PUT the new Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 next to the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 and you might mistake one for the other. But the latest tablet treat from Samsung has a little more kick than its older sibling.
The Galaxy Note 10.1 stands out among the rest of Samsung’s tablets with its front-facing speaker grilles placed on either side of its screen bezel. This is to prevent users from accidentally covering them when using the tab in its landscape mode.
Face up, the Galaxy Note 10.1 boasts a massive 10.1-inch screen but a meagre 1280x800 resolution and an even less impressive 149 pixels per inch (ppi).
Texts are pixilated but the LCD screen makes up for it marginally with its bright and crisp reproduction of images.
The massive screen, otherwise, offers a rather exquisite experience when playing videos and displaying images and web pages.
The speakers work wondrously well with its bass surprisingly audible in a fairly noisy room when the volume is cranked up to its maximum.
Tilt the device towards you and you will find the power button, volume rocker, covered microSD expansion slot, infrared port (for Smart Remote app), 3.5mm audio jack and SIM card slot, all aligned neatly along the top. At the bottom, you will find the 40-pin charger/PC port.
At the back, nestled in the rather cheap-looking plastic, you will find a five-megapixel camera (the tablet also has a 1.9-megapixel front-facing camera) with LED flash and a stylus – the S Pen – holstered at the bottom left of the tablet.
The S Pen is one other glaring feature in the Galaxy Note 10.1. Despite an improved and rubberised tip, what the stylus can do far outweighs its plastic covering.
The S Pen supports a number of useful shortcut gestures like capturing and editing a screen shot (hold down the S Pen’s button and tap on the screen) and opening S Note (double-tap screen while holding S Pen button).
It also powers on the tablet when you slide it out of its holster.
Also, if you hold down the button on its side and swipe the stylus directly across a webpage from right to left (or make a semicircle counter clockwise), you will be brought back to the previous page.
It will be nice if the same action in the opposite direction would enable the user to go back to the current webpage.
The tablet is powered by a 1.4GHz Exynos quad core processor and 2GB of RAM. The beefy processor and copious amounts of RAM should make for one of the fastest tablets around but it gets appallingly sluggish and choppy when carrying out simple tasks like navigating the interface and multi-tasking between applications.
The 2GB RAM, however excessive it may sound, still struggles to help the beastly processor along while running Samsung’s proprietary Multiscreen application.
We noticed the most apparent lag when scribbling on S Note while playing a video; brush strokes are delayed as the system tries to catch up with the input.
Since the Galaxy Note 10.1 is among Samsung devices to receive Android 4.1 Jelly Bean update sometime this year, it may be wise to wait and hope that the update will help iron out the lag issues.
Nonetheless, the Multiscreen feature is tastefully innovative and useful. You can scribble on S Note, surf the internet, watch a video, run Polaris Office, browse your photo gallery, or shoot off an email with Samsung’s mail client side-by-side in two separate windows at the same time.
In addition to that, Samsung’s Pop Up Play feature, which debuted on the Samsung Galaxy S III, allows you to watch a video in a flexible hovering window (resizable on the tablet) while you run any two of the aforementioned tasks at the same time.
In fact, you can also watch a video while you text.
Typing on the Galaxy Note 10.1 has also been made easier as the user can choose from a full-size QWERTY keyboard, a split one (especially useful when using tablet in landscape mode), and a smaller and centred floating keyboard.
You can also opt to access handwriting recognition by holding down the gear symbol on the bottom left of the keyboard and sliding your finger up to the T letter.
All in, the tablet is a pretty thing that works, though not as well as you want it to.
The addition of the S Pen is a nice touch, especially for those who are accustomed to bringing a pen and a notepad with them without the penalty of any extra weight.
If issues like the occasional stuttering, the tab’s bulk and hefty price - RM2,199 - do not bother you too much, the Galaxy Note 10.1 makes for a good companion.
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