Nexus 9 vs. Galaxy Tab S 8.4: easier on the pockets and still powerful

(Google/Samsung)Nexus 9 (left) vs Galaxy Tab S 8.4 (right)

The Nexus 9 from Google and the Galaxy Tab S 8.4 from Samsung are two powerful but cheaper tablet options compared to the premium tablets offered by Apple. Here is how these two devices compare to each other.

Design

The Nexus 9 is taller, wider and thicker than its competitor, however, with a weight of 435 grams, it surprisingly is not much heavier than the Galaxy Tab S 8.4, which weights 294 grams. As for its build, the Nexus 9 has a plastic body and a metal band running around its rim, while the Tab S 8.4 comes with a similar body, although it has faux leather with dimples on it back panel. An advantage of the Galaxy Tab S 8.4, however, is a fingerprint scanner -- a feature which is not present on the Nexus 9.

Display

In terms of display size, the Nexus 9 is bigger and comes with an IPS LCD screen measuring 8.9 inches with a resolution of 1536 x 2048 pixels and a density of 281 pixels per inch. The Galaxy Tab S 8.4, on the other hand, has a super AMOLED screen measuring 8.4 inches with a resolution of 1600 x 2560 pixels and a density of 359 pixels per inch.

Specs

The Galaxy Tab S 8.4 comes with Samsung's own Exynos 5 Octa 5420 chipset, an octa-core CPU comprised of four Cortex-A15 cores clocked at 1.9 GHz and four Cortex-A7 cores clocked at 1.3 GHz and a Mali-T628 MP6 GPU. On the Nexus 9 is an Nvidia Tegra K1 chipset, a dual-core Denver CPU clocked at 2.3 GHz and a Kepler DX1 GPU.

Memory

The Nexus 9 is at a disadvantage as it does not have a memory slot while the Galaxy Tab S 8.4 has a version that allows for the addition of up to 128 GB of external storage. As for RAM, the Nexus 9 has 2 GB onboard while the Tab S 8.4 has 3 GB.

Price

The Nexus 9 and the Galaxy Tab S 8.4 each has a $400 price tag.

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