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
Display
The 2014 Edition features a 10.1-inch 2560 x 1600 Super LCD display. Looking at the subpixel structure of the panel we get an idea for exactly what Super LCD means: RB,GW.
Instead of a standard RGB stripe we get a combination of red, green, blue and white subpixels for each pixel. The white subpixel helps increase light throughput, an obvious problem with these ultra high resolution displays. The downside is that you get a lower subpixel density than a traditional RGB stripe. At these ultra high pixel densities however, the theory is that you wouldn’t notice the difference - hopefully making the power savings by having better light transmission, particularly when displaying lots of white (e.g. web pages), worth it.
In practice the display looks pretty good, although a carefully trained eye will be able to recognize that this isn’t a standard RGB stripe. I quickly realized something was different about the display, something I later verified when looking at the subpixel structure.
Color accuracy is pretty decent on the Note 10.1’s display. As always I’m reporting color data using Samsung’s Movie mode, which remains the most accurate setting of those offered. Grayscale performance is excellent, but our GMB and saturations tests put the Note 10.1 on par with the original Nexus 7. It’s definitely a better calibrated display than any other Samsung Galaxy Note tablet we’ve reviewed. Not quite on par with the new Nexus 7, but getting very close.
Camera
The 2014 Edition features a rear facing 8MP camera with AF and LED flash and a 2MP front facing camera. Image quality out of the rear camera was pretty good for a tablet. I took some photos using the tablet and tossed them in the gallery below, as well as embedded a sample 1080p video recorded using the tablet.
Battery Life & Charging
The Galaxy Note 10.1 (2014 Edition) ships with an integrated (non-removable) 31Wh battery, that’s substantially smaller than the iPad 4’s 42.5Wh battery - helping it maintain a more svelte figure. The question is how power efficient the combination of RB,GW panel and Exynos 5420 are in combination with one another.
We’ll start with our typical WiFi web browsing battery life test. Here we see a good combination of regular spikes in CPU usage with idle time, hopefully simulating constant, reasonably paced usage.
The 2014 Edition does a bit better than the Nexus 10, but clearly worse than the original Note 10.1 (and obviously worse than the much smaller Nexus 7). There’s not much you can do here other than to point out that we’re talking about an extremely high resolution panel, with an extremely power hungry SoC. The fact that we’re talking about more cores running at a higher frequency than the Exynos 5250 used in the Nexus 10 is good news, but Exynos 5420 also enjoys the benefits of being on Samsung’s 28nm LP process as well.
The video playback story is much better however. With the power hungry Cortex A15 cores able to power down (and hopefully remain there), we’re really testing the display and video decode engines here:
The Note 10.1 beats the new Nexus 7 and is only 10% behind the iPad 4, despite having a much smaller battery.
Like the Nexus 10, the Galaxy Note 10.1 (2014 Edition) takes an incredible amount of time to charge with the bundled 2A charger. A full charge from 0 to 100% took just over 7 hours.
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eiriklf - Tuesday, October 1, 2013 - link
Just to elaborate, the nexus 10 on chrome 30 beta pretty much matches the 5s in mozilla kraken and is not far behind in octane either, and I expect the nexus 10 will see regular performance improvements in the coming months.ESC2000 - Thursday, October 10, 2013 - link
You mean they both suck?KateMfield10 - Tuesday, October 1, 2013 - link
Another Android tablet with impressive features and price that launched this week is from tabletmaker Pipo Electronics and the new 9.7-inch Pipo M6 Pro($297) is getting much notice for its slim design and packs in a solid device that compares to the new Kindle Fire HDX and iPad for much less -- the Pipo M6 Pro offers 32GB and built-in GPS -- plus a 2048X1536 Liquid Crystal display, along with a Quad-Core processor - 1.6 GHz / 2GB Ram; it also features premium front speakers, Bluetooth 4.0, a truly large capacity 10,000 mAh battery, a MicroSD memory card slot, and high speed WiFi; and also offers quality dual cameras, Google Play preinstalled and an option to use standard Android 4.2.2 O/S or a user-friendly Windows style interface.One of the first sites in the U.S. with more details for this new model is-- TabletSprint
carlinafrelich - Tuesday, October 1, 2013 - link
til I looked at the check which was of $6274, I did not believe that...my... mother in law truly erning money part-time from their laptop.. there friend brother has been doing this for only about 18 months and recently cleard the debts on their home and got a new BMW 5-series. look at this website>>>>>> url.ℳn/23bb7d0XFire99 - Sunday, October 13, 2013 - link
U joking right? Since when is IP5S a tablet? It shouldnt be in this test at all and when the score is bad for IP5S. They didnt even incl it on the tests.Shootergod - Sunday, December 1, 2013 - link
Hi noob,surely they didn't list the geekbench 3 which they've used to mention before guess what? it has been helpless defeated there,beaten by Note 10.1 octa core version, and Note 10.1 2014 LTE ver. which runs Snapdragon 800 backed with 330 Adreno beats iphone 5s and ipad air hellishly in every single benchmark as usual. How about camera? ipad stucks with sucky 5mp camera which can't take any quality video and images while 8MP camera with flash can take so much better image s and vids with stereo sound recording. After apple introduce 64 bit chip,wow I see many apple fanboys popping out to bark at any tech lovers but before that they are the one saying nobody buys because of benchmark and nobody cares about it because of their shitty devices form ipad to ipad 4 and from iphone to iphone 5 lose to any Android devices,quite pathetic though,but what can I say since it is a world with freedom,everyone can choose whatever they want! Cheers!liahos1 - Tuesday, October 1, 2013 - link
Guys,Have you guys noticed stuttering / laggy performance of any sort. Verge and Engadget were pretty explicit on this. Just wondering if you've seen the same thing.
nerd1 - Tuesday, October 1, 2013 - link
I don't think they reviewed any android product which they claim to be 'laggy'Squuiid - Tuesday, October 1, 2013 - link
Does the note 10.1 2014 cheat benchmarks in the same way the Note 3 does?http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/10/galaxy-note...
darwinosx - Tuesday, October 1, 2013 - link
Anand seems reluctant to come straight out and call it cheating. If any site should do that it would be this one.The horrible faux leather and stitching is bad enough on the Note 3 but just horrendous on a full size tablet.