[Galaxy Note 10.1 General] miko3d:
Here are my 50 cents for the note 10.1.

well Long story short,I have to agree to some (if not most)of the reviews :( ,please let me explain,

First of all I was really happy when i heard about this tablet,I own a galaxy note and im apparently one of those "old minded" people who think that a good stylus (no shame in calling what its) can do wonders if implemented correctly.so Yeah basically im a big fan of the S-pen in a tablet .

I was seriously thinking about buying this tablet,I found the price to be in the edge for me ,its no braking news to say that its priced to compete at the high end of the new wave of tablets. So lets be clear here ,its priced at same level as the new Ipad and transformer infinity 700 and they are the reference to compare with .

Now,I watched and read most of the reviews,but I normally take them with a grain of salt,mainly because i have very specific uses for my hardware that usually are underrated by typical reviewers who all they do is the common tour of hardware,software,crappy pen tests ,bla bla bla without really stopping to check what really stands out in the product,so once i had a Note 10.1 sample around my electronic shop next to where i work i went for a whole week day after day to have a play and feel about it.the good thing is i was able to compare to pretty much all the options there are tablet wise,I checked the asus with its 1080p screen,the nexus 7 (yes not in the same category)and of course the ipad 2 and "new"Ipad,i installed and used most of the apps i currently use in my phone to see how it performs.

this are for me the main issues with this tablet:

BUILD QUALITY:

Ok, call it polycarbonate or alien superlight new gen material,but lets be honest the tablet doesnt feel top of the range at all,it has been criticized a lot for this and I have to agree,we can argue about this as each of us have our own view but to me it feels plastic and cheap but worst is that it doesn’t transmit that sturdy feeling like other tablets do.This is really annoying,samsung are selling a top of the range product and it just feels cheap... compared to all the competition it doesn’t t look good specially against the Ipad or even against the half priced Nexus 7 .

Screen:

On one side yes the retina display is awesome,the asus screen is fantastic and the Samsung is just…ok,its not bad but once you see the others…well you definetely notice the difference,so much shaper,text icons really shine on a high res screen. some people say that from a distance is fine,that the batery is better like this bla bla bla,but the truth is the screen should have been better and there is a noticeable difference.

The good news is that gaming and anything gpu related will be snappier as a result of a lower resolution.

Personally I would have liked a sharper screen

SPEED:

As of today spec wise This tablet is the fastest android tablet you can buy, but in its main area (the UI interface) it doesn’t show like that.Grab a Ipad or better a nexus 7 put them side by side and see what I mean.It should be “butter smooth” ;) and probably this is what it needs: Jelly bean. To me this is not a tablet issue,the hardware is top notch(prof of it is how if flyes in some apps like the browser) but more a Samsung mistake,touch wiz+ICS is more a sore than a selling point.Have a pretty empty home screen and everything is fine and smooth ,start adding widgets and things change for worse ,Multitasking is a great idea,I belive it’s the way forward, yet it needs to be well implemented for being fully productive, here I do also agree with some of the reviewers. The limitation of 6 apps which personally I wont be using plus the fact that the multiscreen solution freezes for a while (and unfortunately is more in the secs area than millisec ) when jumping from windows do not help.Its better than nothing but not enough to put it above other tablets .The good news are that its only going to get better how long will it take?Only samsung knows.

Spen

The spen works better than the one in the note phone,the rubber tip feels great,the pressure also works much better than with the pen of the phone,Its just a shame that the build quality once again is pretty crap.This is something I don’t get it again for the price range… one reviewer wrote that it looks like it came from a cereal box,and I have to agree…but overall best non windows tablet in the market for drawing and note taking,by far! Ipad capacitive crappy pens are a toy (adonit pressure sensitive touch included) when you compare to the wacom spen.This I think is by far the strongest point of this tablet.Here again things can only improve as developers catch up with more and better apps to make use of it,Art rage for example would be awesome.

All in all and after long thought the Spen itself doesn’t compensate for me the cheap look and build quality feeling plus the average screen…but this is just me and also just because I have the note phone which ill keep using till something better comes out.

if jellybean comes quick, speed could balance it a bit more...

I feel frustrated by samsung... such a huge company soo much money and making such elemental mistakes...

a bit of a shame really :(