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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jwh7 - Sunday, March 23, 2014 - link
"I really can’t find any other direct competition in the Android market for the Samsung Pro 8.4 right now, so it's an easy recommendation."LG G-Pad 8.3 !? ...and now easily found for $250 or less; or there's the Play Store edition with newer Android version. (Yes, I have the former and I'm using it now, so perhaps I am biased :-) Sure it is 'only' a 1920x1200 display in comparison to the Samsung 8.4, but I really like the LG added features versus what I've read in reviews of its Play Store edition. I only wish / hope the LG version updates to Android 4.3, or newer, eventually. I don't think I would like the Samsung's home/back button setup, either. I will close only by saying I like the LG enough that I have no desire to root/ROM it, which is saying something.
JarredWalton - Sunday, March 23, 2014 - link
Snapdragon 600 and 1080p means I don't really consider it "direct competition". Sorry if that wasn't clear. It's more like an alternative in the lines of the Nexus 7 -- different, good, but not all the same features.realtanu - Sunday, March 23, 2014 - link
No one will sell me a Samsung 10.1 Note 2014 - This is why Apple wins. I want a Samsung 10.1 Note 2014 with Cellular. I drive to BestBuy and they try to sell me one with WiFi, no Cellular - but they have Apple. I go drive to a Verizon Store in NJ and they can order and ship one for me, but easier to order online. I order online at Verizon Wireless (since they are only ones offering cellular) and I fill out extra forms because my delivery address is different than home address. They say not a problem and call a 800 # after placing order to confirm shipping address; and I get an email saying the same. I call 800 #, am on hold for 20 minutes, get to a representative, on hold for another 5 minutes and they tell me they automatically cancelled my order and I cannot get it shipped to a different address online. I call a NY Verizon Wireless store and ask them whether they have it stock; they try to sell me an old 10.1 and then after clarifying, they tell me they don't have any in stock in NY and to go to NJ or order online.After ~5 hours wasted trying to buy a Samsung 10.1 Note 2014, I think I will just order an iPad Air from Apple.com with AT&T data plan - and it looks like I can order with Amazon Prime too. I really didn't want to buy into the Apple ecosystem, but I'm now seeing the value of it... just being able to buy the product easily is eye-opening versus my Samsung/Verizon experience.
hughlle - Sunday, March 23, 2014 - link
Funny, because i can go straight onto Verizon and order one straight away. I don't find much merit in your argument ;)realtanu - Monday, March 24, 2014 - link
Wasn't making an argument as much as reporting the news ;)I order online at Verizon Wireless (since they are only ones offering cellular) and I fill out extra forms because my delivery address is different than home address. They say not a problem and call a 800 # after placing order to confirm shipping address; and I get an email saying the same. I call 800 #, am on hold for 20 minutes, get to a representative, on hold for another 5 minutes and they tell me they automatically cancelled my order and I cannot get it shipped to a different address online.
996_gt2 - Sunday, March 23, 2014 - link
The disk performance benchmarks are not completely correct for the Dell Venue 8 Pro.The disk performance numbers for the Venue 8 Pro are roughly doubled after the newest A05 BIOS, which enables eMMC HS200 by default. (HS200 could be enabled in earlier BIOSes, but was not enabled by default).
So the Venue 8 Pro should really be at the top of all of these charts, instead of at the bottom.
With the A05 BIOS, I get the following results in Crystaldiskmark:
Sequential read: 175.2 MB/s
Sequential write: 76.67 MB/s
4k read: 15.04 MB/s
4k write: 14.07 MB/s
JarredWalton - Sunday, March 23, 2014 - link
I'll see about retesting before posting any final review. Thanks.themossie - Sunday, March 23, 2014 - link
I assume these benchmarks are for the Venue 8 (not the Venue 8 Pro). Is the BIOS update for the non-pro as well?996_gt2 - Sunday, March 23, 2014 - link
@themossie:Good call. I read the charts and was thought that the results looked very low for the Venue 8 Pro, and then I did some searching and saw that there was also a "non-Pro" Android based Venue 8. If the #s reported in the charts are for the Android Venue 8, then they could very well be correct. Rather confusing naming on Dell's part.
JarredWalton - Sunday, March 23, 2014 - link
Okay, that explains things -- I was wondering where I would get a BIOS update for the Venue 8. LOL. So it seems the Venue 8 has rather slow NAND compared to the Venue 8 Pro.