Samsung may have just delivered the first true challengers to the Apple iPad Air and iPad Mini With Retina Display: The Samsung Galaxy Tab S.

The Galaxy Tab S describes two tablets, one 10.5 inches ($499) and the other 8.4 inches ($399), with the exact same internal specs and features. Both are running Android 4.4 "KitKat," feature 2,560 x 1,600 SuperAMOLED displays, 8.1-megapixel rear and 2.1MP front cameras, 3GB of RAM and a base of 16GB of storage, fingerprint readers and each is just 0.26 inch thick.

The thickness is notable because it makes each tablet thinner than its Apple competitor. The 10.5-inch model weighs a pound, just like the iPad Air, but the smaller Tab S is, at 10 ounces, slightly lighter than the iPad Mini With Retina Display.

I spent a little time with both Wi-Fi versions of the devices and have to say they felt light, solid and just as elegant as the iPads.

Unlike some previous Samsung Galaxy tablets that felt as if Samsung skimped a bit on hardware and design (plastics, bleh), the Galaxy Tab S tablets offer an metallic back that curves smoothly around the edges to meet the glass front. There’s a bare minimum of buttons and slots, just power/wake and volume buttons, an audio jack, a micro USB power port and a covered slot for a micro SD storage card.

Like an iPad, the home buttons are on the front and centered on the narrow side of the body and centered below the screen, and like Apple’s iPhone 5S and Samsung’s own Galaxy S5 phone, it doubles as a fingerprint reader.

The reader

I tested the fingerprint reader on both the large and small device and found the setup — though slightly less intuitive than on the iPhone 5S’s Touch ID — wholly effective. I registered my index finger with both Galaxy Tab S tablets by swiping down repeatedly on the reader.

An on-screen guide showed me if it had effectively picked up the print. After eight passes (and a few times where I did not have my finger centered on the reader), my fingerprint was registered. I entered a backup password and was able to unlock both Samsung Galaxy Tab S tablets with my fingers.

Hands On With the Samsung Galaxy Tab S Tablets

Samsung didn’t talk much about the cameras and I only took one or two shots with the 8MP camera (which includes a flash and is centered near the long top edge of the tablet). The shots looked fine, although I noticed the camera hesitated a bit more than I’d like when I hit the giant on-screen shutter button.

The screen, though, is a wonder. At 2,560 x 1,600, the Tab S just beats out the iPad's Retina display (2,048 x 1,536) and on the sample images and video I saw, objects looked nearly touchable. It also has a neat trick where the display can auto-adjust color and saturation based on external lighting conditions.

Samsung had set up a tiny demo with colored lights and each time they changed the light, the screen adjusted for maximum viewability. There are also presets for viewing photos, movies or text. All worked well.

You know the face

Samsung’s Galaxy Tab S interface is quite similar to the Galaxy S5, so it’s both familiar and easy to use. Some people, like me, tend to prefer iOS as a tablet OS, but for Android adherents, Samsung’s is among the very best.

Like previous Samsung tablets, the device supports onscreen multitasking, where you have two apps open and functioning on the screen in different windows at the same time. With the feature, we were able to watch a YouTube video while browsing the web; the site loaded quickly as the video played without interruption.

Samsung also told us that the Galaxy Tab S slides smoothly in the Samsung ecosystem. It works with the Gear 2 smartwatch and can even, via Wi-Fi Direct, answer calls from your Samsung Galaxy S5 phone.

Once paired with a Galaxy phone, the phone's display appears as a virtual screen on the tablet. When calls come in, and you answer it on the tablet, it automatically routes them through the Tab S speakers. You can even run the phone's apps, although we felt a little silly playing Candy Crush on the smaller window when we could have just as easily run the tablet version on the Tab S.

Samsung is selling a few accessories. First there’s a rather hefty 10.5-inch-wide Bluetooth keyboard designed for the Tab S. If you’re focused on productivity, you might want it, but it does almost double the weight of the 10.5-inch Galaxy Tab S tablet.

There are also, more notably, a pair of covers that introduce what may be the oddest hardware throwback I’ve seen in a while. Both the Book Cover (which envelopes the whole tablet) and the Simple Cover (which only protects the screen) feature faux-suede skins and connect to each Tab S via a couple of buttons — which require snapping into place.

There are a pair of buttons on the covers and holes on the tablets. You position the plastic buttons on the covers on top of the tablet button holes and then press — hard — to snap them together.

I assume Samsung has surmised that people rarely remove these covers once they put them on, because I literally had to yank on the cover and tablet to get them apart. I prefer Apple’s magnet-based Smart Covers to Samsung's snapping covers.

Additionally, while the covers offer a variety of folders screen-viewing styles, I could not seem to get the hang of setting them up in the right configuration. There are magnets in the covers so, in a way, it’s hard to set them up in the wrong way — some configuration usually works.

What we don’t know

It’s far too early to pass judgment on these tablets. There is still so much we don’t know: how does the battery hold up? Will we grow to love the covers? Is the included Milk Music service worthy of our time? What about carrier support and LTE options? Samsung confirms they’re coming, but as I’m writing this, I don’t know which carriers and at what prices. There’s also the fact that LTE radios add a little bit of weight.

On the other hand, there is no question that Samsung has cooked up a recipe for very iPad-like tablets that should appeal to the anti-Apple crowd.

Pete Pachal contributed to this report.