Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 review
Verdict
Advantages
Fabulous screen
Ultra slim and lightweight design
Good video compatibility
The inconvenients
Bad connectivity
Non-expandable memory
Disappointed with the Android app scene
Key specs
Review Price: £399.99
1GHz Tegra 2 processor
1 GB RAM
Android 3.1 operating system
10.1 inch PLS screen
16GB(/32GB) internal memory
It's hard enough to look at any 10-inch Android tablet without instantly comparing it to Apple's iPad 2, but it's nearly impossible not to with Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1. The large-screen form factor, every part of this Android Honeycomb 3.1 tablet's sleek appearance is designed to take on Apple's iOS big boy. That guarantees one thing though - it's the best-looking Android tablet to date.
The Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 proves that it's not just Apple that can produce truly beautiful hardware. Miraculously, this tablet is lighter and thinner than the
ipad 2
, at 8.6mm thick and 565g.Those downsized numbers, 15g lighter, 0.2mm thinner, are too light to notice in real life, but to rival an iPad 2 on those fronts is something no Android tablet has managed before.
It's very thin and light but, like all large tablets, it's not very comfortable to use one-handed for long periods of time. The screen surround is also plastic, rather than the metal seen in some other high-end Android tabs, but that doesn't lead to a cheap remote feel. It only extends a few millimeters from the sides of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1. The back uses a soft-touch finish, which is more comfortable in the hand than a hard metal back. This tab is an absolute joy to hold.
There's a sharp seam along the border between the black back and the silver sides, but aesthetically the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 is a triumph.
Samsung's adoption of something akin to Apple's design philosophy has also resulted in some serious compromises in connectivity It comes with 16GB of internal memory, and there's currently no way to increase that .There is no memory card slot, and no USB socket. The only on-board connectors are the proprietary dock socket, used to charge the tab and connect to a PC, and the 3.5mm headphone socket. Compare this to
Asus Eee Pad Transformer
with its miniHDMI and microSD card slots and you begin to understand the cost of a design as pure as that of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1.
Samsung lets you combat this lack of connectivity with accessories. Other than the USB cable and power adapter, none are included in the box, but an HDMI adapter is on sale for £30. A media dock and a keyboard dock are also available - the latter won't turn your Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 into a netbook, it's much more like the keyboard dock for the original iPad. Looking at the total of what's available for the tab, bundled or not, it's actually less flexible than an iPad 2 in some ways, as there's currently no way to augment a memory card (Apple's Camera Connection Kit allows this).
In the real world, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 always wins the flexibility fight - plug it into a computer using the USB cable and you can drag and drop files freely into the 16GB of internal memory. Once the operating system and pre-installed apps have made their way with that storage, there's a reasonable 13GB left to play with.
The Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 runs Android 3.1 Honeycomb, the latest edition of Google's operating system for tablets. Like the smartphone edition of the system you may already be familiar with, it's split into two main areas: home and application menu.
Each of the home screens is a park, waiting to be customized with widgets and shortcuts as you see fit. Android Honeycomb is compatible with most smartphone widgets, but they tend not to display perfectly because of the Samsung Tab's 1280×800 pixel screen. Many older widgets may have only considered 854×480 pixel screens and below, so end up looking a bit skewed.
What makes Android Honeycomb's home screens so brilliantly effective is the notifications system. There's a bar at the bottom that shows all notifications from running apps, including emails , social media updates, etc. These make home screens useful as hubs for the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, arguably more so than the ability to drop clocks, Twitter boxes and links to your favorite apps.
The other half of the notifications bar - it's quite long as it spans the entire bottom of the tab - houses the software navigation buttons. These take you back, go straight to the screen home, go to recent apps and take a picture of what's currently on the screen. This navigation bar remains at all times. It will hide its attention-grabbing icons when the media player is running in full screen, but the bar is always there under the surface. Within easy reach.
