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With no Galaxy S8 announcement at Mobile World Congress this year, Samsung turned to its Android and Windows 10 tablets to fill the void. 

The Korean electronics giant announced two new tablets at the trade show in Barcelona: The Android-powered Galaxy Tab S3 and the Windows 10-powered Galaxy Book, which will be available in 10.6- and 12-inch models.

Despite the different operating systems, both tablets share common traits borrowed from Samsung's Galaxy phones. They also come with enhanced S Pens and support for detachable keyboards.

Galaxy Tab S3

One look at the Galaxy Tab S3 and it's clear Samsung designed it to go head-to-head with the iPad Pro.

The Tab S3 is super thin at 6

The first thing you'll notice as soon as you pick it up is the new metal and glass design. It looks and feels like a blown up Galaxy S7, which is both good (it's pretty and only 6-millimeters thick) and bad (the glass backside is a fingerprint magnet).

The Tab S3's 9.7-inch (2,048 x 1,536) Super AMOLED display is excellent — it's both bright and crisp, and text and photos look fantastic. The screen is also HDR-ready, making it the first tablet to support videos with greater dynamic range.

The Tab S3 is the world's first HDR-ready tablet.

Underneath the hood is a Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor, 4GB of RAM, 32GB of internal storage (expandable up to 256GB via microSD), and a 6,000 mAh battery with Samsung's Fast Charging support via its USB-C port. Along with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, the tablet's also got built-in LTE.

Taking photos with a tablet still feels silly.

On the back you'll find a 13-megapixel camera with autofocus, and on the front, a 5-megapixel camera for selfies. There's also a fingerprint sensor built into the home button below the screen.

For sound, Samsung's crammed in quad speakers tuned by the audio specialists at AKG.

All these features are great upgrades for a premium tablet, and Android 6.0 Marshmallow with TouchWiz is plenty smooth and responsive, but the new S Pen and attachable keyboard are the real stars.

The new, larger, enhanced S Pen.

Supports up to 4,096 levels of pressure.

In a nutshell, the Tab S3's S Pen is basically the same as the Galaxy Note7's with 4,096 levels of pressure and a 0.7 millimeter tip for pinpoint precision. The Tab S3's display is also able to detect when the S Pen is tilted at different angles.

Combined with Samsung's signature S Pen software like Air Command (especially the GIF maker) and screen-off memo, which lets you write notes when the screen's off, I could see students and creatives really liking what the Tab S3 offers.

The only thing that kind of sucks is the S Pen can't slot into the tablet for storage because of its larger size. It's not a deal breaker, and for what it's worth, it does come with a metal clip that magnetically attaches to a section on the back of the Tab S3, but it's not the most elegant design.

The S Pen doesn't slot into the Tab S3, but at least it clips to the back using magnets.

Likewise, the keyboard (sold separately) is also one of the better ones I've used with any tablet. The keys have good travel and the keyboard attaches to the Tab S3 via a magnetic "Pogo" port.

The Tab S3's keyboard is pretty good.

No word on pricing or release date for the tablet or the keyboard, but given the specs, I wouldn't bet on it being cheap. Still, if you're looking for a new Android tablet, the Tab S3 looks like a good one to keep an eye on.

Galaxy Book

The Galaxy Book is the other tablet Samsung trotted out — it's more of a Surface Pro competitor since it runs Windows 10.

As I mentioned earlier, the Galaxy Book is available in two sizes: 10.6-inch (1,920 x 1,280) LCD and 12-inch (2,160 x 1,440) AMOLED displays. 

They're thicker and heavier than the Tab S3, but they're also beefier tablet computers.

The 10.6-inch Galaxy Book has a seventh-generation 2.6GHz Intel Core m3 dual-core processor, 4GB of RAM, either 64GB or 128GB of internal storage, and a single 5-megapixel front-facing camera.

The Galaxy Book runs Windows 10.

The 12-inch Galaxy Book has a seventh-generation 3.1GHz Intel Core i5 dual-core chip, 4GB of RAM with 128GB of SSD storage or 8GB of RAM with 256GB of SSD, and two cameras (13-megapixels on the back with autofocus and 5-megapixels on the front).

Both Galaxy Books come with microSD card slots for storage expansion up to 256GB, and feature Wi-Fi direct, Bluetooth, LTE and Fast Charging.

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