After receiving it, we opened it, turned it on, set up it's wireless to connect to the internet (you do NOT have to attach this to a phone plan for it to work!!!) in order to complete the set-up/registration process which took roughly 5 minutes. Unlike our Fire, it: plays just about any movie or music format, has expandable memory via the micro-SD slot on it, and can be connected via USB to our laptops for easy transfer to either the micro-SD card or the device's hard drive. If you are familiar with any of the Samsung Galaxy devices then running this tablet is easy, or if you are familiar with "Android" devices then it shouldn't be much harder to figure out how to operate it. The sound and video exceeded my expectations for the price paid/size of the tablet. Plus as a bonus it did come with the basic red snap on cover similar to that you get for a Kindle. One down-fall similar to that of the Fire is the need to download "Aps" in order to do certain things (Amazon library, Google Play, etc), but as you pretty much have to do this with a Kindle it's not really a deficiency.

I have nothing but good things to say about this device. It meets/exceeds our needs and was still as affordable (if not slightly cheaper) than a Kindle.

The color is an AMAZING, true blue-based red and has a shimmer to it. I wouldn't say that it is feminine looking at all but it is beautiful and the case is also a very nice shade of red. I would say for the case, it is slim, it barely adds any bulk to the tablet itself.

Otherwise- The garnet red edition is exactly like the white and brown/gold version of this tablet. :)

Received this replacement unit from Amazon on Mother's Day (12 May 2019) for her. On 19 May 2019, this replacement Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 started doing the exact same power cycling On/Off as her original. Called Samsung first, they were of no help. It's all about "Planned Obsolescence" these days! I would hesitate to purchase any Samsung products in the future.

I also wanted to take some features off, like the folder with all apps on it, from the Home screen. My mother tends to click on things and mess everything up, can't remember what to do with the camera, etc., so I put as few icons on as possible.

But the "apps" icon with a bunch of things in one folder won't go away, I can't put it elsewhere on a blank screen, and I can't remove all the apps individually. That means I have to put with the function and every time my mother clicks on it, she sees all these apps and plays with them, usually resulting in me having to fix it all over again.

The battery life is not very good. I have the screen brightness so she can see it better, less than halfway, but the battery just runs down quickly. She can't remember to charge it all the time and has gone through so many tablets, breaking ports and chargers. I wanted one that was inexpensive and with a good battery life, but I guess we have to settle for something that has a clear screen, good sound, and hope it will last a while.

I also had the experience with not even touching the screen, just hovering my finger, and it clicked what I was hovering over. Not good for my mother.

I received this quickly from the seller, no complaints there. No manual, but came as described.

What I like:

This tablet comes with removable storage capacity. Whereas more and more companies these days are realizing that people will buy more devices faster if they have to upgrade to the next-largest hard-drive every time they run out of space, it's refreshing to see a MicroSD card slot in a tablet. This is one of those things that, when a company doesn't do it, I think "really? How can you possibly imagine you'll get away with that?" Once again, though, here this is not an issue. It's also much more universally compatible than a lot of its competitors. For instance, I can pair my Bluetooth Speaker with it effortlessly, despite the fact that it was made by Skosche and not Samsung. It's agreeable and not finicky.

Then there's the capabilities it gives you with photos. For me, the ability to crop and otherwise edit my photos in the same device that took them is a big deal, and this tablet offers many apps each with various useful options in how to do this. You can also disable location-based services. As a privacy-conscious person, I definitely approve of this, especially when most apps demand permission to view your location, even when they have no need of that information to perform their function. "GPS" is one of the options in the top-menu that you can shut-off completely with a single touch.

Then there's the multiple desktops feature. This is one of the reasons I so love Linux OS. I'd like to be able to give each desktop a different wallpaper, but maybe this will be in a future update. Another thing I enjoy is the ability to use the file-browser of my computer to access and change the contents of the tablet's hard drive. I can just drag-and-drop files into folders, which is far and away better than a tablet which requires you to download its proprietary "desktop manager" or other corporate software to manage its contents and then be SOL when said software inexplicably malfunctions (I'm looking at you, Apple and RIM!)

Also, speaking of the lack of corporate meddling, this tablet is a mostly DRM-free-zone. While unfortunately there's copy-protection on a lot of the Play Store media content (like eBooks,) if you tend to get your media from others sources (like downloading music from Amazon or ripping movies from DVDs you own) then you'll find yourself perfectly able to enjoy your own legal right to copy your own files across your own devices on your own terms, and access them on your own terms as well. This NEEDS to become a socio-economic norm, and I applaud any company who already does things this way.

What I think could be better:

The port at the bottom of this device for charging and syncing is TINY. Micro USB is a TERRIBLE choice for something that has to be plugged in and left to charge or sync as often as a tablet, because it really can't take much of a bump without being damaged and becoming unusable. Maybe they think this is somehow a more efficient use of space, or maybe this is more of that "make it suck so people will have to pay for repairs and replacements more frequently" phenomena I mentioned, but I would be stoked if they'd just put a regular-sized USB port on it, like they have on the other end of the cable. Smaller is NOT always better, and there's plenty of space on the bottom of this tablet for a standard USB port.

Also, while this tablet's onscreen appearance is appealingly customizable, you can't change a few things that I'd really like to change. For instance, the drop-down menu that gives access to your WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, etc options is a really abrasive white-with-black-and-blue-font. The same is true of the options menu. This wouldn't be such a bone-of-contention with me if I could invert or even customize the color scheme, but apparently no one thought of this in designing Jelly-Bean. Unfortunately those colors are really harsh on my eyes, especially if I have to use the tablet at night (and I take night classes, so... yeah.) The least they could do here is create a "night mode" that inverts the colors to reduce eye-strain. I'd like to see this as an OS update in the near future.

Also, this tablet will not communicate with a computer running Linux OS no matter what mode I set it to use. I guess most people don't (yet) use Linux, so this is likely not a problem for you. But considering that Android is *based* on Linux and has many of the features that Linux users enjoy, this should not be happening. I even have a smaller Android tablet (Archos 43) which does not have this problem. But sadly in the case of the Galaxy 3, "Droid doesn't."

Overall, this tablet is a huge improvement in my life and I'm very thankful to have it, despite its aforementioned shortcomings. It's not absolutely perfect by my standards, but it's at least several steps in the correct direction and makes the technological and business aspects of my life overall much easier. I would recommend this tablet.