The main apps menu is the simplest catalog of all your apps and can be accessed using a link at the top right of these home screens. Unless you want to pepper your home screens with shortcuts, this is where you'll launch most of your apps and games. That said, a custom tab interface element is a row of app shortcuts at the bottom of the home screen. This is the standout feature of Samsung's Touchwiz UI tweaks. It allows you to launch mini apps like calculator and world clock in addition to other apps.
Exploring the potential for third-party software, we come across what is perhaps the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1's biggest problem: there are so few apps and games that use its hardware. With a Tegra 2 dual- core and 1GB of RAM, it's got plenty of power for everyone, but it's rarely implemented by developers – yet. have been optimized for tablet screens.Thousands upon thousands of Android smartphone apps will work on the tablet, but when it's often obvious that they weren't remotely designed for the device you're using , the result is disheartening.
When you spend up to £500 on a tablet, you expect a premium experience. The app experience here is decidedly average. The Android Market isn't doing you a favor either, which makes it difficult searching for tablet apps. Some developers label them with an "HD" title, but this is also used to refer to high-end smartphone games. Compared to the clarity of the iOS app space, where apps are clearly iPhone (/iPod Touch) apps, iPad apps, or universal apps, finding goodies worth gorging on the Android Market can be a nightmare.
This situation is improving however. Consider that the iPad series was launched in April 2010, where the first Honeycomb tablet, the Motorola Xoom, was launched at the end of February 2011. A year is a long time in this business. who lack patience would be better served by an iPad 2.
Jet Car Stunts, one of the most beautiful android games compatible with tablets
Android Honeycomb's youthfulness – as well as its open approach – also ensures that it's not bug-free. We saw a crash screen within the first few minutes of using the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, and scrolling in the browser can be incredibly slow at times. Android Honeycomb 3.1 is polished and fun to use in many ways, but it's finicky. Just like with apps, a little patience may be required.
We have to point out that these are mostly issues on Google's side, not Samsung's. Hardware-wise, this is an incredibly good tablet...
The Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 features a 10.1-inch display (an easy-to-solve name mystery) using a PLS panel. This stands for Plane to Line Switching, and is Samsung's take on IPS, the technology of screen used in the iPad 2.
Both panel types are designed to provide excellent viewing angles, and the Tab works perfectly here. Viewing angles are excellent, contrast is excellent, and color reproduction is very vivid. Perhaps too vivid even - it seems to be trying to recreate the saturation levels of its famous AMOLED screens of yore here.
You don't have full control over the screen's saturation levels, but you can choose from Dynamic, Standard, and Movie display modes. Movie helps tame the color a bit. The built-in media player offers additional color tone options - Normal, Warm, and Cool - plus an additional outdoor visibility mode that boosts brightness and color saturation for a more powerful image.
You'd never want to use it indoors - it's borderline awful - but it's handy outdoors as the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 uses a glossy screen, attracting fingerprints and glare like a magnet attracting paperclips. However, all competitors of consumer tablets use this type of screen.
Using automatic brightness adjustment, the Tab keeps its backlight fairly muted. It judges screen brightness using the light sensor on the front just to the left of the furthest lens visible from the camera. Go manually and turn up the backlight and the Galaxy Tab 10.1 has retina-scorching brightness potential. This in turn will kill battery life, but is useful for giving the screen an extra "pop" for use in direct sunlight.
At 149 dpi, the pixel density is higher than the iPad 2
's
The tablet's display is roughly on par with the Apple iPad 2's screen in sheer quality, and trumps resolution, with 1280×800 pixels instead of 1024×768. , so many apps and games available on the tab don't use that extra resolution, as we've complained about before.
The touchscreen is capacitive, which responds directly to your finger rather than a stylus. There is an occasional software glitch in scrolling, which is due to Android Honeycomb rather than the Galaxy Tab 10.1, but otherwise the screen is excellent. It can handle at least 10 separate touch points (we don't have fingers after that) and responsiveness is top notch.
