The Galaxy Note 10.1 (2014 Version) is extremely similar to the Galaxy Note 3, but expands all of its same applications and features across an even bigger screen.
The brand new Galaxy Note 10.1 is super fast, comparatively lightweight and has features galore. S Pen support is preferable to ever; joined with the software improvements, the Galaxy Note 10.1 is a multitasker's dream. It also works with Samsung's Galaxy Gear smartwatch. It's one of a small number of Android tablets that exhibits clear advantages over Apple's almighty iPad.
And yet, I can't quite recommend that anyone should purchase the Galaxy Note 10.1. Starting at $549.99 for the 16GB version, the Note is priced even higher compared to the iPad, which already establishes a relative threshold for high-end tablets.
Layout: The Galaxy Note 3's larger sibling
Physically, the Galaxy Note 10.1 takes the appearance of the Galaxy Note 3 and expands it across a tablet form factor. While both tablets share similar measurements, the Galaxy Note 10.1 is a good deal lighter, and you can really feel the difference by using it. You're far less inclined to strike forearm fatigue after extended use, which is pleasant.
The tablet comes in either black or white, with a rim around the perimeter. But given the Galaxy Note 10.1's lavish pricing, Samsung is still apparently unable to craft a device that feels high-end. Samsung claims the faux leather back panel of the tablet will inspire "analogue nostalgia." It is definitely only textured matte plastic while I liked the appearance of the material in photographs, in person. And the "detailed stitch" around the edges of the panel is little more than an embossment. It nearly makes me nostalgic for the chintzy plastic backing on the majority of Samsung's other products.
Held horizontally, there's a Samsung logo at the topmost part of the tablet, next to a front-facing 2-megapixel camera. There are two haptic feedback enabled capacitive touch buttons to the bottom, on each side of the physical home key. The top border is home to power and volume buttons, including an IR blaster. Stereo speakers flank the tablet on either side, with a 3.5mm headphone jack on the left, along with a microSD card slot and S Pen on the right.
The display has received a big update from the original. This time around the 10.1inch panel features 2560-by-1600 pixel resolution, which works out to 299 pixels per inch. That places it on par with all the Nexus 10, and really makes it denser than the 2048-by-1536pixel iPad, which has 264 pixels per inch. The display gets very bright, and colours appear super saturated. My only complaint it that it uses a PenTile pixel matrix, which can lead to pictures and text to appear blurry in case you look carefully. Most people won't even detect it, but when you do, it could drive you a little mad.
I didn't have to charge the tablet after using it heavily for just two days in a row, usually with the display brightness set to max. You shouldn't have any trouble utilizing the tablet all day or streaming Netflix for hours on end.Functionality: As fast as tablets get
The Galaxy Note 10.1 comes in two different flavors. The Wi-Fi models uses Samsung's 1.9GHz octa-core Exynos chip, while the LTE form uses a 2.3GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 800. Both come with 3GB of RAM. Either one will be plenty fast.
I tested the Wi-Fi version with Samsung's octa-core chip. I put it up against the LG G2, which uses a 2.26GHz quad core Snapdragon 800; about the exact same processor you'll find in the LTE Note 10.1. It's also one of the fastest Android phones available right now.
Standard scores were incredibly similar. AnTuTu tests general system operation, including CPU, GPU and RAM. And while the Galaxy Note shows a little edge, both scores are high enough to land them in the most notable of the rankings chart.
Geekbench 3 simulates realworld, cpu - intensive tasks, and scores single core and multicore performance individually. The Galaxy Note showed a minor advantage again, scoring 957 for single core operation and 2603 for multicore, whilst the LG G2 turned in scores of 2229 and 888, respectively.
The Galaxy Note fell slightly behind in Sunspider, which tests JavaScript performance. It scored 1063.7, in contrast to 910.6 for the LG G2 9 (In Sunspider, a lesser score is better).
While the Galaxy Note 10.1 is in many ways the fastest Android device you can buy right now, anecdotally, I encountered a number of hiccups. I noticed some light stuttering on home screen transitions. This became more noticeable while using Samsung's built-in My Magazine software. When you get an app up and running it's smooth sailing, therefore I believe that it's realistic to attribute the majority of the slow down I encountered on Samsung's UI, which may occasionally feel a little bloated (I'll touch on this more in a bit). It's additionally a little buggy. I encountered moments where my touches wouldn't register at all until I pressed the button power to refresh the display. Hopefully these issues will probably be repaired in a future update.
While performance is solid overall, within the grand tradition of tablet cameras, the Galaxy Note's 8-megapixel rear camera feels like an afterthought, despite the ostensibly high megapixel count. Images appear waxy and soft, and colors are somewhat washed out. The 2-megapixel front-facing camera is similarly unimpressive, but works good for video chat.
S Pen 2.0
The largest distinguishing factor between the Galaxy Note 10.1 and the competition is Samsung's inclusion of the Wacom-powered S Pen. Physically, it's just like previous iterations contained with last year's Galaxy Note 10.1 as well as the Galaxy Note 2. I'd still prefer it to become a bit more, but previous Galaxy Note owners are going to be very happy to learn that the Note 10.1's S Pen finally works on capacitive touch buttons, that was a curious, frustrating omission before.
