the show is the audio. The tablet is equipped with four speakers, tuned for Dolby Atmos, and they are fantastic. They produce a loud, clear, and surprisingly spatial soundstage. When holding the tablet in landscape mode to watch a film, the stereo separation is excellent, creating an immersive experience without needing headphones. This was a sentiment echoed by users, who praised the “4 good speakers.” For a device aimed at students and entertainment, this is a killer feature. Whether listening to lectures, watching action movies, or playing games, the audio punches far above its weight class, making external speakers feel completely unnecessary for personal use. It’s a thoughtful inclusion that dramatically enhances the tablet’s value as a media consumption device.

Performance and Everyday Use: Smooth, Capable, and Clutter-Free

At the heart of any tablet is its processor, and there seems to be some confusion online about what powers the Samsung Galaxy Tab A9+ 11″ 128GB 5G. Our testing, and reports from savvy users, confirm it’s the Qualcomm Snapdragon 695 5G chipset. While not a flagship powerhouse, this is a very capable and efficient mid-range processor, especially when paired with the generous 8GB of RAM. In day-to-day use, the tablet felt snappy and responsive. We could easily switch between Chrome with a dozen tabs open, a PDF reader, and Spotify without any noticeable lag or stutter. This is a significant improvement over older budget tablets, including Samsung’s own Tab A8, which one user rightly called “långsam” (slow).

For productivity, the A9+ handles itself with grace. The DeX mode, Samsung’s desktop-like interface, allows you to use the tablet more like a laptop, with windowed apps and a taskbar. While it won’t replace a dedicated work machine for heavy tasks, it’s perfect for writing documents, managing spreadsheets, and answering emails. It’s also excellent for students, as we found reading and annotating large PDF documents to be a breeze. The experience is fluid, and the large screen provides ample space for split-screen multitasking. We didn’t test it with intense, graphically demanding games like Genshin Impact at max settings, but for casual gaming and most titles from the Play Store, the performance is perfectly adequate. The combination of a solid processor, plenty of RAM, and a fast-refresh-rate screen makes for a consistently pleasant user experience that belies its budget-friendly price. You can see the full specifications and available offers on this surprisingly powerful tablet.

Connectivity and The 5G Conundrum: A Critical Warning

This is arguably the most important section of this review, as it addresses a major point of confusion and a potential pitfall for buyers. The Samsung Galaxy Tab A9+ 11″ 128GB 5G boasts an impressive array of physical ports that many premium tablets have abandoned. It has a USB-C port for charging, a MicroSD card slot to expand the 128GB of storage, and, thankfully, a 3.5mm headphone jack. These “legacy” features add immense practical value, allowing you to use your existing wired headphones and cheaply add hundreds of gigabytes of storage.

Now, for the 5G part. This is where things get complicated. Several user reviews highlight a critical issue: receiving region-locked devices. Specifically, some buyers have received units intended for the Indian market. As one user warned, these models are “locked down to Indian SIM cards only,” meaning a UK SIM card will not work, rendering the 5G cellular capability useless. Furthermore, these imported models often cannot be registered for a UK warranty, leaving you without support if something goes wrong. Another user reported confusion, believing “5G” simply referred to 5GHz Wi-Fi, and was disappointed to find their model didn’t take a SIM card at all—likely having purchased a Wi-Fi-only variant by mistake.

Our advice is unequivocal: exercise extreme caution when purchasing. If you require cellular 5G connectivity in the UK, you must verify with the seller, before you buy, that you are purchasing a genuine UK model that is not region-locked. While some users reported successfully using their UK SIMs, the risk of receiving an imported, incompatible model is significant. This issue seems to stem from third-party sellers and not the product itself, but it’s a crucial factor in your purchasing decision. The tablet itself is fantastic, but getting the right version is paramount.

