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If you've seen one 7-inch Galaxy Tab, you've seen them all — Samsung doesn't seem to be interested in overhauling its tablets' designs. That's not a bad thing at all, though: the Galaxy Tab 2 is a sleek, attractive device, albeit not a particularly flashy one. The tablet's back is a matte grey plastic, and it's both comfortable to hold and mercifully resistant to fingerprints. As far as buttons and ports, it's laid out exactly like the Galaxy Tab 7.7. There's an IR blaster on the right side as you hold the tablet vertically, below the volume rocker and power button — those two are grouped close enough together that I continually pressed the wrong one when I wasn't looking at them. A microSD card slot sits on the left side, letting you add up to 32GB of storage in addition to the 8GB that comes built in. Up top you'll find the headphone jack, and on the bottom two stereo speakers flank Samsung's standard proprietary dock connector. It's a good design, and Samsung was smart not to change it much.

At 10.4mm (0.41 inches) thick, the Tab 2 is a hair thicker than the Tab 7.0 Plus (9.9mm) and several hairs larger than the Tab 7.7 (7.85mm), but I can't say I really noticed the difference in either case. All three weigh almost exactly 12 ounces, despite the fact that there's an LTE radio inside the Tab 7.7. The Tab 2 is thinner and lighter than either the Kindle Fire or the Nook Tablet, an impressive feat for a $249.99 tablet.

Dimensions (in.) Thickness Weight (lb.) Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 7.6 x 4.8 0.41 0.76 Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus 7.62 x 4.82 0.39 0.76 Original Galaxy Tab 7.48 x 4.74 0.47 0.85 Kindle Fire 7.5 x 4.7 0.45 0.91 Nook Tablet 8.1 x 5 0.48 0.88 HTC Flyer 7.69 x 4.8 0.52 0.93

The two speakers are decent, but there's not much in the way of a stereo effect — their output just sounds like one louder-than-average speaker. They're pretty clear, and have decent dynamic range as you listen to music or watch a movie, but be careful about how you hold the tablet: if you hold it horizontally, your hands will likely cover the speakers, and if you hold it vertically in your lap or on a table the sound gets seriously muffled as well.

With the Tab 2 replacing the Tab 7.0 Plus, I can't help but think of the Tab 2 and the Tab 7.7 as the same product, one with a cellular connection and one without. There's really only one difference in hardware between the two models, and unfortunately it's a big one: the display.