Samsung’s latest ‘military grade’ rugged tablet arrives in the US starting at $489

The Samsung Galaxy Tab Active 3, announced globally in September of last year, is now available in the US starting at $489.99. It’s a rugged 8-inch Android tablet designed primarily for manufacturing, retail, and job sites, with an IP68 water- and dust-resistance rating. Samsung even says it passed tests against 23 environmental conditions, including vibrations and high altitude, to meet the MIL-STD-810 military-grade standard. An IP68 S Pen stylus is included in the box, as is a case that protects against drops up to 1.5 meters.

The Tab Active 3’s touchscreen is designed to be used even when wearing work gloves, though not “extremely heavy duty gloves or mittens.” It also offers three physical navigation buttons as well as two programmable buttons that can act as shortcuts to certain apps.

Its rear 13-megapixel and front-facing 5-megapixel cameras are optimized for scanning barcodes, and a removable 5,050mAh battery is included. While it will ship with Android 10, Samsung says an upgrade to Android 11 will follow. It will sell with either 64GB or 128GB of internal storage, expandable by microSD card slot.

The Galaxy Tab Active 3 is available now from Samsung’s partner distributors and at Samsung.com. It starts at $489.99 for a Wi-Fi-only version and $589.99 for the LTE model. Samsung says it will remain available for purchase for three years.