Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 - The Starlet

The Starlet 

Since our hands-on with the device in May, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 has garnered much attention (positive and negative). On the positive side of things, the Galaxy Tab 10.1 is the strongest offering yet from Samsung (and Google) yet that can compete with the market leader, Apple iPad 2.

For starters, Samsung has done a very respectable job of designing the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 (3G model) - it is the lightest (565g) and thinnest (8.6mm) tablet in the market for the 10.1-inch form factor. In addition, it runs on Google Android 3.1 on top of its own user interface, Samsung TouchWiz. It ships with a 1GHz dual-core processor and 1GB of RAM. Given these traits, Samsung is ready to take on Apple and the rest of the tablet market too.

Alas, the coin always has two sides. Having all the attention showered on its stunning feat of engineering, it is inevitable that it will be under scrutiny. In recent weeks, Samsung has been embroiled in legal lawsuits with Apple in 12 courts in nine countries on four continents. Apple succeeded in gaining a ban on the sales of the tablet in Germany and Samsung has refrained from marketing and selling the tablet in Australia while pending the resolution for a similar lawsuit. Locally, the Galaxy Tab 10.1 hasn't faced such an issue, so we are still good to go with our review of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 (3G model) that has most of the tech community drooling over it.

Design Aspects 

As the name suggests, the Galaxy Tab 10.1 has a large 10.1-inch display. While the black bezel surrounding the screen does not occupy much space as compared to the Lenovo IdeaPad Tablet K1, it suffers from a similar undesirable trait in almost all tablets - a glossy display that attracts fingerprints and smudges very easily. 

As mentioned earlier, a key selling point of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 is its light weight of 565 grams. This makes it the lightest 10.1-inch tablet in the market when compared to tablets in its class (Acer Iconia Tab A500 - 730g, Apple iPad 2 - 613g, ASUS Eee Pad Transformer - 680g, Lenovo IdeaPad Tablet K1 - 750g, Motorola Xoom - 730g). Hence, you will have no problem holding it with one hand over long usage periods. 

Although it is the lightest among all the 10.1-inch tablets, our gripe with the Galaxy Tab 10.1 is its plastic build. Having handled and reviewed a several tablets, we can't help but notice the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 is lacking a premium feel compared against tablets such as the ASUS Eee Pad Transformer. Nonetheless, we found ourselves leaning towards a lighter and more portable device over build quality.

The other star physical feature of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 is its 8.6mm thin profile, which is just a hairline thinner than the 8.8mm iPad 2. While the 0.2mm difference is hardly noticeable, every gram and millimeter counts in the technology arena.

As powerful as the new Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 is, it does not have connectivity features available straight out of the box. Unlike it, competitors such as the Motorola Xoom has a dedicated micro-USB and HDMI ports. We would also prefer the inclusion of a memory card slot to increase the storage capacity of the device, which is a common feature among Android tablets such as the Acer Iconia Tab A500. These limitations quickly bring to mind of the the tablet's similarity to Apple's iPad 2.

A Stroke of Touch Wizardry

With more Android 3.1 Honeycomb tablets flooding the market as of late, the Galaxy Tab 10.1 attempts to stand out from the crowd with Samsung's customized user interface (UI), Dubbed as Samsung TouchWiz, the UI shares a few similarities (and differences) to its earlier counterparts, which were used in smartphones such as the Samsung Galaxy S II.

To give you a quick overview of the TouchWiz's main features, here's an earlier video walk through to shed some light, followed by a quick summary of the seven main features.

Generally, the Samsung TouchWiz does its job fairly well on improving on the usability of the Honeycomb user interface. It addresses some of the shortfalls of the Honeycomb interface and adds in several handy features such as app trays, screen capture and enhanced notification panel.

Besides the Lenovo IdeaPad Tablet K1, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 is the second Android tablet to have the task killer function available out of the box. One of the biggest gripes we have with Honeycomb OS is its inability to close apps from the multitasking menu. Needless to say, we are glad that Samsung addressed this issue in the Galaxy Tab 10.1. However, we feel there is a duplication of functions on the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 where the Program Monitor widget and Task Manager app basically do the same thing. Furthermore, they render the multitasking menu useless since users can also switch between apps through the Program Monitor or Task Manager.