To the other hand, you can even buy a $20 Wacom Bamboo stylus for use with just about some other tablet, so what makes the S Pen special? It's mostly inside the software.
As mentioned earlier, the Galaxy Note 10.1 features exactly the same software modifications and enhancements as the Galaxy Note 3, and both are designed with the S Pen in mind. Besides returning like pressure sensitivity, features, palm rejection as well as the S Note app, Samsung has produced a number of built - in new features called Air Commands.
Air Command is initiated automatically if you take away the S Pen in the holster within the tablet. You can even activate it by hovering the S Pen right over the tablet's screen and clicking the button on the face of the pencil. This feels a little awkward in the beginning, but you get used to it.
Air Command is actually a string of five fast actions you are able to perform with the S Pen. The simplest of those actions is Pen Window. This permits you to draw a window anywhere on your tablet screen to open a compatible app inside of it. You're able to draw the apps as big as you need, though you can't go much smaller than about a quarter of the screen, which actually feels a little too big for something similar to a calculator. Still, it's helpful for multitasking, enabling you to really perform two actions at once without needing to change windows.
S Finder is another relatively simple feature, much like Spotlight on Apple's OS X. It allows you to truly search for content on your own apparatus or on the web.
Screen Write takes a snapshot of the current screen, lets you annotate or draw on it with all the S Pen, then save or share it with someone else.
In The End, Action Memo seems a whole lot like an update for the S Note widget from previous Note devices. It's essentially a tiny yellow sticky pad that allows one to jot down quick notes. The key difference from S Note is the fact that you'll be able to now choose a corresponding actions for your notes you take. For instance, you can write down someone's contact information, and Activity Memo will read your handwriting and create a genuine listing for you personally within your pill's Contacts page. It works surprisingly well.
The trouble is, aside from genuine note taking through S Note, and possibly some experiment with Activity Memo, I'm not sure how much I'd actually use any of these characteristics. To me, the majority of Samsung's additions feel as though they can be in search of an audience, as opposed to the other way around. This feeling carries over into Samsung's new Magazine UI.
Software
The Galaxy Note 10.1 runs Android 4.3 (Jelly Bean), together with a healthy dose of customizations from Samsung. Samsung's TouchWiz UI seems similar to that which we've seen in recent iterations. The biggest change comes in the appearance of the My Magazine feature.
My Magazine is basically a Flipboard-powered app/UI that transforms your tablet screen into an interactive feed for news and social network upgrades. To get to My Magazine, all you need to do is swipe up from your base of the screen, or press your home key if you're on your home screen. (That last attribute really caused me to open the app on a certain number of occasions I wasn't trying to. Luckily you are able to disable it.)
My Magazine begins having a setup screen that allows you choose what type of news you want to receive. You can also select which social networks you need to get, but a dearth of Facebook confounds me. There's also a Private channel, that'll pull together your recent pictures, notes, emails and calendar entries.You are able to switch between feeds by swiping horizontally through the screen. Swiping vertically will bring you additional stories from within the feed you're in. The info is presented in should you tap on them about two to six tiles per screen, each of which will generally link one to a web site, social network, or perhaps the original file on your tablet. It's an attractive interface that produces using the tablet more satisfying, but it doesn't offer any significant developments over the regular Flipboard app - which, by the way, does let you hook into your Facebook account.
Of course, the Galaxy Note 10.1 also supports Multi Window multitasking, which allows you use two apps in a splitscreen mode. Some improvements have been seen by this feature since last year. For instance, you can now drag and drop content between windows, provided the apps are compatible. You can even now run precisely the same app in both windows (though this only works for that internet and a few messaging apps). And should you generally run exactly the same two apps together, you may produce a "matched window" so you don't need to select each app separately each time. The Galaxy Note 3 can do all of this too, but it's much easier to use on the larger tablet screen.
Perhaps my favourite feature is the truth the Galaxy Note 10.1 stays a killer universal remote control. I'd choose the Galaxy Note 10.1 over a conventional remote control any day.
Conclusion
When I spent time with the Galaxy Note 10. 1, I kept asking myself, what makes this specific? And actually, plenty does. It's super fast. It has a comfortable, lightweight design. The S Pen can be used in tons of various ways, and Samsung has packed in tons of features you simply can't get by having an iPad
About the flip side, there's still nothing clear about what makes this tablet $150 more special than, say, the Nexus 10. Sure, Samsung is offering some free bundled content, like trial subscriptions to Dropbox, Hulu Plus along with the New York Times, among others. But, for a lot less cash, the Nexus 10 gets you the same size screen and resolution, along with timely software updates direct from Google. It's not quite as powerful while the Galaxy Note, but I'd expect this to shift with rumors of a second variation of the tablet on the way. If you truly like Samsung's My Magazine feature you'll be able to download Flipboard for free. Along with a Wacom stylus will set you back $20. This means you'll be saving well over $100 compared to the Galaxy Note 10.1.
The 2014 Edition of the Galaxy Note 10.1 is an improvement on the original in just about every way. But if Samsung really desires to capture the same way to the Android tablet market it has with smartphones, it takes to find out a method to offer more features in relation to the competition without such a substantial upsurge in price.
