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.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
97 Comments
View All Comments
danbob999 - Tuesday, October 1, 2013 - link
Not only HPC. Pretty much any multi-threaded CPU test. And these do not include javascript benchmarks, which as stated many times on this web site, tests the software more than the hardware.AndreiLux - Wednesday, October 2, 2013 - link
In the end MHz and number of cores is irrelevant because:http://chip-architect.com/news/Apple_A7_Samsung_54...
Their two cores are as big as four A15's. Clocks are also irrelevant as seen with Qualcomm vs ARM designs.
What in the end matters is perf/mm² and that dictates the better design.
MySchizoBuddy - Tuesday, October 1, 2013 - link
so according to you apple's MINOR modifications has improved performance to such a level that even a quad core cannot beat it. Damn Apple engineers must be super geniuses.ddriver - Wednesday, October 2, 2013 - link
No, it does not beat a quad core, one core of the A7 beats one core of the snapdragon 800 by about 20%. Anand only uses single threaded tests to compare the two processors, and not even native code, but JS running on different VMs.Using all the cores, the snapdragon is way faster than A7, that is why no such benchmarks are present to ruing the myth of A7's performance.
KPOM - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
And how many mobile apps make full use of multi-core processors? Furthermore, thermal limitations prevent the quad-core processors from achieving maximum performance all the time, hence the whole controversy over "rigged" benchmark results. Let's face it. Apple made the right decision in sticking with a dual-core design with faster single-core performance. For what people use mobile devices to do today, it's the best balance between performance and power consumption.ESC2000 - Thursday, October 10, 2013 - link
But then they stuck a tiny battery in there (guess they had to because of the iPhone tiny size) so there's no actual battery life advantage. In fact, the first night I had my iPhone it died over night and the alarm didn't go off, causing me to be late to work. The reason appeared to be that it couldn't handle pushing email every fifteen minutes. So yeah I don't think the iPhone stands out for its battery... Look at the Motorola phones for amazing battery life.abazigal - Friday, October 11, 2013 - link
How much battery life did your iphone have when you went to sleep? I typically plug in my iphone to charge before turning in for the night, and even if I didn't, it boasts impressive standby capabilities and the battery life dipped very little throughout the night (around 5-6% max for 6 hours, or 1% per hour).abazigal - Friday, October 11, 2013 - link
Either that, or the engineers in the other companies are totally inept for failing to make those small changes to optimise their chips for better performance and energy savings.name99 - Tuesday, October 1, 2013 - link
Please tell us which ARM reference design it is that Apple "modified slightly"...You seem deeply confused about what CPU design is and how it works. What would you define as a non"conventional arm v8 chip"?
steven75 - Wednesday, October 2, 2013 - link
You should probably read Anandtech's own review of the A7 chip.