Samsung has a bewildering array of tablets and smartphones out at the moment, but there's nothing confusing about where the Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 Edition sits. It's the Korean firm's top-of-the-range consumer tablet, and it's designed to rival such products as the Nexus 10, Amazon Kindle Fire HDX 8.9in, Sony Xperia Tablet Z and Apple iPad Air.
It boasts a 10.1in high-DPI 2,560 x 1,600 resolution screen, a 1.9GHz Samsung Exynos octa-core processor, an 8-megapixel camera and – as with all the Note products – a pressure-sensitive stylus, which slots neatly into the top-right corner of the tablet.
Other notable features include an infrared transmitter that turns the tablet into a universal remote control for your TV and set-top box, and 802.11ac Wi-Fi. Surprisingly, there's only 16GB of built-in storage, but there is a microSDXC slot for adding more.
The design is reasonably high-end, too, with a seamless strip of chrome-effect plastic surrounding the edge and a white plastic rear, imprinted with a leather-effect pattern. If this sounds cheesy, it doesn't come across so in the flesh. The Note 10.1 doesn't wow like the iPad Air or the Xperia Tablet Z, and isn't particularly light at 535g. However, there isn't anything cheap about its design. It's certainly a big improvement on the first Note 10.1, which was bulkier and heavier.
Fire it up, and the good impressions continue. The screen – as is typical of Samsung's flagship devices – boasts a bright and fully saturated look, and with a pixel density of 299ppi, it matches the Nexus 10 and outdoes the iPad Air. It's a magnificently crisp display.
Resolution isn't everything, however, and on the quality front, the Note 10.1 also scores highly. Measured with our colorimeter, the display hit a maximum brightness of 367cd/m2 and a contrast level of 798:1. It isn't as bright or quite as colour-accurate as the iPad Air – it crushes greys into blacks a touch more, and whites are a shade yellow – but again we're splitting hairs here, and fine ones at that.
Performance, battery life and camera
With an eight-core SoC inside, it looks well up to the job of keeping Android 4.3 running smoothly, too. In fact, the Note's Samsung Exynos 5 Octa comprises a pair of quad-core processors: one clocked at 1.9GHz for demanding tasks such as games, and the other clocked at 1.3GHz, which kicks in when such high power isn't required – watching video, for instance, or listening to music. In addition, there's a sizeable 3GB of RAM, and a six-core Mali-T628 GPU for gaming.
Things begin to look up when you begin to compare it with its Android rivals. Overall, the Note 10.1 2014 Edition is on a par with the superb Kindle Fire HDX 8.9in, and faster than the Nexus 10 and Xperia Tablet Z. It's as fast an Android tablet as you can buy right now, and lacks for nothing when it comes to responsiveness and overall feel. There's no discernible typing lag when entering text with the onscreen keyboard, and menus and homescreen animations are generally stutter-free.
The low power cores seem to do the trick when it comes to conserving power, too, with the Note lasting a creditable 11hrs 10mins in our low-resolution looping battery test. Technically, it would have lasted longer, but with 5% remaining on the battery gauge the Note dims its screen automatically to save power. Alas, it reduces the backlight intensity to such a level as to make the screen unusable (we measured it at 5cd/m2), and there's no way of changing this behaviour in the settings, nor adjusting brightness manually.
The Note's camera, however, definitely won't be catching David Bailey's eye. It's an 8-megapixel snapper capable of grabbing 1080p video, but had a couple of key weaknesses: a tendency to underexpose when faced with scenes with very bright and dark areas; and a problem with flare when shooting indoors, which reduced the contrast and overall picture quality of many our test shots.
Usability and software
What makes the Note 10.1 2014 really stand out from the crowd is its pressure-sensitive stylus, and along with the usual raft of Samsung paraphernalia, there's a collection of stylus-specific apps and customisations on offer here.
Pull the stylus out of its home in the edge of the tablet and up pops a circular menu on the screen, offering a variety of options. You can grab onscreen elements, such as web pages (or parts of them) and store them in the Scrapbook app; take quick notes; launch a choice of apps into pop-up windows; or grab a screenshot and scribble on it.
There's also handwriting recognition built into the onscreen keyboard, which works well, and the full version of SketchBook Pro, an advanced drawing and painting app.
This is all very useful, but we're less keen on Samsung's rather overbearing Android overlay, TouchWiz. It provides a lot of features out of the box, admittedly, but it complicates things to an unnecessary degree – requiring, for instance, sign-up to Samsung's own Hub app store as well as Google Play to get the most out of it. Many of these "extras" an be replicated with third-party apps as well.
Verdict
The Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 Edition is a top-quality tablet. It's as fast as a Kindle Fire HDX, has a good screen, decent great battery life, stylus support and expandable memory, along with infrared, universal remote-control support.
You can now get Samsung Galaxy Note 2014 Edition delivered to you by ordering at www.questonlines.com.
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