Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 (2014 Edition) Review
by Brian Klug & Anand Lal Shimpi on October 1, 2013 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Tablets
- Samsung
- Mobile
- Galaxy Note 10.1
Final Words
Starting from the inside out, the new Galaxy Note is better in pretty much every way. The industrial design is much improved compared to its predecessors. The new Exynos 5420 is quite fast on both CPU and GPU fronts. Battery life is ok for normal usage but great for video playback (just behind the big iPad). You get tons of RAM (3GB) and super fast WiFi. Then there’s the display. The 2560 x 1600 panel is easily the best Samsung has shipped in a tablet. Although not the best in the industry, it’s in a different league compared to Samsung tablet displays of years past. Even compared to the Galaxy Tab 3.0 lineup, the 2014 Note 10.1’s display is so much better.
With a relatively good story across the board in terms of hardware, the only difficulty in this conclusion boils down to a discussion of price vs. functionality.
The Galaxy Note 10.1 (2014 Edition) arrives at an interesting time for the 10-inch tablet market. It’s definitely the high-end offering we’ve always hoped to see from Samsung in their 10-inch family, but the world seems to be moving toward smaller tablets for consumption, while toying with the idea of a 2-in-1 for productivity. Samsung attempts to straddle both lines with the inclusion of the S Pen, something we found surprisingly useful in our review of the Galaxy Note 8.0, but a feature that comes at a steep price.
There are really two key tablet price points/devices that you have to compete with in this world: the 2013 Nexus 7 at $229, and iPad at $499. The Galaxy Note 10.1 (2014 Edition) continues Samsung’s trend of charging a premium for the S Pen/Note experience and shows up at $549 for a 16GB WiFi-only model. That is a healthy premium over the non-Note model, but easily worth the adder given what you get (assuming you're limiting yourself to shopping exclusively in Samsung's tablet lineup). What I'd really like to see is a 2014 Edition of the Galaxy Note 8, with the same sort of hardware but at a much lower price point.
At the end of the day, the new Note’s pricing paints it into a niche just like the rest of the big Note lineup. If you love the S Pen experience and want it on some of the best 10-inch tablet hardware available, the new Note 10.1 is perfect. It's arguably the best 10-inch tablet Samsung has ever built, but it's also priced as such. If you're not married to the S Pen, there are definitely cheaper options out there.
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misfit410 - Thursday, October 3, 2013 - link
I have an iPad 3 and an iPad mini, my experience is not smooth on either.. can't even browse engadget or Gawker without crashing safari.badcode - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
I thought that was only occurring on my ipad 1 because it was so old. Now I know I will either wait for a Tegra 4 tablet or get a surface pro 2. Thanks for the infocrankerchick - Saturday, October 12, 2013 - link
Late reading the review, but I wish you guys had touched on how the device runs in actual use. Benchmarks are nice, but some want to know how laggy the tablet feels using it, especially in multi-window mode or with the stylus. That's what makes this tablet unique, and it doesn't seem to be touched on at all.sundragon - Wednesday, October 2, 2013 - link
Interesting as this is typical excuse I read when people blast Apple for being slow but when when someone introduces a faster Android based device, the same excuse isn't used.A 1.3 GHz ARMv8 based dual core CPU (designed by Apple, fabbed by Samsung) is beating a 1.8GHz Samsung ARMv7 A15 quad core CPU (designed by ARM, fabbed by Samsung).
All the excuses for javascript, multi-threaded performance, etc are BS.
Will you use the same excuse when Samsung introduces an ARMv8 64-bit Exynos next year in the Samsung Galaxy 5?
If it beats the 5S willl ya all be making excuses for Android being different from iOS?
I think not, I think admitting to being biased is a bit better than making excuses...
P.S. the chart Anand created to show the cheating on the Android side of things (except Motorola/Google) is telling as to the business ethics of the companies listed...
Now go polish a turd and try to sell it to me...
IUU - Thursday, October 3, 2013 - link
Apple is not slow but its intentions are sinister.I would rather buy "a polished turd" from any other "incompetent Apple rival" than let Apple destroy the progress of computing.
And by the way... Apple has offered a palatable computing performance only with its recent mobile products. Yet, they can't get over the fact that they actually had to incorporate performance parts into their devices, and they started to iterate the same old crap about "user experience", hoping they ultimately sell outdated tech with high profits.
I won't say more, I am fiercely anti-apple, but there are some very good reasons for this, whether you want to believe it or not.
ESC2000 - Sunday, October 6, 2013 - link
Or to put it more simply, competition is good for us all. Consumers would be screwed if everyone bought only apple, but I get the sense from the rabid apple lovers that ideally we'd all use apple products for everything. Thank God that's only a fantasy. Apple's awesome hardware is totally wasted on its closed down gimp OS.jasonelmore - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
That's the thing, 90% of the gains werent from amazin soc design, it was from moving to a 64 bit instruction set, which dropped laggy legacy support of the past 20 years that slowed things. Moving forward, all these oem's will do the same, and that's when we truly see how good apple's new soc is.ddriver - Tuesday, October 1, 2013 - link
Not really, while it is not a reference ARM design, apple have only modified it slightly, but it is still a conventional arm v8 chip.Note that the benchmarks the 5s is better at are:
1 - JS benchmarks using different browsers with different JS engine implementations
2 - single threaded, which plays in favor of apple, since they have lower core count
The snapdragon 800 is actually considerably faster in HPC workloads. The A7 has better single threaded performance, but not that much higher to make up for it...
Naturally, I don't expect from someone with your screen name to be capable of objectivity. And no, I don't own a single samsung device, so I am not biased even a little bit. If anything, I am a Dell and Asus guy...
MrSpadge - Tuesday, October 1, 2013 - link
I really dislike Apples closed software environment - but you have to give credit where it's due. The 2-core A7 at 1.3 GHz beating this 4+4 core with A15's at a maximum of 1.8 GHz is really impressive. Apple is doing something right here! And seriously, who cares about HPC workloads on a tablet?ddriver - Tuesday, October 1, 2013 - link
So why do you need high performance on a tablet if high-performance computing is not needed on a tablet(or a phone for that matter)?I mean it is either that we need and care about performance or not. If we don't why would a faster chip be considered an advantage? Because it can do something in 0.002 seconds rather than 0.0025?