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
The S Pen
Tucket inside the lower right corner of the Galaxy Note 8.0 is the device's flagship feature: the S Pen. Samsung integrates a Wacom digitizer layer into its capacitive touchscreen stack, which enables the use of the pressure sensitive S Pen.
Although these devices exist in vastly different price brackets, I feel it’s necessary to mention that the responsiveness of the S Pen isn’t anywhere near as good as the stylus that ships with Microsoft’s Surface Pro. I mention that because while I do believe the Surface Pro can be a good stand in for creative professionals on the road, I’m not sure the Galaxy Note 8.0 can serve in a similar nature. The display is obviously smaller, palm rejection doesn’t work as well and the active digitizer is laggier on the Note 8.0 compared to the Surface Pro.
That being said, in a pinch, and especially for those who aren’t used to drawing on giant Wacom tablets - the Note 8.0’s S Pen does have its good moments.
I hadn’t written off the S Pen completely, but I had come to terms with the fact that I have little use for it until I was driving away from my house to go try out the Note 8’s camera. I got a call from an engineer at Micron to talk about a new SSD, the M500. I was in the car in my driveway when I got the call, contemplating whether or not to run upstairs to my computer so I could take notes during our conversation. I was trying to understand some issues that came up in my testing of the M500 and the discussion was bound to get technical. I looked over into the passenger seat and realized I had two tablets with me - surely one of them could serve as a notepad. With one hand holding the phone to my head, I had one free hand to take notes. Ah-ha! This was a situation crafted perfectly for the S Pen.
I grabbed the Galaxy Note 8.0, pulled out the S Pen, and went about taking notes. I propped up the tablet between my leg and the steering wheel (note the car was stopped, I’m not advocating driving and taking notes on a tablet). The experience was surprisingly decent. The Galaxy Note 8.0 approximated a pad of paper while the S Pen approximated a pen. It worked. I was pleasantly surprised.
The experience wasn’t perfect. My handwriting is remarkably worse on a tablet compared to a pen and paper. I didn’t get to play with different pen sizes while I was on the phone, but going to something smaller definitely helps with fitting more text on a single screen. I don’t know that I’d want to pen tons of notes on the Galaxy Note 8.0, but in a pinch it really proved to be a wonderful stand in. My preference for large amount of note taking would still be a laptop with a keyboard, but as a replacement for jotting down quick notes while on the go, the S Pen isn’t bad at all.
After having this little usage model epiphany, the rest of the S Pen’s features made more sense to me. I couldn’t understand why Samsung made such a big deal about the S Pen being able to activate the capacitive menu and back buttons before, now I could. In the situation I just described, I needed the S Pen to navigate everything on the tablet. It made sense.
There’s the obvious question of how often I’d see myself using the S Pen functionality on the Galaxy Note 8.0. The reality is that I’m rarely in the situation I found myself in on that day. I’m usually at a desk or if I’m traveling I’m on my smartphone or notebook. If you are the type of user who is always looking for a pen to jot something down, and don’t mind carrying a small tablet with you, I suspect you’re the very target for the Galaxy Note 8.0. If you’re not, there are a number of other options - many of which are more affordable.
The other big S Pen feature that I can understand the appeal of is the ability to grab a screenshot or snippet of anything, quickly annotate it, and share the resulting file. If my job entailed finding things on the web or in email, grabbing them and offering short commentary on them I could see this feature being more useful. On second thought, I wonder if that might be a quicker way for me to do my job instead of penning these really long posts. Joking aside, this is just one of those situations where you’ll immediately know whether or not the Galaxy Note 8.0’s S Pen functionality is something you’d use.
The S Pen is also useful for highlighting/copying text, just tap and hold the pen over a word to bring up the text selection tool.
There are a ton of other little S Pen features included in the Note 8, such as the ability to scroll by hovering the pen over the display at the top or bottom of a page/list. As with many of Samsung’s TouchWiz features, I don’t see broad appeal for every last one. Samsung’s strategy appears to be to try and fill its products with as many niche features as possible with the hopes of different subsets of the tools being useful for a broad market.
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boomhowler - Friday, April 19, 2013 - link
I really like that you included a NAND-test. Those memory chips can be a real performance killer if they are bad. A request: it would be interesting to see if the NAND performance is about the same when the storage has been filled to ~90%. I have several colleagues who experience large performance degradations on their androids when the storage starts to fill up. And if you can, also add comparisons to Win8/iOS models as well.awehring - Saturday, April 20, 2013 - link
Anand,you are missing an universal remote to control a home cinema. Me too!
But I found TouchSquid Remote at the Android Play Store, which claims to be just that. Have you ever tried it?
arifmahmud - Saturday, April 20, 2013 - link
This review is a compact review of Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0 & help any readers at glance about the awesome device.Commodus - Sunday, April 21, 2013 - link
Like it or not, Samsung is going to be burned by that $399 price.Is it fair for what you get? Sure -- but most people don't need a pen and Wacom digitizer. You could safely argue that most customers at this size are buying for cost, not features; otherwise, they'd get a 10-inch tablet or a low-end laptop. While the iPad mini isn't the best value-for-money deal in its current state, it also costs $70 less, carries more tablet-native apps and first launched several months ago.
Personally, I'd be more curious to see what Apple does for the second-gen iPad mini than the Note 8.0. Put in a Retina-ish display and an A6 at $329 and the tiny iPad could be a killer combo.
herts_joatmon - Monday, April 22, 2013 - link
I be suprised if Samsung designed this as an "iPad killer". Unlike Apple and some other manufacturers, Samsung dont have a one size fits all policy. Rather, they have segregated the market into smaller segments. This tablet is aimed at creative types, where as most tablets are designed for consumption (reading, gaming, browsing etc).Like the original Note phone. They wont have expected it to sell in abundance, but if other market segments take it up, it will be a bonus to them.
For me, the closest rival is the Surface Pro. Thats the only other tablet that you can actually draw on with pressure sensitivity support and good accuracy (that im aware off) and that is over twice the price. So is $399 a fair price? Compared to $999, its a bargain.
What I want is a mobile sketch book. Any other functionality is a bonus in my opinion.
nerd1 - Wednesday, April 24, 2013 - link
$500 Ativ smart PC has the same wacom support.ZoeAnderson24 - Monday, April 22, 2013 - link
If you think Jean`s story is terrific..., 1 weak-ago my son in-law basically got a cheque for $4657 putting in a 10 hour week from home and their friend's mom`s neighbour did this for 9-months and actually earned over $4657 in there spare time from their computer. the advice on this web-site All29.comTAKE A LOOKA_Smith - Thursday, April 25, 2013 - link
Is that a painting colored by fabric colors at the back of photos in the review?fteoath64 - Friday, April 26, 2013 - link
Only 1 comment that is most important is the aspect ratio of the screen!. The iPad Mini's 4:3 ratio is just perfect for web and reading and it is nor less good for movie watching either!. The 16:9 ratio of Note makes it look long and web reading is constrained by either too narrow a width on portrait mode or too shallow if put on landscape mode. I suggest a 1600 X 1200 screen be used with minimal bezel on the sides. All other things are perfect as they are ...Pessimism - Wednesday, May 8, 2013 - link
Plastic housing and no cellular telephone capability = no care.