The Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 tablet has been a firm favourite of consumers for some years now. It was, toward the end of 2013, the Samsung flagship tablet, but nowadays the Tab A and Tab S models have taken over with better hardware and offering more for the consumer.
The Galaxy Note 10.1, however, is still available, which is impressive considering it’s placed in a market that changes so rapidly. The 10.1" WXGA TFT screen with a maximum resolution of 1280 x 800 still looks good, and the ARM Cortex A9 quad-core processor running at 1.4GHz together with 2GB of memory is capable of running the installed Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich well enough.
The Galaxy Note 10.1 also includes a pair of cameras: 1.9MP at the front and 5MP at the rear. There’s Bluetooth 4.0, 802.11 a/b/g/n wi-fi, mini-HDMI, micro-
USB and a micro-SD card slot supporting cards up to 64GB. Tucked into one corner is the Samsung S-Pen, which pulls out and activates the pre-installed Samsung handwriting features, as well as a few other apps.
It measures 262 x 180 x 8.9mm and weighs around 620g, with a slight variation depending on the model and when it was released – from August 2012 to around mid-June 2014. It’s a big enough tablet for viewing the internet, video and images, but it’s slightly too heavy for long-term holding in a reading position.
The design of the Galaxy Note 10.1 is generally good. The older model we have has a couple of knocks to the rounded edges, but it’s still going strong. These earlier models, though, have a cheapish white plastic cover throughout, which despite being tough don’t really lend it the look of quality. The later 2014 models have a strange leather-esque rear casing, which is actually just white textured plastic made to look like leather – even with fake stitching around the edges. It’s certainly an odd design decision from Samsung.
The performance is good, though. Android 4.0 breezes along without any stuttering or significant slowdowns. Gaming on the Galaxy Note is good too: it can play nearly anything available in the Play store without too much trouble.
The battery life isn’t brilliant: we managed to get six and a half hours off a full charge in our tests, and even less when we added more gaming. At home this won’t be too much of an problem, but when commuting or working out and about you’ll need to consider stopping off for a quick recharge.
The Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 is still going strong, then, and is still of use, even in this ever accelerating market. It’s unfortunate, however, that it’s still priced much higher than most other tablets available these days, some of which are actually better.