Not satisfied with the browsing benefits of a large capacitive touchscreen, Samsung has also incorporated motion-based navigation controls. In the browser and gallery, you can zoom in and out by tilting the device up. forward and backward when both thumbs are pressed on the screen. You can also move icons between home screens by tapping on them and tilting the tab from side to side.
Both of these motion-based gesture controls work well, but they don't consider one thing crucial - the touchscreen gestures they attempt to replace are already incredibly convenient and intuitive. The pinch-to-zoom gesture is one of the key UI innovations of the touchscreen revolution. You can disable gestures if you end up using them accidentally, so the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 doesn't lose any points for what's just an attempt to stand out from the competition.
There's an accelerometer and gyroscope on board, so like most tablets, the Tab 10.1 will automatically spin depending on how it's held. It was remarkably fast and reliable here. And like gestures, you can disable this feature if it annoys you.
The Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 offers two cameras: a 3.2-megapixel camera on the back and a 2-megapixel user-facing sensor for video calls and taking pictures of you pouting. With autofocus and a built-in LED flash, the main camera is capable of taking reasonable quality photos, much better than what you'd get with the awful iPad 2. Snapper 3 cameras, 2 megapixel can create photos up to 2048×1536 pixels and 720p videos.
However, like most low-end smartphone camera photos, the primary lens can't capture huge amounts of detail and color reproduction is lacking - with photos looking slightly washed out. 'testing, we were lucky to have fantastic shooting time, but you can still see those gaps in action, the sky isn't as bright a blue as the real thing, and zoom in on those shots shows that they don't offer enough detail to print at a decent size.
In tougher, less well-lit conditions, the Galaxy Tab 10.1's camera images become grainy and soft. The autofocus also starts to have real trouble sharpening objects. Turn on the flash and it will improve - as it is a small lamp rather than a real xenon flash, it also helps to focus significantly - but its range is quite short. Do you really want to use a tablet as a compact camera (really not)? Answers in the comments below.
Something tablets should definitely be good at playing video And yet so few are The Eee Pad Transformer and iPad 2 can't play many out-of-the-box video codecs, but the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 certainly can.
It can play MKV files, Xvids or DivX videos and handles HD content easily. However, it failed to play our high bitrate 1080p MKVs and a few other MKV files. its video skills surpass all other big name Android Honeycomb tablets currently available. We have a hunch the Archos G8 101 might beat it on codec support in the coming months, but its screen not a patch on that of Tab 10.1.
Battery life is also impressive. In our video test, where we disabled Wi-Fi and set the brightness to auto in a reasonably well-lit room, it lasted 8 hours 49 minutes playing a standard def file .Using 7000mAh rechargeable battery, it has slightly larger capacity than 6520mAh
Acer Iconia A500
and 6500mAh Motorola Xoom. The iPad 2 wins here though.
The Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 beats every other 10-inch Android Honeycomb tablet when it comes to form factor. It's thinner and lighter than them all, without sacrificing battery life or power. doesn't cost more either. At £399 for the 16GB, non-3G version, the Tab is comparable in price structure to rivals like the Motorola Xoom and
Asus Eee Pad Transformer
.However, it doesn't offer everything.Connectivity is relatively poor - it lacks HDMI output, DLNA, expandable memory and non-proprietary USB connection.It helps the Tab 10.1 look good, but it's a compromise with which some tablet fans will struggle to live with.
Verdict
Thinner and lighter than an iPad 2, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 proves that Android tablets don't have to be iOS's ugly sisters. comfortable in hand. Aside from limited connectivity, its flaws are broader Android issues rather than issues to be ironed out at Samsung and its design team.
Trust Score
Note in detail
Performance
8
Design
9
Features
7
Battery life
8
Other
Processor
Tegra 2
Memory (RAM) (Gigabyte)
1 GB
Mobile Broadband/3G
Nope
Display
Operating system
android