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In terms of battery life the Tab 3 8.0 is uninspiring, if solid. Our looping HD movie tests showed around 8 hours of battery, with our standard 90 minute looping "Nyan Gareth" video chomping through 20% of the Tab 3 8.0's battery.
Extrapolated out, this means the Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 8.0 will last 450 minutes under heavy strain with the screen's brightness turned up to maximum, which equates to around 8 hours.
That's a solid score, and while it's certainly not the longest-lasting tablet out there, it's suitable for watching movies or playing games while travelling.
However, using the tablet for lots of web surfing did also prove a strain and we'd expect to see the same sort of score for heavy web use.
Benchmarks
The benchmark scores vindicate our criticism of Samsung's choice of using a dual-core chip.
Our Antutu score of 10,404 is roughly half that of the (cheaper) Nexus 7, which is a pretty dismal result for the Tab 3. As we highlighted, this lack of power is certainly felt around the operating system and using apps.
SunSpider, which is essentially a test of Java, also lagged behind the Nexus, albeit far a less pronounced deficit. However, different browsers and settings can heavily affect SunSpider.
The big surprise, however, was Peacekeeper, the graphics heavy browser test. This produced an exceptional score of over 700, putting it up with the iPad and Samsung Galaxy S3 in the rankings. This does highlight the fallibility of benchmark scores, as our real-world testing showed that the Galaxy Tab 3.0 is pretty lightweight when it comes to games.
