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
Camera
Although it’s sometimes used as one, I still don’t believe the majority of the population uses a tablet as their primary imaging device. That doesn’t however mean that it can’t be used as as a camera. In fact, I do see an increasing number of situations where tablets are being used as cameras in a pinch. Particularly on the productivity side of things where you may need to take a photo of something you’re studying on site (e.g. insurance adjuster taking photos of a claim). All of this is a long winded way of saying that tablet camera performance matters. It doesn’t perhaps matter as much as it would in a smartphone, but it still matters.
The Galaxy Note 8.0 comes with a fairly standard two camera setup. Around back there’s a raised bump to accommodate a 5MP camera module (2560x1920) with F2.7 lens. Up front there’s a 1.3MP sensor (1280x960) and F2.8 lens. Neither camera has a flash of any sort.
The Note 8.0’s size actually doesn’t make it ridiculous to take photos with. The camera UI is fairly standard for Samsung and includes a fairly typical set of customization options (ISO, exposure adjustment, JPEG compression, etc...). Shot to shot latency is about on par with the iPad mini, but considerably slower than the latest and greatest smartphones like the HTC One.
Camera preview is relatively smooth but clearly not anywhere near full resolution, as a result photos tend to look pretty bad during framing but can come out surprisingly decent once captured.
Samsung integrates optional voice recognition with its camera app. You can say smile, cheese, capture or shoot to activate the shutter. The process works surprisingly well but it does add additional latency to shooting since the voice recognition isn’t instant. Oddly enough some words worked better than others for me, although accuracy improved the closer my face was to the tablet.
Image quality outdoors was surprisingly decent. Both the Galaxy Note 8.0 and iPad mini did relatively well on camera duty. Samsung's auto white balance could definitely use some work, and in lower light scenarios the iPad mini seems to resolve details better than the Note 8.0.
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| Outdoor 1 | Indoor | Outdoor Nature | Macro | Outdoor Low Light | |||||
| Apple iPad mini | |||||||||
| Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0 | |||||||||
Low light performance is horrible on both tablets. In well lit scenarios, the Note 8.0 is a competent shooter though the iPad mini seems to do better overall. I was personally surprised by how well these tablets performed at macro shots. Again, I wouldn't use either as a primary shooter, but if your job requires embedding photos in emails and all you're carrying is one of these tablets you can make it work (assuming there's plenty of light around).
Video recording performance was also surprisingly decent on the Galaxy Note 8.0:
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HanakoIkezawa - Thursday, April 18, 2013 - link
Menu or back button. Hardware buttons and the "experience" are completely objective and chanfe from user to user. Ios devices drive me insane because I only have a menu button ans no back button, but my sister loves having only one button on her iphone. I feel lost on nexus devices because of the lack of hardware buttons but im sure some nexus owners how despise the note 8 layout.It's all matter of opinion.
antef - Thursday, April 18, 2013 - link
A menu button need not be in a permanent bar that uses screen real estate, it should be with the app's UI, which is what Google's guidelines indicate. It doesn't make sense for a large screen application to require a tiny button off-screen to be pressed to pull up app functionality. It's disjointed and unintuitive.Sabresiberian - Thursday, April 18, 2013 - link
Heh I suggest that the fact that the Surface Pro is based on any Ivy Bridge Core i5 chip could be the reason it is faster at, oh, everything. :)herts_joatmon - Thursday, April 18, 2013 - link
I mainly want this for sketching. I had no issues when trying it out in the samsung store. I was using Sketchbook pro though not s note. Had 4 layers on there (sketch, inking, backround colour and picture colour). It seemed to work fine through out. I only spent about 15 minutes playing though...GNUminex - Thursday, April 18, 2013 - link
As a college student I constantly see other students struggling to annotate lecture slides or or pdfs on their tablets, and/or struggling to type on their tablets. It really confounds me why no one has set out to make hardware that comprehensively meets the productivity needs of these people and then market the device to them. Keyboards that don't physically connect to the tablets and act as a base are not practical for all situations. The transformer's dock doesn't make a sturdy base. The Surfaces don't sit well on a lap and are too expensive. The Note finally solves the writing problem with it's stylus but has no keyboard, and the more traditional tablet laptops are too big and too expensive.The0ne - Thursday, April 18, 2013 - link
You've been using Win8 tablets for years? How can this be?The0ne - Thursday, April 18, 2013 - link
You've been using Win8 tablets for years? How can this be?nerd1 - Thursday, April 18, 2013 - link
Win8 developer preview was released July 2012 as far as I remember.ezekiel68 - Thursday, April 18, 2013 - link
I came in interested in the Note 8. I left interested in the Nexus 10.haukionkannel - Thursday, April 18, 2013 - link
Well, I came to the same conclusion than the article writer. I would take any day Nexys 7 with a s-pen over this product if it only would be available... Better screen, longer usage time, smaller size...Hopefully we will some day see "note" version of some of those small size Nexus tablets!
I don't mind a little bit weaker CPU or GPU as long as you get better screen and longer battery time!
But not a bad product at all!