Both sizes can be offered, as Samsung’s availability is dependent on market.

While the US/CA does not have it, the UK gets the 8.7” A9 Tab:
https://www.samsung.com/uk/tablets/g...m-x115ndbaeub/

There was even a Galaxy Tab A 8.0” available previously too:

Having said that, if weight is not as much of a concern, there is the Tab Active 5 in the US:
https://www.samsung.com/us/business/...m-x300nzgan20/

First, your "larger sample size" was undefined in your post. You could have ten tablets in the company, you could have 100 or 1000 tablets so as a "sample size" means nothing. Second, until your post above, we didn't know the use case for your tablets. When the tablet isn't your own, you generally do not treat it as well as if it were your own tablet. My uses were personal, so likely much more comparable to what the OP was considering.

sorry i wasnt very clear and may have sounded more strongly that i should. i apologize. it is my pet peeve when someone claim you are wrong because of 1 data point or when people cannot differentiate between causation and correlation (not targeting at you, just in general, especially at work when people just draw whatever conclusion)

i do not know how many tablets we have been through. We have about 80 active tablets (probably 300 if we include phones) at any point in time, but we have cycled through many more over the years.

while you are right that the drivers generally treat work tablets with little care, it doesnt change the fact that quality has gone down. so your 5-6 years old devices maybe built better than those now, or you could be just luckier. i also would not say your experience is more relevant than mine:

1) we do know the drivers who abuse their device and those who dont. some of the devices still looked pristine when we switched them out after many years. these good drivers are also experiencing problems with the new devices and replacing them at a much faster rate. they also often feedback that the new devices are not as good as before and requested we switch back to brands like oppo. i recall 1 good driver switching back to his old device of at least 5 years after having enough with his samsung tablet.

2) during covid, our company gave out some of the "extra" devices we had, but many switched out their devices after less than a year. we didnt ask, but our guess is they were damaged or they werent too happy with it.

3) over the years, we had multiple samsung devices that were dead on arrival, something we didnt see before in the past, and something we didnt see in other brands.

4) we are also facing more issues even for devices that are used in office, where i would say they are quite well taken care of. top complaints are buggy interfaces, slowness and the need to constantly update the device.

im not too knowledgeable about the performance level of android tablets out there, but i have heard people complain about the lack of 8in options. there are 8in tablets, but their performance probably arent great. e.g. the tab active 5 has very dated design and pretty small ram memory. it is also close to 50% heavier than ipad mini. but that is probably because that is a business tablet.