Samsung Galaxy Tab Pro 8.4 and 10.1 Review
by Jarred Walton on March 22, 2014 9:30 PM ESTSamsung Galaxy Tab Pro 10.1 Subjective Analysis
Visually, the Tab Pro 10.1 looks very similar to the 8.4, only larger. There are a few little differences, however, like the fact that the 10.1 is designed to be held and used primarily in landscape orientation. Again, we have the same potential issue with the navigation buttons being integrated into the display bezel – if you’re not in landscape mode, “you’re holding it wrong.” What it really boils down to however is personal preferences. I just finished saying out I tend to like the 8-inch class tablets as a nice middle ground between smartphones and laptops, but I can certainly see the draw in larger devices. The bigger display can work better at times (i.e. if you’re watching a movie with a friend), and depending on your eyesight it might simply be easier to read.
_thumb.JPG)
_thumb.JPG)
_thumb.JPG)
_thumb.JPG)
_thumb.JPG)
_thumb.JPG)
The I/O and port options are identical to the Pro 8.4, with the only real difference being their locations. The micro-USB port is on the bottom again (but in landscape mode this time). The stereo speakers are moved to the left and right sides near the top, which creates a better soundscape in my experience (though headphones would still produce much better audio). The headset jack is on the left just above the speaker in the corner, the microSD slot is behind a cover on the right, and the power and volume controls are on the top edge near the left side along with an IR port in the center.
Like the Pro 8.4, the display is again beautiful, and the colors are actually better as well (particularly white levels). Samsung does have three screen modes on the 10.1, and considering the other similarities I was surprised the same option didn’t exist on the 8.4. Anyway, you can choose between Dynamic, Standard, and Movie modes, with an option to automatically adapt the display based on your current app. We’ll see in a moment how those modes compare in terms of color quality, but if you’re not a stickler for having accurate colors you’ll probably never notices. This is a tightly bonded display, so you almost feel like the content is resting on the surface of the device rather than residing below the glass. Reflections can still be a problem (especially in sunlight), but that’s pretty much the case with every tablet out there; in general the display can get bright enough to remain usable outdoors.
Other than being larger and heavier, the feel is otherwise identical to the 8.4. There’s a metal trim around the outside edge with a slightly rounded edge, and the back has a faux-leather (plastic) finish. We received the white model for review, though you can also buy the Pro 10.1 in black if that’s your preference. I find white tends to not show fingerprints and smudges as much, though actual dirt and grime can become a problem over time. The in-hand feel is excellent, with slightly rounded corners that don’t become uncomfortable to hold. Battery life is also quite a bit better than the 8.4, thanks to the larger battery capacity and perhaps the change in SoC as well.
I mentioned performance being better on the 8.4 in many of our benchmarks, but let me clarify that a bit before we get to the actual scores: in practice, the difference is often imperceptible. Yes, there are cases where the 8.4 might score 20% higher in benchmark frame rates, but there are other instances where the Exynos CPU cores appear to be faster. Most of the time, you can use either one and not really worry about the lower level details. With graphics, however, I do notice the difference between the devices. Angry Birds Go! for example just runs a bit better on the 8.4 than on the 10.1. If you’re looking for a device that can handle all the latest games well, I’d go with the 8.4; if you’re more interested in browsing the web, checking contacts, etc. and want the larger display, there’s nothing wrong with the Pro 10.1 – and if you want a really large tablet, you can always look to the Galaxy 12.2 models. I already feel like 10.1 is a bit large and heavy for a tablet, though, so you’d need a very specific use case to convince me that a 12.2-inch display is the way to go.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
125 Comments
View All Comments
Wilco1 - Monday, March 24, 2014 - link
What is claimed this is CPU performance at maximum frequency, not a latency test of bursty workloads. It would be interesting to see Anand's browsing test reporting both power and performance/latency results as it seems a reasonable test of actual use. However SunSpider is not like a real mobile workload.The datasets for most of the benchmarks in Geekbench are actually quite large, into 20-30MBytes range. That certainly does not fit into the L2 on any SoC I know, let alone on L1. So I suggest that Geekbench gives a far better idea of mobile performance than a benchmark that only measures the set of JIT optimization tricks to get a good SunSpider score.
