The original Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 was one of our favorite tablets at the time of its release. Its built-in stylus, IR-emitter, and split screen multitasking made it a productivity powerhouse that other tablets just couldn't match. The 2014 Edition ($549.99/16GB) is better in every conceivable way—it's lighter, faster, packs a higher-resolution display, more stylus functionality, and even better multitasking capability. This year's Note 10.1 is not without its flaws, though, as the software experience can be buggy at times. Fortunately, the Note 10.1 still offers the best stylus and multitasking experiences available. It's one of the few Android tablets that can actually make your life easier, and if Samsung can iron out some of the software bugs, it'll make for a compelling alternative to the Apple iPad.
Design and Features
At 9.57 by 6.75 by 0.31 inches (HWD) and 19.75 ounces, the new Note 10.1 is smaller and lighter than its predecessor, but still not as physically impressive as the 0.27-inch thick and 17.44-ounce Sony Xperia Tablet Z. Despite Samsung's best efforts to conceal the all-plastic build, the Note 10.1 still feels cheap. The faux-leather back isn't terrible on its own, but when combined with the imitation chrome edges—seemingly lifted straight off of faux-metal, plastic utensils—the whole package ends up looking a bit tacky. It feels sturdy enough, though, and it's preferable to the slick glossy plastic that typically adorns Samsung products. The Note 10.1 is available in white or black.
View all There are Power and Volume buttons along the top edge, as well as the IR-emitter for controlling your home theater devices. You'll find a flap covering the microSD card slot on the right edge and a 3.5mm headphone jack on the left. Side-firing stereo speaker grilles can be found on the left and right edges as well, while a micro USB port sits centered along the bottom edge for charging and syncing—an upgrade over last year's proprietary port. The stylus is tucked neatly away in the upper right hand corner and uses the same pressure sensitive Wacom digitizer that's standard in Note devices.
Samsung made a much needed upgrade to the display here, now sporting a 2,560-by-1,600-pixel resolution that amounts to 298 pixels per inch. That's better than the iPad's 263 pixels per inch, and the LCD panel on the Note 10.1 is exceedingly bright and vibrant. This isn't an AMOLED display, but colors look overly saturated in typical Samsung fashion. Samsung offers Dynamic, Standard, and Movie profiles for varying degrees of saturation and color accuracy, so you can tweak the display to your liking. This is one of the better tablet displays I've seen, and gives the iPad a run for its money.
This is a Wi-Fi only tablet that connects to 802.11a/b/g/n/ac networks on the 2.4 and 5GHz bands. You also get Bluetooth 4.0 and aGPS/GLONASS GPS radios. The microSD card slot worked fine with our 64GB SanDisk card and the micro USB port is MHL-compatible for mirroring to an HDTV with the appropriate adapter, which also worked fine in our tests.
The Note 10.1 is also one of two devices that are compatible with the Samsung Galaxy Gear smartwatch. The Gear is impressive, but feels a bit rushed. It's also probably a better fit for Note 3 owners since the call answering feature will be useless with the Note 10.1
Stylus and Multitasking
The Note's stylus was unique last year, but has since been imitated by competitors like the Toshiba Excite Write. But just having a stylus isn't enough, as we saw with the Write's lack of useful features and OS level integration. Samsung is still top dog with its suite of stylus friendly apps and baked in features. New this year is Air Command, which makes use of the stylus' proximity sensor to bring some of Samsung's most useful stylus features front and center.
Hovering the stylus over any part of the screen and pressing the stylus' button brings up a semi-circle menu with five options: Action Memo, Scrap Booker, Screen Write, S Finder, and Pen Window. Action Memo brings up a floating sticky note with Samsung's usual array of note taking tools. Each memo minimizes down into a floating icon until dismissed. Scrap Booker lets you create virtual scrapbooks by clipping whatever content is on the screen. It even preserves metadata like image URLs and link content. Screen Write captures a screenshot and lets you annotate it with your own notes. S Finder lets you search through all of your notes and content, including Web history and apps.
Pen Window is Samsung's secondary multitasking feature, which supplements the improved multi window feature. Multi window is still here, but now you can drag the divider to resize the left and right windows. You can also save pairs of apps you like to open often, which is a nice addition. Pen Window lets you define another rectangular space for a third, fourth, or even fifth concurrent task to run in. These two features combined blow away any other tablet when it comes to multitasking, which gives the Note 10.1 a huge advantage for productivity.
via Technology - Google News http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&fd=R&usg=AFQjCNGMuyDQDv7YE-_bpYc3E0EhLr-BEg&url=http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2425004,00.asp
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