The Samsung TouchWiz falls short in terms of performance when compared to its main competitor, the HTC Sense 3.0 UI that is found in the HTC Flyer and newer smartphones such as the HTC Sensation. Overall, HTC Sense is more polished in terms of the user interface and features. When reviewing the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, we noticed slight lags when navigating the user interface. Animations and transitions were not as snappy as we expect from a tablet that has similar hardware specification as the rest of the Honeycomb tablets. Nevertheless, it isn't a very detracting point and the Samsung TouchWiz is a crucial element of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 which sets it apart from the crowd.

A Star in the Galaxy? 

The Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 is pretty much similar to its Android counterparts when it comes to hardware configurations - an NVIDIA Tegra 2 (1GHz) dual-core processor and 1GB of RAM. Obviously, we would expect it to perform on par with any other similar Android tablet, but just to be sure it ranks as well as the others, we've shared our benchmark findings too.

For the performance benchmarks, we pit the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 against the newcomer Lenovo IdeaPad Tablet K1 and ASUS Eee Pad Transformer as they run on the same Android 3.1 platform. As usual, the Apple iPad 2 is included as it is by far a benchmark for all other tablets. The following benchmarks are used for raw performance evaluation: -

• Quadrant evaluates the CPU, memory, I/O and 3D graphics performance. This is an Android OS based test.
  
   
• Smartbench 2011 is a multi-core friendly benchmark application that includes both the Productivity and Games Indices for a more complete gauge of the overall performance of Android devices.
  
   
• SunSpider JavaScript benchmark measures the browsing performance of the tablet.

From the results above, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 performed consistently well across all three benchmarks. The Galaxy Tab 10.1 took a decent lead over the other two Android tablets, breaching the 2000 and 3000 marks in the Quadrant and Smartbench 2011 (Productivity) benchmarks respectively. The ASUS Eee Pad Transformer edges out the Galaxy Tab 10.1 in the Smartbench 2011 (Games) benchmark but the difference is minimal. Despite the better benchmark number, the user experience was found to be similar across the board as they are equipped with the same hardware components.

When it comes to web browser performance, the Android tablets generally do not differ much from the Apple iPad 2 although the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 seemed to falter a little in this aspect. Again numbers aside, it's important to note that Android tablets do have an edge over the Apple iPad 2 due to Adobe Flash support.

Benchmark results are just one part of the user experience, acting as a fraction of your purchasing consideration. The actual usage is might vary from what's shown in the benchmarks. Our time with the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 was a positive one, although there were slight lags when navigating the user interface (as mentioned in the earlier section). We suspect that the Samsung TouchWiz is the culprit for hogging system resources, hence resulting in a slightly sluggish user experience compared to the other tablets. 

Do note that the above benchmarks are conducted with stock firmwares, and hence do not reflect the day-to-day usage conditions of the tablet.

"Tabbing" on the Dance Floor

With a slim profile of 8.6mm, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 is built to be a mobile entertainment device. On paper, it has everything to back that up - a 10.1-inch display with 1280 x 800 pixels resolution, Adobe Flash player support, full HD video playback support, stereo speakers, a 3-megapixel auto-focus rear camera with LED flash and a 2-megapixel front camera.

The viewing experience on the Galaxy Tab 10.1 is pleasant with vivid details and vibrant colors, considering that Samsung managed to pack a pixel density of 149 ppi (pixel per inch) on the 10.1-inch display. This is a tad higher than Apple iPad 2's display at 132 ppi. However, the display has a flaw common in most tablets - a reflective screen. It gets annoying after a while when you keep seeing the reflection of your background or yourself on the screen. And let us not forget the amount of fingerprint smudges on the same screen.

If you tend to hold the device on the lower half of the device, the stereo speakers would be clear to blast its music. This is unlike the placement of the speakers on the BlackBerry PlayBook where it is hard to avoid blocking the speakers with your hands when holding the device. From our testing on the Samsung, the quality of the speakers are average at best and you're better off with an external pair of portable speakers if you are serious about music quality on the move.

The Galaxy Tab 10.1 doesn't exactly come with a strong imaging proposition, given its 3-megapixel autofocus camera, considering how most Honeycomb tablets offer a 5-megapixel imaging resolution. However, it is also important to note that a higher megapixel count does not necessarily mean better image quality. We put the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 through the color and resolution tests to prove that point.

For those who are considering getting the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 over the Apple iPad 2, the battery performance is perhaps the most important section of this review. For the battery life assessment, we compare the Galaxy Tab 10.1 against the ASUS Eee Pad Transformer, Lenovo IdeaPad Tablet K1 and the Apple iPad 2. The battery test involves looping a 720p video with screen brightness and volume set to 100%. We also turned on Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity to ensure constant streaming of data through email and Twitter.