Intel doesn't have magic that makes frequency scaling 10-100 times faster - PLLs and voltage regulators all use the same physics (until recently Intel was using the same industry-standard voltage regulators as everybody else). The issue is one of software, the default governor is not recognizing repeated patterns of bursty behaviour and keeping clocks high for longer when necessary. Intel avoids the Linux governor issues by using a separate microcontroller. I have no doubt that it has been well tuned to the kind of bursty behaviour that SunSpider exhibits.
virtual void - Monday, March 24, 2014 - link
So you are suggesting that the performance counters in Sandy Bridge is reporting the wrong thing when it reports 97% L1D$-hit rate in Geekbench? They seem to work quite well on "real" programs.The performance counters also suggest that Geekbench contains trivial to predict branches, while program developed with dynamic languages and/or OOP languages usually contains a lot of indirect and even conditional indirect calls that is quite hard to predict. Only the most advanced CPU-designs keep history on conditional indirect calls, so a varying branch target on a indirect call will always result in a branch-prediction miss on mobile CPUs.
The sampling frequency of CPU-load and the aggressiveness the Linux kernel switches P-state is based on the reported P-state switch latency. All modern Intel CPUs report a switching latency of 10µs while I haven't seem any ARM SoC report anything lower than 0.1ms. The _real_ effect of this is that Intel platforms will react about ten times as fast to a sudden burst in CPU-load when running Linux-kernel.
Wilco1 - Monday, March 24, 2014 - link
SPEC2006 has ~96% average L1D hit rate, so do you also claim SPEC has a small working set and runs almost entirely out of L1? The issue is not about the correctness of the performance counters but your interpretation of them. The fact that modern CPUs can run at multiple GHz despite DRAM internally running at ~50MHz still is precisely because caches and branch predictors work pretty well.C++ and GUI code typically only has a limited number of distinct targets, which are easy to predict on modern mobile CPUs (pretty much any ARM CPU since Cortex-A8 has had indirect predictors, and since A15 they support multiple targets). I've never seen conditional indirect calls being emitted by compilers, so I can imagine some CPUs may ignore this case, but it's not in any way hard to predict. The conditional indirect branches you do get in real code are conditional return (trivial to predict) and switch statements on some ARM compilers.
Well if there is such a large difference then there must be a bug - I did once glance over the Samsung cpufreq drivers and they seemed quite a mess. It is essential to sample activity at a high resolution, if you sample at Nx slower rate then you do indeed react N times slower to a burst of activity - irrespectively of how fast the actual frequency/voltage scaling is done.
Egg - Monday, March 24, 2014 - link
Alright, I'll admit I didn't actually read the article. It just seemed you were unaware of what Brian had said previously.UltraWide - Saturday, March 22, 2014 - link
The Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 has 3GB of RAM.JarredWalton - Sunday, March 23, 2014 - link
It's not clear if all 10.1 Note 2014 come with 3GB, or just the 32GB models, but I'm going to go with 3GB (and hopefully that's correct, considering the cost increase for the Note). I had the Samsung specs pages open when putting together that table, and unfortunately they didn't list RAM on the 10.1 16GB I was looking at. Weird.Reflex - Saturday, March 22, 2014 - link
" If you want another option, the Kindle Fire HDX 7” ($200) and Kindle Fire HDX 8.9” ($379) pack similar performance with their Snapdragon 800 SoCs, but the lack of Google Play Services is a pretty massive drawback in my book."For many of us that's actually the Kindle line's largest advantage. Android and a good chunk of its app ecosystem, without compromising our privacy and exposing ourselves to all the malware. Plus we got these specs six months ago with the HDX line, and for a lower price in a better package.
A5 - Saturday, March 22, 2014 - link
Yeah, because the best way to avoid malware is to bypass the Play Store and install an APK from a random website to get Youtube to work.And you're only fooling yourself if you think Amazon is any better for your privacy than Google.
Reflex - Saturday, March 22, 2014 - link
Have you actually read their privacy policies and compared? Or taken a look at their profit models? There is a significant difference between the two for their approaches to privacy.And no, if I really care to get an app like that I can get it from a third party market if I must. There are some that mirror the Play store. But that said, there are very few needs that are not met via apps already available in the Amazon store.
R0H1T - Sunday, March 23, 2014 - link
So you're saying that Amazon has no record of you in their database whatsoever OR that they don't track your browsing history through their Silk browser, using Amazon's own servers, & never target (ads/promos) you based on your buying/browsing history ?I'd say you're deluding yourself if you think that Yahoo, twitter, FB, bing or even Amazon are any different than Google when it comes to tracking their users or targeting them with specific ads/promos based on their (recorded) history ):