Samsung Galaxy Tab Pro 8.4 and 10.1 Review
by Jarred Walton on March 22, 2014 9:30 PM ESTBattery Life
For battery life testing, we run the displays at 200 nits and test Internet surfing and H.264 720p video playback. In some cases the tablet OEMs have features built into the software that lock display brightness to a low (minimum) setting when battery life is less than 10%. The Galaxy Pro offerings appear to do this, though you can override the behavior in the power options. In real-world use, you can expect perhaps slightly better Internet battery life (as it's unlikely you'll be refreshing pages every 20 seconds) while the video playback results are exactly what you would do if watching a movie.
The Nexus 7 wins the WiFi testing result while the iPad Air and Mini Retina take the top two spots for the video playback (and silver and bronze in the Internet testing). It’s interesting that the two Galaxy Pro tablets are so close on the Internet results but the 10.1 does substantially better on the video playback. Either way, both tablets are at least capable of reaching their “up to 9/10 hours” advertised battery life, with perhaps a bit more if you’re willing to turn down the display brightness or shut off WiFi.
There are better tablets if you want as much battery life as possible, but given the ready availability of portable chargers and such I'm not sure it's all that critical. Gaming battery life is lower than the above results, of course, so plan on more like four to six hours of gaming (depending on the game) before needing to plug in.
Storage Performance
Having used several older Android tablets, the drop in storage performance over time can be extremely painful. With Android 4.3 and 4.4 now supporting TRIM, hopefully things will stay running a bit more smoothly over a long period of time. As it stands, we don’t have all that many results for our Android storage benchmarks (and no cross-platform test for iOS yet), but the Samsung eMMC looks to be better than most of what we’ve tested. The random write speeds in particular are nearly twice as fast as that of the Nexus 7, and we’re at least consistently beating typical hard drive performance with >1MBps random I/O. Hopefully we’ll see even faster NAND/controller solutions upcoming tablets.
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Reflex - Sunday, March 23, 2014 - link
1) Amazon is not in the business of selling a user to a third party, and in fact has strict internal policies for data use.2) Again, read the privacy policy. It is dramatically different from Google's. Amazon's goal is to sell you stuff directly, not to sell the customer as the product to third parties.
realtanu - Sunday, March 23, 2014 - link
+1theduckofdeath - Sunday, March 23, 2014 - link
"1) Amazon is not in the business of selling a user to a third party, and in fact has strict internal policies for data use."You could have fooled me with all of those 3rd party resellers using their portal. :)
Amazon does sell your information to third parties, they just do it using a slightly different model than Google.
Reflex - Sunday, March 23, 2014 - link
They actually do not. Create your own reseller via Amazon, anyone can do it. There are no options to purchase information on users, only information on your own product performance. Please actually read the agreements or set up a merchant account(free) to see for yourself. I know its popular to dismiss Google, Facebook and others with "Well everyone else does it" but there are several companies that do not and it is not any part of their business model. Amazon is one. Apple is another (and I dislike Apple, but facts are facts).R0H1T - Monday, March 24, 2014 - link
And you have definitive proof that Google sells your info to anyone else right ? AFAIK Google is known for targeted ads based on one's browsing history, through cookies which everyone else employs in the same way, or your gmail contents.Now the NSA/FBI/CIA et al have access to each of these firm's servers & data center residing in the US but that's the only thing(or entity) that has unrestricted access to your data, as for the rest I don't believe that Google shares everything they have on me & it's not like I have anything to hide nor have I put sensitive/personal info in public domain to begin with !
The user tracking you're alluding to is done the same way whichever firm you look at, the sharing of sensitive or personal info to non govt organizations is hard for me to believe because only FB does it, again AFAIK, & there's literally no proof of Google doing it in the manner what you've suggested.
grahaman27 - Saturday, March 22, 2014 - link
Most would consider it a massive drawback.Reflex - Saturday, March 22, 2014 - link
Given how well Amazon has done in the market I don't know that its 'most' actually. Some certainly do. Perhaps even many. But the Kindle devices are very large players in the space implying that for many it is not an issue.And again, better hardware, cheaper price, better security, better privacy, can sideload anything you need that isn't in the store.
JarredWalton - Sunday, March 23, 2014 - link
Better hardware? Or similar hardware? Better security? Doubtful -- different, yes, but not inherently better. Better privacy, perhaps. Sideloading is an option for all Android devices, so that's not really in the cards. Basically, it's as I said: if you can live without Google Play Services they're good devices.Reflex - Sunday, March 23, 2014 - link
Similar but Samsung is six months late and just prior to a new generation that will be coming later this summer. Furthermore they are more expensive with no significant improvements over the older hardware. And I will say 'better' because of build quality, the KF8.9 construction quality is excellent, something I have yet to see in any Samsung phone or tablet.The security of a curated app store is inherently better than the free for all that is Play services. I did not say that sideloading did not exist on others, only that if there is a must have app, you can get it on the Fire via sideloading if you need to.
And yes, if you need Google Play a KF is not a good device for you. But many people can live without it, as demonstrated by the KF marketshare.
JarredWalton - Sunday, March 23, 2014 - link
I'm like many in that I have purchased a number of apps via the Google Play Store over the past few years, which means shifting away from it I would lose over $100 worth of software. I suppose if I had started with the Amazon store I'd be in the reverse situation. I haven't spent time with the Kindle so I can't really say whether build quality is better, but I have no complaints with the Galaxy Pro offerings. Sure, the faux-leather plastic backing isn't the best thing ever, but it felt fine to hold and use on a regular basis.