Samsung announces Galaxy Tab S4 with 10.5-inch Super AMOLED display, 16:10 aspect ratio, and 64GB or 256GB options for $650+, shipping on August 10
At a small press gathering in Manhattan today, just one week before the company heads over to Brooklyn for its big Galaxy Note 9 event, Samsung announced the new Galaxy Tab S4 tablet.
Context & Ripple Effects
Samsung is announcing the Galaxy Tab S4 at a small Manhattan press gathering one week before its Brooklyn [[a:|Galaxy Note 9]]-focused event, shipping August 10 from $650+. That entry price marks a steep climb for the flagship Tab line: when the Galaxy Tab S2 opened U.S. preorders at $400 in 2015, Samsung was still selling its top tablet as a mid-priced device.
First-order effects
- Buyers of Samsung's flagship Android tablet now face a $650+ starting price for the 10.5-inch Super AMOLED model, with 256GB as the step-up option — roughly a 60% jump over the Tab S2's launch pricing three years earlier.
Second-order effects
- The $650+ anchor holds: the following year's Galaxy Tab S6 keeps the same 10.5-inch OLED size and a near-identical $649 entry price, confirming the S4 reset the line's price floor rather than being a one-off premium experiment.
Third-order effects
- With the baseline locked above $650, the line stratifies upward into larger, costlier tiers — culminating in the $1,100 Tab S8 Ultra and the $800+/$1,200+ Tab S9 family — turning Samsung's tablets into laptop-priced productivity devices rather than media consumption hardware.
The trend: Samsung's flagship Galaxy Tab line has spent the decade migrating steadily upmarket, with each generation raising both screen size and entry price toward laptop territory.