Judging from the results of the battery test, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 is still lagging behind the Apple iPad 2. It managed a battery life of 339 minutes (slightly more than five and a half hours), which is miles behind the Apple slate. However, if you take into consideration that the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 has a slightly better battery mileage than its fellow Android competitors, the battery performance is actually quite good.

The Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 shines in the portability index thanks to its overall dimensions, better than average battery life and weight of just 565g. It is the first Honeycomb tablet to narrow the gap with the Apple iPad 2. As with most other Honeycomb tablets, Google needs to really optimizes power management on the Android platform so that its tablets can compete more effectively with the iPad 2 to attract consumers.

For those who are looking for an alternative to the Apple iPad 2 with good battery life, you could consider the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1. But for those who really need battery life to be their top priority and don't mind the platform and OS choice, the iPad 2 is still king.

Under normal usage conditions, the Samsung tablet was able to last more than a day with occasional web surfing, checking social feeds and replying emails. As our battery test simulates fairly stressful usage conditions, we believe the Galaxy Tab 10.1 is able to last much longer under normal day-to-day usage conditions. After all, actual battery mileage will vary under different usage conditions. 

Bright Shiny Starlet 

When Samsung released its first tablet, the Galaxy Tab a year ago, we were duly impressed with it. It could match the Apple iPad in a few aspects but it faltered in a major aspect - the Android 2.2 OS. It was not optimized for use on mobile devices with larger screens such as tablets and hence the user experience was less than satisfactory. A year later, Samsung returned to the scene with its second tablet offering, the Galaxy Tab 10.1, which is one of the best Honeycomb tablet we have reviewed so at the point of writing.

The Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 impressed us greatly throughout the review. As the thinnest (8.6mm) and lightest (565g) 10.1-inch tablet in the market, we had no qualms about carrying the Galaxy Tab 10.1 around for work and personal usage. The excellent engineering and design that went into making the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 makes it a joy to tote around in one hand and indulge in one-handed operation.

Besides the much improved Android 3.1 OS, Samsung also throws in its customized TouchWiz user interface which brings a few handy features. One useful feature is the revamped notification panel that enables you to toggle more connectivity options. Another is the addition of more widgets such as the Program Monitor, which allows you to quit apps and free memory space in a jiffy. Other notable add-ons are its app tray of six preset shortcuts and the ability to take screenshots.

From a multimedia perspective, the 10.1-inch high resolution display is a delight to view media content on the Galaxy Tab 10.1. Audio quality might not be great but we weren't expecting otherwise from its slim build. One aspect which caught us by surprise was its camera performance. Its 3-megapixel imaging resolution actually churned out respectable images that fared even better than its competitors' 5-megapixel shooters.

However, the Samsung tablet is not without its flaws.While the overall user experience was positive, we felt that the Samsung TouchWiz caused the tablet to feel sluggish at times. Interface transitions and swipes were not as fluid and smooth as other Honeycomb tablets and the Apple iPad 2. The lags were noticeable when we browsed the Android Market or activated the app tray.

The lightweight and sleek form factor also come with one sacrifice - build quality. We know that some consumers place high emphasis on getting a device with a solid build quality and unfortunately, the plastic shell of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 could be a deal breaker. The plastic material makes the device look and feel a little cheap compared to the better built Apple iPad 2. Last but not least, there is room for improvement in the area of battery performance. As one of the best Honeycomb tablets, we expected better battery life out of the Samsung tablet.

At a retail price of S$848, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 3G (16GB) competes directly with the similarly priced iPad 2 Wi-Fi +3G (16GB) edition and is a highly recommended buy amongst Android tablets. Compared to its immediate rivals, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 is really worth the amount you are paying for if you're looking for direct alternative to Apple's offerings. Although the Lenovo IdeaPad Tablet K1 32GB Wi-Fi costs lower at S$699 and offers more storage capacity, its performance and stable operation leaves much to be desired. If the tablet's overall portability isn't your main concern, and you're looking for a mobile workhorse, you can consider the S$799 ASUS Eee Pad Slider 16GB Wi-Fi or the S$898 ASUS Eee Pad Transformer (with the keyboard docking station). Both of these ASUS slates offer a unique proposition that's not rivaled yet.

In short, the similar price point of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 with its immediate rival gives consumers little reasons to look elsewhere for a suitable direct alternative to the Apple iPad 2.

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