Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0 Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi on April 17, 2013 11:29 PM EST- Posted in
- Tablets
- Samsung
- Android
- Mobile
- Galaxy Note 8.0
NAND Performance
Given one of my obsessions over the past 5 years, focusing on NAND performance in modern smartphones and tablets is an obvious fit. For these tests we turn to Androbench, using a modified version of the default performance settings. By upping the read/write buffer to 100MB we get more repeatable results, which is always nice to have. Just as in our PC SSD reviews, we focus on large block sequential read/write performance as well as small file random access. For Windows 8 tablets, we use Crystal Disk Mark as a rough comparison point. Note that we are looking at peak performance here and not sustained write speeds. I don't even want to know how slow these things will get if exposed to prolonged random writes. I've toyed with worst case performance on modern iOS and Android mobile devices and it's not pretty. For now, just try not to fill these things up.
The Galaxy Note 8.0's peak sequential performance is ok, the Nexus 10 does far better. Random IO performance however is great (for an ARM based tablet). The latter is very important for IO heavy multitasking workloads, which could be why we're seeing a mild focus on it here. Random write performance is still lower than I'd like to see (realistically we need to be about an order of magnitude better than where we are for real IO intensive multitasking), but the Note 8.0 at least ends up near the top of these charts.
If you look at the Note 10.1's performance you'll notice a big difference in random IO performance. It's entirely possible that Samsung is using a better controller/firmware combination in the Note 8.0, or it could be that my review sample happened to source a better eMMC solution. NAND based storage is typically treated like a commodity by most OEMs, so I wouldn't be too surprised to see wide variation in performance depending on how well you do in the eMMC lottery.
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danstek - Thursday, April 18, 2013 - link
I just have to say that the background used for the photos looks awesome!klatscho - Thursday, April 18, 2013 - link
just had the same thought - nice one anandhagmamad - Thursday, April 18, 2013 - link
stole the words out of my mouthonwudinjo,uzorchi - Wednesday, April 24, 2013 - link
hey guy checkout this page www.phy.unn.edu.ng for amazing information as regards academic excellencenerdstalker - Friday, April 19, 2013 - link
Hey, c'mon Anand... This is AnandTech, the gathering place of geeks and nerds. It's not The Verge. :Pmmartel - Saturday, April 20, 2013 - link
Another thumbs up on the photos - beautiful background and photography.nerdstalker - Sunday, April 21, 2013 - link
I bet the photos look awesome on an iPad 4/5, rMBP or late-2012 iMac. ;) BTW, for a long time I expected AnandTech to review the late-2012 iMacs; but it didn't happen. :( I hope they review, at least when those get the next speed bump.jeffkibuule - Thursday, April 18, 2013 - link
It's an interesting tablet for sure, but eh, we know we're going to get the Nexus 7 II with a 1920x1200 display and Qualcomm Snapdragon 600/800 in a month for $249-299. I'd just sit back and wait for the inevitable.thesavvymage - Thursday, April 18, 2013 - link
hell, it can keep the 1280x720 res if it stays at the 200/249 price point. Im just hoping the usb otg isnt totally neutered like it is on the Nexus 4. We shall see...MonkeyPaw - Thursday, April 18, 2013 - link
It's actually 1280x800, but I really hope Google doesn't overdo the specs of Nexus 7.2 and forsake battery life. More than anything, I wish my Nexus 7 got a few more hours on a charge, especially during games. I appreciate a boost in specs, but I hope they are sane about it.