What Other Users Are Saying

Across the board, the user sentiment for the Samsung Galaxy Tab A9+ 11″ 128GB 5G is a mix of high praise for its value and significant warnings about purchasing pitfalls. Many users are thrilled with what they received for the price. One customer summed it up perfectly, calling it “Solidly build, excellent value for money,” and highlighting the aluminium case, 5G, Wi-Fi, Micro SD slot, and good speakers. Another described it as “perfecta con un precio muy ajustado” (a perfect tablet with a very tight price), praising the 8GB of RAM and screen quality for reading documents.

However, the negative feedback is consistent and serves as a critical warning. The most prominent issue is the region-locking problem. A detailed review explained, “It is, however, an Indian import device… you can’t actually put a UK sim card in it.” This sentiment is compounded by reports of receiving faulty or tampered-with products. One user received a unit that “wont charge and just constantly blinks,” while another received a box that had been “tampered with and badly resealed.” These reviews underscore the importance of buying from a reputable source and verifying the product’s origin and model specifications before committing.

How Does the Samsung Galaxy Tab A9+ 11″ 128GB 5G Compare to the Alternatives?

While the Tab A9+ offers incredible value, it exists in a competitive market. How it stacks up depends entirely on your priorities, be it ecosystem, portability, raw power, or a child-friendly experience.

1. Apple iPad mini A17 Pro 128GB Wi-Fi

The iPad mini is the champion of premium portability. Its smaller 8.3-inch Liquid Retina display is sharper and more colour-accurate than the Tab A9+’s screen, and the A17 Pro chip provides significantly more processing power. If your priority is a compact device that easily fits in a small bag, and you are invested in the Apple ecosystem with its seamless integration and polished App Store, the iPad mini is an excellent choice. It’s ideal for those who value performance and a compact form factor above all else, but it comes at a higher price and lacks the screen size, MicroSD expansion, and headphone jack of the Samsung.

2. Apple iPad Pro 11-inch (M4) 256GB Wi-Fi

This isn’t a direct competitor; it’s an aspirational alternative. The iPad Pro is a professional-grade creative tool, powered by Apple’s desktop-class M4 chip. Its Ultra Retina XDR display is one of the best screens on any device, period. This tablet is for digital artists, video editors, and power users who need uncompromising performance and are willing to pay a significant premium for it. For someone considering the Tab A9+, the iPad Pro represents the absolute high-end of the market. It wins on every performance metric but is in a completely different league when it comes to price.

3. Amazon Fire HD 10 Kids Tablet 32 GB

The Fire HD 10 Kids tablet is a purpose-built device for a completely different audience. While the Tab A9+ is a versatile all-rounder for the whole family, the Fire HD 10 is specifically designed for young children. Its strengths are not in its specs but in its rugged “kid-proof” case, the 2-year worry-free guarantee, and the tightly controlled Amazon Kids+ ecosystem with its curated, ad-free content and robust parental controls. If you are buying a tablet exclusively for a child aged 3-7 and your primary concerns are durability and content safety, the Fire tablet is the smarter, more specialized choice.

Our Final Verdict: A Superb Tablet with a Caveat

The Samsung Galaxy Tab A9+ 11″ 128GB 5G is, without a doubt, one of the best value tablets on the market today. It masterfully balances cost with features, delivering a product that feels far more premium than its price suggests. The combination of a solid metal build, a large and fluid 90Hz display, fantastic quad speakers, and a full suite of connectivity options—including the rare headphone jack and MicroSD slot—makes it an incredibly versatile device for students, families, and everyday users. The performance is more than sufficient for media consumption, light productivity, and casual gaming.

However, our enthusiastic recommendation comes with a serious warning: be extremely diligent about where and what you are buying. The prevalent issue of region-locked imported models that can’t use UK SIM cards or be registered for a warranty is a significant risk. If you don’t need cellular connectivity, this is less of a concern, but for those counting on 5G, it’s a potential deal-breaker. Assuming you can secure a proper UK model, you are getting an absolutely phenomenal piece of kit for your money.

If you’ve decided the Samsung Galaxy Tab A9+ 11″ 128GB 5G is the right fit for your needs, you can check its current price and purchase it here.